Remote Starter

Just a short update tonight...

Our friend Saramay was kind enough to let me use her heated garage to work on our Canyonero today. I scouted out where I might be able to place the block heater I purchased, and then got to work on installing in the remote starter.

The remote starter is a simple two-button remote that starts and stops the car. It was actually really easy to install, but that's because I know what I'm doing. Seriously. If I didn't have as much experience with automotive wiring, it probably would have been a long, arduous project. I still had to take apart a lot of the underside of the dash on the driver's side. Most of the wires connected into the ignition switch wiring, which was simple enough. There were a few other wires to connect--the brake pedal switch, a ground wire and the parking light wire. The Haynes manual I have doesn't have good wiring diagrams for the parking lights and doesn't say where the relays are. That made it hard to figure out where I needed to run that wire. I found the hidden relay by coincidence after a lot of poking around.

Anyway, once I got the wires all hooked up, the remote starter worked like a charm. It starts up when I press the start button, and stops when I press the stop button. It'll warm up the car for 15 minutes and then automatically shut off. If I put in the key and press the brake pedal, the car stays on and the remote starter shuts off. Perfect.

I hope that the remote starter works well enough for now. It's going to take a little while before I get the extra little parts ordered to get the block heater installed. Also, in a weird little twist, apparently you can't start the car with the block heater still plugged in. That means that once it's installed, I'll have to go out, unplug the block heater, then start the car to let it warm up. I guess the remote starter still means I don't have to actually get in it to start it. And it'll be nice when I'm at work and getting ready to go home.

So that's what I did today.