Comments on Bulldog Security remote starter installation?
 

(Unrelated question first: Does a posting in General Chat also show up in the Tech Forum areas? I want the best coverage for my posting, but don't want to spam everyone here with redundant posts...)

I'm getting ready to install a Bulldog Security RS-102 remote starter in my '93 SSEi, and was wondering if anyone has any tips or horror stories to share. I've installed an RS-82 on an '86 Aries previously, and just finished putting another RS-102 into a '96 Trans Sport, so I'm okay with the kit installation in general, but haven't put one in a PASSkey-equipped car before.

I've read the Bulldog installation manuals upside-down and sideways, and also have the '93 GM Bonneville service manuals. I also have the adaptor module for the PASSkey resistor bypass. Right now I'm just looking for any general advice or things to watch out for, from anyone who's done this before. I'll be happy to do a writeup on it when I'm done if no one else has already; TIA...

Ahhh....an expert. My understanding is that you'll be ok with the bypass kit. If it works, PM me or email me your procedure and any part numbers you used, and I'll get it posted up in Techinfo. My neighbor is about to attempt this install, too. I'll tell him to wait for you.
:wink:

> Ahhh....an expert.

Um, if I'm an expert, we're all sunk. :-)

> My understanding is that you'll be ok with the bypass kit. If it works, PM me
> or email me your procedure and any part numbers you used, and I'll get it
> posted up in Techinfo. My neighbor is about to attempt this install, too. I'll
> tell him to wait for you.

Well, tell him not to stand on one foot waiting for specific Bonneville advice as I'm not planning to start that install until I finish up a couple of pesky home-remodeling jobs (the spouse would really like me to finish the tile job in the kitchen), so if all goes well, I might get to the Bonneville before the end of the month. (Pesky day job keeps getting in the way, too.) OTOH, if Century Tile manages to not screw up the order on their second attempt, I might get the kitchen done sooner than that.

However, I can probably think up some useful general tips on the Bulldog kit and some Pontiac-specific tips from installing the RS-102 in the '96 Trans Sport, so I will post a followup on that here when time permits, and you can propagate that wherever you like for starters. (Har! Get it? Okay, never mind...)

Pardon the public reply here, but I emailed you (or PMd, I forget which) some longwinded stuff yesterday; did you receive it? Reason I'm asking here is because I checked the box for sending a copy of it to my own email account as well, but nothing's shown up...

Got it Andy. Just have to find time to format it and post it! I'm working 14 hour days this week. Yuk.

I have the rRS602-E from Bulldog. I installed myself in my 1993 SSE and when it got totalled I pulled it b4 the adjsters took the car and now I 've installed it in my 95 SSEi. Problems I had are as follows: #1 I never installed an alarm b4. #2 I was too cheap to buy the bypass for VATS so what I did was measure the resistance on my key pellet with a multimeter then got resisitors from radio shack and wired in line. This works great so far. The motion detector that bulldog provided sucked and when I had the 93 SSE the alarm would only sound when the door was shut not open. We tried resetting the eprom and reversing the polarity but still no good. Therefore, I use the factory alarm on my 95 and just use the Bulldog strictly for starts & keep runnin's. I would like a better shock sensor or motion detector but I don't think they make one. One last thing is that the distance you have to be from the vehicle is less than advertised. I 've got my antenna taped to my front windshield comin from the dash upward to right below the factory tint strip. I'm gonna try to chng the remote battery to see if that hlps. Oh yeah and I had to get a new starter last week bec my buddy at work must have pushed the start button twice and it jammed the starter into the starting function. I was in a meeting when it happened so he couldn't find me to shut it off. This has happened b4 but I keep a small socket rachet in my door panel to hurry up and unplug the unit if it keeps cycling. I'm goona call bulldog and ask how to stop it reading a "start"twice.

I have a bulldog alarm, and have the exact same problem! The range really sucks bad. the first alarm I had, the distance was only around 10 feet, so I had to send the entire unit back a total of 3 times, then they finally decided to replace it for me, and now the distance is probably around 30 feet or so and it'll work. I agree, their distances are no where near what they advertise. :( I still like the alarm just fine though..

> Problems I had are as follows: #1 I never installed an
> alarm b4.

Hey, we all have to start sometime. Main thing is get the components installed right, and then it's a matter of whether or not they work right. If they're installed the way they're supposed to be, then your installation will be just as good as if you paid somebody else to do it. (Better, even, if they end up breaking fasteners or whatever because they're in a hurry to get the job done by 5:00 p.m.)

