Tuner/Remote start weirdness.

Last weekend I put a Crimestopper Remote Start/Alarm/Keyless entry into my truck. I've installed this type of unit in several vehicles. Everything works fine there's just one weird thing going on regarding the tuner when my MKIIa is in the car:

If I remote-start the vehicle with the empeg in the sled the player will fire-up fine and function normally except when I try to switch source to the Tuner. It isn't available as one of my choices (Player and Aux only.) A simple remove the player and re-insert it will fix this. Obviously I don't see this issue during a regular key-start.

The remote-start process is: hit the button, the 12v, ignition and accessories are powered on, then after ~5 seconds a start is attempted.

Anyone else seen anything like this? It's not a big deal but I had my player installed in my last vehicle with the same type of starter module and I didn't see this happen.

Just one of those things that I can't explaing that make me lose sleep at night.

It could very well be that five-second pause. Perhaps the engine start is happening right at the instant the tuner is doing some kind of initialization. Like this:

- Ignition line goes high so player begins to boot.
- Five seconds into the boot process...
- The engine starts causing a huge voltage dip in the juice on the line to the player.
- Something gets messed up because of the voltage dip.

This is just a theory of course. However... is that five-second delay configurable? Can you make it a lot shorter, or perhaps even zero?

Possible. I'll look into that.

The another "oddity" is that I'd almost always see the battery icon in my old car. I barely ever see it in the truck... Oh well.

Another really easy thing to double-check first. Make certain that the player thinks that it is booting into the correct (CAR/DC) mode. Perhaps the remote start is confusing that auto-detection.

In reply to:

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It could very well be that five-second pause. Perhaps the engine start is happening right at the instant the tuner is doing some kind of initialization.

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I had a similar issue, in that the engine heater on my car takes about that amount of time, and so I'd be starting the engine at about the same time as the player would be trying to talk to the tuner.

I enabled Hijack's "fake tuner" setting for DC mode, and it's worked flawlessly ever since. (Thanks, Mark! )