just curious, wait 8 seconds to start?

here's how it went, one of our best customers comes in, we installed remote starters in all his personal vehicles, says he wants the remote start portion removed or de-activated an all the cars!

Reason- he says he has been having problems with one of the vans we did a starter in, a toyota rav4, starter was installed about two and a half years before, so he goes by the mechanic, and the guy points out to him, that the remote start could be the nature of his problems, this is the mechanic's reason- he says, the remote start fires up the engine to quickly from ignition to cranking the starter, he states, that at least eight seconds must elapse after the ignition is turned on and then the starter must crank, not having this delay between ignition and starting he says could cause the pcm to fail.

now i've never heard this theory before, and personally it doesn't make much sense to me, because the average human being doesn't wait eight seconds after turning ignition to start, me personally when i start a vehicle with the keys, i wait a couple seconds for the lights to go out that come on momentarily when the ignition is turned on, then i crank, but that's just out of habit nothing about electronics at all.

so my question is, is there any truth to this theory?

any explanations would be welcome, and this is my 500th post,

The only time based thing to consider is the amount of time the fuel line takes to pressurize.  This is typically less then 2 seconds and a modern ECU may actually take longer to sync with the motor then the fuel pump takes to prime.

Something you may want to ask your customer -

1. How long have you been driving?

2. How many times have you started your car?

3. How many times have you waited 8 seconds before starting the car?

4. How many issues have you had related to that 8 second delay?

As stated above, if this was a real concern the car would have an interlock that would prevent it from starting.  If remote start units were damaging cars because they weren't waiting long enough the manufaturers would make the delay longer.  Currently, I believe the DEI delay is around 5 seconds or so from when the ignition is turned on to when the car actually cranks.

good one.