New to mobile electronics. Have Q’s

Hello everyone!

Within the past few months our shop, which is an automotive repair shop, got turned on to the idea of installing remote starters and alarms. Having a great deal of knowledge and past experience with electronics (not with car audio/security) , i was nominated to be the install tech for any of the remote starters and alarms.  The first few dozen or so have been fairly easy, and now that we figured out some of the pay scales + extras + extra time to install for this and that its starting to smooth out a little bit.

First and foremost, electrical connections: Today i slid under the dash of an Astro van and discovered it had previously had a remote starter installed by a local car audo specialty shop, but was cut out of the vehicle when it was sold. At first i thought it would be a great thing because most of the needed wires were "marked" for me and i didnt have to peel back any tape and such, but further inspection of the previous install job showed its flaws. They used scotch locks on all the ignition/acc wiring and cut everything off short. The starter wire's insulation was stripped back so about 2 inches of bare wire was exposed and they simply wrapped the remote start wire around and through it and taped it up (not too good i might add). The rest of the locks were exposed and not taped in any way shape or form. My question is: Do most typical car audio places use these methods? Toss a scotch lock in, crimp it down and move on?

Im not a huge fan of scotch locks. They do limit the current that can travel through any given wire, they damage the wires and so on.

Next question would be: How much time is spent on most common typical remote start installs and alarm installs?  Does this include the wiring of needed relays for doorlock hook up? Does it include the costs of relays, resistors ect? If not, how much extra should be added for the relays/resistors/time spent wiring them in and mounting them securely?

Main reason why time is an issue (other than living in a gotta have it yesterday socitey) is because if the price remains the same, and extra time is needed to wire in extra's (such as relays or resistors) or drill holes ect. , profitability is decreased, and what was a great profit, simply becomes money exchanging between our customers and our suppliers/empolyees, which is better than loosing money, but also doesent help keep a place alive, just ties a bay up.

Back to electrical connections. I will admit it. I use butt-connectors on nearly everything. I use see-through connectors and crimp them down the right way, and depending on the size of the connecter, either use ray-chem(shrik wrap/tube) or a combination of liquid electrical tape and black electrical tape. I feel that my connections are rock solid and permenant. My questions is: Is this a common practice among car audio shops?  If so thats great, if not, how is it cost effective / time effective to crawl under the dash of a car with a soldering iorn and connecting numerous wires. Also, its not too easy to get a soldering iorn into alot of places without burning other wiring or getting delicate electronics too hot.

I have alot more questions, but its getting late and i have 3 to install tomorrow before noon. Thanks for your help guys! Im open to any suggustions and or comments.

Thanks!

Scotch lok's - ewwww - who the hell made these things anyways, they should be brawn and quartered. While some people do the strip, poke and twist - tape, I will definitely not recommend this practice either. While it may work just fine right now in the time the joint will definitely deteriorate. Always solder the main connections for the power, ignition and accessory lines, there is always a way to do it. There is nothing worse than having to fix someone elses work (as you have found out). The quality of your work speaks more about you than you know, all it takes is one customer to go somewhere else and that installer either pronounces the install good or bad, as you have done above. So always solder the main wiring. To use butt connectors on the smaller wires like hoodpin and tach I can see, usually if I have the soldering iron out, I'll solder all the wires, and use heatshrink when you can.

Now why do I not do the strip,poke and twist - tape. Because problems with joints happen down the road. On a hot day that black tape might be nice and sticky, on a cold day it will be nice and brittle, over time that black tape connection will come loose leaving a twisted together joint. Next that joint has been vibrating away due to normal conditions present in all vehicles, it is only a matter of time before it comes loose, this causes all sorts of issues with remote starters that pass large amounts of current. Problems happen down the road, if you are prepared to warranty all those connections in the coming years, great go ahead and strip, poke and twist and hope the customer comes back to you and not your competitor, otherwise rest easy and confident that soldering has made the best permanent connection. Imagine if they built amplifiers with the strip, poke and twist method, yeesh.

