Should I add remote start?

Diverjer · November 5, 2019

I once had a Compustar remote start on a truck I bought and it was kind of nice. Didn't like the truck, kept it for 5 months. I never would have thought I would like one, but I did find it handy. Never did like the brains of the things kind of wedged into the kick panel by driver side, there were sure a lot of wires going to that thing, think it was a CM-800? Just looked like a mess that didn't need to be there.

Anyway, thought about having one put on my 2014 Silverado. Wondered if there was anyone on here that had some history with one and maybe I should just forget about a remote start. Don't really need one, just was kind of cool. Talked to a Compustar Pro dealer here in town, said $279.00 installed. Asked where he would put the brains as no room where it was on last truck, said it would be fasten under steering column. Don't look like much room there, also not sure I like all those wires coming off the brains being tapped into existing wires, looks like possible problems that aren't needed.

Semedar · November 6, 2019

You can get/add OEM remote start. Just call your dealer up and they’ll set it up for you and give you a key fob that has the remote start button on it and they’ll program that as well.

Diverjer · November 6, 2019

Thanks, also want to apologize, I posted this under 2019 and should have been under 2014. Don't see a way to delete or move.

kickass audio · November 6, 2019

I stuffed mine under the dash. Looks like shit but there was some room just above where the vent tube is that blows air on your feet.

I would recommend an aftermarket unit and not the factory. I didn't like that the factory one wouldn't report back that it successfully locked/unlocked/started unless I used the onstar app and I'm certainly not paying for onstar just for that. My only gripe is my aftermarket unit is a viper 5901 alarm/remote start combo with an idatalink alca bypass module and for whatever reason it likes to crank the truck once, fail to start it up the other 2 times and complain that it failed to start the truck but if I press remote start again it fires right up and works fine.

It had a problem trying to program the damn tach signal since it is all through the data bus on the truck and the voltage drops down when the BCM thinks it doesn't need to charge the battery at 14.4v which the aftermarket remote start sees that and as soon as the voltage begins to fall it thinks the engine died and kills the remote start and will attempt to restart the truck. The workaround to this for me was to get the engine to sit at the 12.6v that it drops down to in the right condition and remote start the truck and perform a keyless takeover. Then I would stick the key in the ignition and hit the brake to shut down the remote start and hold in the valet switch on the antenna for a few seconds to learn the tach and it fixed that problem.

It's totally doable for installing it yourself with just wire strippers, a few wire taps and bullet connectors as needed, there are not too many wires that need to be connected. I am considering hard wiring the bypass module so it doesn't feed so much data to the aftermarket unit and hope that fixes the problem of my random starting issues I am running into now.