Two Christmases ago her mom bought her a Bully Dog remote starter for her Mazda MPV van. Of course the catch was I was supposed to be the installer. I didn't say no, but I wasn't real enthusiastic about the purchase either....
So it has been sitting in the corner near the door ever since. I've been meaning to get it installed, but some other project always got in the way.
Well, she got insistent. And rightly so I suppose.
So today was the day. I made room in the new shop, pulled the van in, set some heaters up, and set to work.
First look under the dash and I decided the driver's seat had to come out. I've done this type of work without taking the seat out... but I was younger... and the projects were smaller. Four easy bolts and an electrical connection, and I had lots of room.
I should probably mention that last week I did some research on installing this thing. I spent a couple of hours on the web, reading the instructions, and watching the included DVD. They actually have all the wiring color codes online so I sat with the harness in my lap and figured out where each one need to go under the dash. There are a lot more wires in the harness than are necessary. In the end, I was down to seven wires, with one being a ground. Oh, one error I found was that the instructions said I needed some kind of key bypass thing. Basically the claim was my van had a proximity chip in the key and I would need to buy another key and a little box to put it in, and then wire it into the system. Turns out that 2005 was the one year the van didn't use this feature because they switched to a new key/fob design. I found this out while surfing the web.
So I sliced the protector off the ignition harness and easily found all the wires I needed to tap. It took a couple of hours to get them taken care of, but that included playing around with the propane heater (that was nearly out of propane and acting up) and running back up to the house.
The instructions said that when everything was plugged in, the parking lights would begin to flash and wouldn't stop until I stepped on the brake, held one of the buttons on the remote, released the brake, and then released the remote button. I plugged everything in and jumped out to find... NOTHING. No flashing lights. SHIT! Well, I figured I had nothing to lose to do the brakes/button. When I did this, I thought I heard a click in the control unit. I then got out and hit the start button. "Click!" Parking lights flashed. ENGINE STARTED!! Parking lights came on and stayed on. Hit the stop button, and the van shut off.
So it works! First try even!
Once everything appeared to be working, I secured everything under the dash and put the seat back in. I even vacuumed (the pigsty) out! (I installed the studded tires too!)
OK, so what shortcuts did I take? I omitted the hood safety switch. The switch is open until the hood is lifted and then grounds out. Figured if I left the wire alone, it would work just fine. I may or may not install this later. Honestly I don't know what the situation would be where I need this feature.
There was also a wire that could run to the distributor that would monitor a tach signal for starting. The instructions said it may or may not be needed and if the car was hard to start, to install it. The van starts fine so I'm not going to worry about it.
The one wire I'd like to install, and would have if I could figure it out... is to power the remote locks. When the car is running, the remote locks won't work. I suspect this wire allows the factory remote to lock/unlock doors when the engine is running. Problem is I need a negative signal and the signal I get (according to the online wiring info) is a negative through a resistor. (Apparently locking is with a negative signal and unlocking is with a negative through a resistor, instead of a negative to lock and positive to unlock [or visa versa]. Granted, my understanding of electrics is a bit shallower than this, so I may be confused.) I'm sure there is a way to deal with this, but I didn't find it addressed to my satisfaction and figured having to manually unlock the door with the key was a small sacrafice. I may work on this down the road.
So, I'm now out of the dog house!
And to Skip: See, my projects EVENTUALLY reach completion!