Wiring in this method takes a little more time but yields a higher quality install, take some pictures of the methods desribed above in order to show a customer what the other shops have been doing, this is a great way to justify a better quality install that is worth the extra $.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply and add your advice and comments. Think I have a good grasp of everything, just having a horrible time juggling performance VS quality. Yes, i was the best possible quality out of my work, but as i have found recently, to accomplish this level of quality, I invest large ammounts of time preping and soldering connections and really, there are alot of places that a soldering gun will do more damage to the surrounding area than good to my connection. But soldering is not out by any means, just need to know either what your using to make these connections (what type of iorn) and or how can you be fast(er) at it? Im using a standard Snap-On A/C Soldering iorn with a long barrel on it.

As for wiring diagrams, i use DTI's "wirecolor" software to give me a general idea of where to find "these" wires, and from there its me and my DMM. Sometimes, such as when tracing down tach wires, or finding very specific door lock diagrams i will use our Mitchell On-Demand which is an excellent source for wiring diagrams, the DTI simply gives me a place to get started.

Pricing: Heh any ideas here? I know what our base pricing should be, but like today i had a dodge stratus 2.7 sedan getting a remote start+Keyless. I had to use resistors and relays on it for the door locks. Now the problem isnt charging for the relays, and the resistors are cost free nearly per customer, the problem comes in with the labor to wire up the resistors the correct way, and wire up the relays and find a place to mount them and so on.

The labor times would be excellent!! Will give me something to "shoot" for and i know that if it says 3hrs and im getting it done in 4-5, either im having a bad day or i need to be doing something differently.

Thanks again for all the pointers and tips guys!!

Starting to get a better feeling about all of this. Hardest part of the entire job is when the salesmen walks out into the shop and asks "How much more time on that, the customer is on the phone" and im layin there trying to get it done and guestimate how much longer.

Another problem is figuring out a "good" time to tell the customer when it should be ready, then getting the car in only to find that it has positive door locks that require resistors and relays and tell the customer it will be an added hour or so to install this passlock2 bypass and hook up the door locks.

Think they are starting to realize that everything i have done so far has been totally different. Some just require relays, some just require resistors, some require both and some require none and the only thing that is about the same across the board is the remote start itself... none of the extra bypass equipment and keyless stuff.

How do you guys use your resistors and relays? Do you have them pre-wired in your downtime/sparetime and marked "Dodge Caravan - lock wire/Unlock wire" or "4 wire reversal"  so when there needed you simply solder in your few leads and away ya go.... or do it on an as needed basis?

Another thing we are considering would be DVD's and LCD's and such. Is it very profitable to be able to do these types of installs, or is it on a much higher playing field compared to remote starts and alarms? Im satisfyed with starts and alarms for now, but if its profitable, im open to it and will try anything a few times = )

Soldering equipment: Like i said, using a corded snappy long barrel gun. As Forbidden mentioned, a butane based iron. Which would be better and why? Considering http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/pro_det.asp?P65=&tool=all&item_ID=66590&group_ID=787&store=snapon-store&dir=catalog as a cordless rechargable, or do you think this http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/pro_det.asp?P65=&tool=all&item_ID=7141&group_ID=12178&store=snapon-store&dir=catalog would be better for my situation? or both?

Yeah, nice thing about snapon/mac/matco is i allready have accounts setup with them and it makes it nice to get a quality peice of equipment and be able to make payments on it.

As is, a problem i have with using my gun inside the car is its bulky and requires an extra cord, and as most of you know, theres not alot of room on these floorboards for extra junk.

About the cordless: I love the idea over butane irons, but do they get hot enough to reliably use and, are there other models avaliable? snappy is about all i can find, nothing at radio shack, nothing at napa/advantage/az not even a craftsman model avaliable i can find.

Thanks for the info though! I dont mind spending the extra money to get something that will make me faster, make life easier and be generally safer.

Thanks!