alarm installation

[Nocturnall]

So Christmas day I received a car alarm as a present. All excited to install it I jumped on the computer, went to my favorite explorer site (here of course) and despite searching found little to nothing about installing alarms. So I collected what I could and set underway to install my alarm and figured I'd write my first "how to" while I was doing it. I am far from an electronic expert, too the point of I needed to wait for my father in law to come home (I was installing it in the basement at his house) and explain relays to me. At this point I'm not currently finished, but all I have left to do is wire the alarm to the horn, and then hook up a relay and wire everything so the alarm locks and unlocks the door as well as rolls the windows up when armed.

I spent about a day getting things together, reading the entire manual for my alarm and getting the odds and ends I needed. Which included some quick splice connecters, because I'm not comfortable soldering especially under a crammed dashboard, some spade connectors, zip ties, electrical tape, extra wire, and butt end connectors. I also went to bulldog security and got the wiring schematic for the vehicle. With all this in hand it was time to begin.




I started first by removing the seat:

Next I removed the panels under the dash, in the above picture you'll notice one is already removed. The first peice comes off after a few torx screws on the very bottom of it, I had to remove the handle for the hood release which is fairly straight forward. Then the piece pops off from the dash, it's held in with metal snaps or whatever you'd like to call them:

With this done you can remove the first peice of dash trim or whatever you'd like to call it:

Next you remove the metal plate which was held in place by 11mm bolts:

Yea there are a lot of wires but this is fairly simple, as I mentioned above I'm not electrical expert and my install went along no problem.....for the most part.

Well first off mine has listed 2 (+) 12v constant wires with inline fuses. There is a 12v constant wire in the ignition switch harness:

but I'd rather just be connected to the battery and since I already had a hole in the firewall right there for my amplifiers in the back I figured I'd just go through there:

At this point of the install I really didn't understand how many wires needed to go into the engine bay, there were quite a few at the end of the install, luckily they all fit through the hole I already had. So with these wires run into the engine bay but NOT connected I went to the next wire:

and the next wire after that:

and the next after that:

These were the wires on the first harness with my alarm, I don't know if it's the same with others but mine had 6 main wires then 20 something smaller ones for the extras like window roll up and whatnot. With these first 6 done I wrapped them up in a bundle and crammed them away to make a little room for the next harness.

My next harness started off with a wire connecting to the switch on the brake pedal. Just follow your brake pedal up under the dash and you'll see the sensor on the top of the mount for it. Make your connection and onto the next wire which for me was the tach sensing wire. This wire, as described by my install book, senses the tach readings so the alarm doesn't keep trying to remote start when press the remote start button on your transmitter. This wire was on the pcm harness located on the firewall, passenger side:

the wire that came with my alarm wasn't long enough to reach this at the pcm, I wanted to avoid ripping into the loom so I went to where the wires were exposed. This is where the extra wire and butt connectors came in:

 

[Nocturnall]

From this I went to track down the wire that powers the dome light when the door is opened. This one I had to track by taking apart the dome light and testing all the lines with door closed then open, the line the alarm required was negative. Eventually I found it and then tracked it to the kick panel on the drivers side. There are quite a few connections(Door open 12v+, door open ground, dome light ground, ground for the module, ground for a relay(for parking lights), door lock, door unlock) made in this area and it's very tight in there, at least it was for me with big oaf hands so try and make the connections at different heights to allow for them all. After this wire I made the connections so the alarm can tell when the door is open or not. This I've been having some problems with, the wire I used as the negative wire shows a slight ground at all times which causes my alarm to think that the door is open after it's armed for about 30mins I'm going to use a relay. I'll be hooking it up so that there is a wire connected from the 12v line that becomes energized when you open the door, that will connect to the 86. The ground the 85 prong. Then attach the wire from the ground when opened wire on the door to the 30amp prong, then the 87prong connected to the wire that needs to see ground. Next, the door lock wires, 1 for lock and 1 for unlock. Both positive lines so you shouldn't need any special connections or anything. Here's a shot of most of the wires connected in the kick panel:

So with that done it's onto the parking light wire. This one is a little difficult or at least was with my alarm because my alarm only supports a 10amp line, if it's more then that then a relay is needed to blink the parking lights. Wouldn't you know it the parking light line is 15amps, or at least the fuse is so I assume the line is more then 10amps, though it may not be exactly 15amps. So now it's time to install a relay. To put this relay inline I had to hook the wire from my alarm that worked the parking lights to the 86 on the relay, then run the 85 to ground which you can see the yellow 12gauge wire I used in the above picture attached to the ground that was already there. I then proceeded to run another wire from a constant 12v supply to the 30 prong on the relay, and then ran from the 87 prong to the parking light wire. I then mounted it in what I thought was a pretty good place seen here:

You can see where I connected to the parking light wire here:

Now this next part was kind of a pain in the butt and I had an other problem with this....which took all of 4 seconds to resolve BUT if your not careful it is a part that can cause a bit of a problem. This is the orange wire which is a start kill, antigrind protection wire. This requires another relay. The orange wire on the module is a negative wire so you connect it to the 85 side of your relay. You cut and connect the starter line from the ignition key to the 30 prong on the relay, then you connect the other side of the cut wire to the 87a which is in the center of a 5 prong relay. You also want the start wire from your remote starter module connected to the wire connected to the 87a prong so remote start still works. When mounting this relay and running the wires you want to make it very difficult for a potential thief to get to them or the relay because what it's doing is making it so with the alarm armed or if they disable the alarm the car will not start. So it's in your best interest to make the relay and the wiring unreachable without taking apart a good deal of the dash. At this point I have no picture of where I put mine but I'll try and get some.


Sadly I lost my install manual so at this point I'm trying to write this from memory and recall all the wires I attached, I think we're about done though.

I think next would be the hood pin which is a little more involved but still pretty easy to do. I ran the wire for it out through the firewall where I've been running all my other wires. Next I picked a spot for the pin/switch. I wanted a spot where it wouldn't really get soaked, I may not have picked the best spot:

but it's where I picked to mount it. Simply drill the hole, remove the bottom bolts, slide the pin through hole, put the bottom bolt and lock washer back on then adjust the bolts on it till the hood pushes it down most of the way, but you don't want it pushed all the way down before the hood is all the way closed. Installed it looks much like this:

I had to adjust mine so it was almost all the way up. This is an important part of the install because it makes it so the engine can't remote start when you have the hood open, how much would it suck if the engine cranked and the fan started to spin while you were changing the thermostat? With the pin installed I suppose it's time to move onto the speaker for the system. You want to find a location that isn't easy to reach while under the vehicle and isn't in the direct path of incoming water. I picked this location for mine:

Good luck to an auto thief reaching it and disabling it from under the vehicle. Would need to be Mr Fantastic, it's right by the passenger side firewall tucked away, it was pretty damn hard getting it in there. All the wiring is up and out of view from the bottom of the vehicle as well.


I cheated with the wire that powers the module and clamped it onto one of the other wires I already had running out, I couldn't imagine the module taking much to run so I didn't think it would be a problem. Finally in my install I put the led into the dash. The directions say to pick a location that is easily visible from both sides of the vehicle up front so I picked a different but still very visible place:

Drill the correct size hole for the light, insert, run the lines to the module and then they just plug it in. The location I chose is good also because the light shines up on the windshield and reflects so you can REALLY see it at night. My LED happened to be blue which is nice because at some point all the lights on my dash will be blue, or at least that's the plan. Finally, at least getting most of the basics installed, install the shock sensor. You want a postion that will cover the vehicle equally, basically something in the center but you also want to be able to adjust it so that a cat farting next to the car doesn't set it off because well that get's annoying as I'm sure you all know. In the center console is were I wanted to put it but the wires weren't long enough and quite frankly I was getting lazy so I noticed I could tuck it up right here:

I just screwed this right on being careful to not strip the holes, then ran the wire to the module.


With this installed it's now just a matter of pluging it all into the module, supplying power to everything and making sure all the features work which with mine basically everything worked as it should. Everything I had hooked up worked at this point so I went on to clean up the install. At the point of testing it it looked like this:

wrapped up some of the wires and we were to this:

I spent about another hour or so tidying up the install:

wrapping up all my loose extra wire and zip tying it up under the dash and again trying to clear things up and make it look "professional:"

Zip tying the stuff coming from the right to the left and cleaning that up:

Pushing the module into the space that I had picked out for it:

And finally my organized install:

I think that's about it. If you have any questions feel free to ask, I'm going to be adding a little bit more to this because I still have to put in a relay and wire it so it'll close my power windows when I arm it. I'm also toying with the idea of setting up a relay so when I push the trunk release button it rolls the windows down(For the summer). If you have any questions or anything feel free to ask and I'll check my setup and see if I can get you an answer.

 

[kelly2]

why not just get a window module?? relay for parking lights not needed and you can get tach at the cluster easier and cleaner than under the hood. the 12V at the ignition harness can supply the alarm/rs easily. did you hook up factory alarm disarm (assuming your truck has a factory alarm)?

 

[Nocturnall]

I don't have a factory alarm. I hooked to the 12v constant under the dash and the alarm went off saying Master power interrupt so I didn't know if that had something to do with it or not, I switched the wire to one of the wires to the battery and it never happened again. The alarm says "for parking light circuits exceeding 10amps, a relay is required." The wiring diagram I had for the explorer from bulldog security and from the company that I got my alarm from say to get the tach at the pcm. Finally I've never heard of a window module. This is the first major electrical undertaking I've ever done in a vehichle.

 

[Jason94sport]

That's cool. Your learning. Props to you. A piece of FYI though. You can splice into every wire needed right under the dash & you don't need to run wires all through the car or even into the engine bay.

 

[DeRocha]

Looking good
Nice to see you getting your hands dirty. This type of install can be fun and challenging at the same time. It will give you a sense of accomplishment on a job well done and done right... For many people the quantity of wires is just too overwhelming and they just have a shop do the install..

 

[Savage Wolf]

not bad for a first timer install of a remote starter I would post pics of my viper system but most of you would go "WTF, I dont see any alarm" :
One question about that bulldog system, does the remote starter have a relay pack on the outside or is it built in, the mobile electronics shop I worked at wouldnt install those things cause we didnt want to assume any responsibility for them if they caught on fire or anything of the sort

 

[Nocturnall]

the alarm is actually a valiant. Bulldog just had a schematic or more like a list of where to find which wires and why they did. Starter relay as in relay to power the start is internal, there is a relay I hooked up but failed to get pictures of for antigrind and starter defeat that was external.


I usually do all the other stuff on my vehicles, this is the first untaken of so much electrical and I was VERY happy when everything worked because the very little I found on the site about it was negative for the most part. Things not working, the people that had done it themselves seemed to talk people out of doing it more then anything. The people that were trying were hitting snags. I figured I would document my encounter the best I could think and type it out hoping it would maybe help someone. It's a lot of first for me so I hope it came out alright, as soon as I can locate the digital camera I will take more pictures.

 

[kelly2]

fyi: anyone else wanting to try this, post up (or e-mail me, i don't check back here to often). for the most part they're not that bad just time consuming for newbs