> #2 I was too cheap to buy the bypass for VATS so what I did
> was measure the resistance on my key pellet with a multimeter
> then got resistors from Radio Shack and wired in line. This
> works great so far.

It should; that's all you need to do. Their generic bypass box contains two or three different bypasses anyway; you only use the one that's intended for your car, and the others just sit idle and unconnected.

> The motion detector that bulldog provided sucked and when I had
> the 93 SSE the alarm would only sound when the door was shut not
> open. We tried resetting the eprom and reversing the polarity
> but still no good. Therefore, I use the factory alarm on my 95
> and just use the Bulldog strictly for starts & keep runnin's.

Good plan. IMHO, don't bother screwing around with a shock sensor; it'll either be too sensitive and drive the neighbors crazy, or won't be sensitive enough, in which case it's pointless.

> One last thing is that the distance you have to be from the
> vehicle is less than advertised.

Aaargh, yes; I'm finding that out, too.

> I 've got my antenna taped to my front windshield coming from
> the dash upward to right below the factory tint strip.

The factory's installation video shows them stretching the antenna wire out> #2 I was too cheap to buy the bypass for VATS so what I did
> was measure the resistance on my key pellet with a multimeter
> then got resistors from Radio Shack and wired in line. This
> works great so far.

It should; that's all you need to do. Their generic bypass box contains two or three different bypasses anyway; you only use the one that's intended for your car, and the others just sit idle and unconnected.

> The motion detector that bulldog provided sucked and when I had
> the 93 SSE the alarm would only sound when the door was shut not
> open. We tried resetting the eprom and reversing the polarity
> but still no good. Therefore, I use the factory alarm on my 95
> and just use the Bulldog strictly for starts & keep runnin's.

Good plan. IMHO, don't bother screwing around with a shock sensor; it'll either be too sensitive and drive the neighbors crazy, or won't be sensitive enough, in which case it's pointless.

> One last thing is that the distance you have to be from the
> vehicle is less than advertised.

Aaargh, yes; I'm finding that out, too.

> I 've got my antenna taped to my front windshield coming from
> the dash upward to right below the factory tint strip.

The factory's installation video shows them stretching the antenna wire out _horizontally_ across the bottom of the dash, rather than vertically up towards the windshield. If I remember right, the instructions for the Extended Range model also talk about running the extra-long lead horizontally across the top of the windshield towards the mirror. So maybe you should try orienting the antenna horizontally instead of vertically. (e.g. I think AM signals are best received by a vertical antenna, FM signals by a horizontal one; maybe this is the same kind of deal) In any event, they make a big fuss out of telling you to get the antenna lead as straight as possible.

> I'm gonna try to change the remote battery to see if that helps.

Sure.

> Oh yeah and I had to get a new starter last week bec my buddy at
> work must have pushed the start button twice and it jammed the
> starter into the starting function.

I can't see how pushing the button twice would make any difference, but it _is_ supposed to release the starter as soon as it detects a voltage increase from the alternator spinning up. In tach mode, with the tach lead connected to the white wire at the coil pack, it should release even faster when it detects the engine speed increase. If you don't have the tach lead connected and the unit programmed for Tach mode instead of the default Tachless mode, you should.

> I was in a meeting when it happened so he couldn%2 _horizontally_ across the bottom of the dash, rather than vertically up towards the windshield. If I remember right, the instructions for the Extended Range model also talk about running the extra-long lead horizontally across the top of the windshield towards the mirror. So maybe you should try orienting the antenna horizontally instead of vertically. (e.g. I think AM signals are best received by a vertical antenna, FM signals by a horizontal one; maybe this is the same kind of deal) In any event, they make a big fuss out of telling you to get the antenna lead as straight as possible.

> I'm gonna try to change the remote battery to see if that helps.

Sure.

> Oh yeah and I had to get a new starter last week bec my buddy at
> work must have pushed the start button twice and it jammed the
> starter into the starting function.

I can't see how pushing the button twice would make any difference, but it _is_ supposed to release the starter as soon as it detects a voltage increase from the alternator spinning up. In tach mode, with the tach lead connected to the white wire at the coil pack, it should release even faster when it detects the engine speed increase. If you don't have the tach lead connected and the unit programmed for Tach mode instead of the default Tachless mode, you should.

> I was in a meeting when it happened so he couldn't find me to shut
> it off. This has happened b4 but I keep a small socket rachet in my
> door panel to hurry up and unplug the unit if it keeps cycling.

Huh? All you need to do is step on the brake to kill the entire starting process. If you've got the hood interlock installed, popping the hood will achieve the same thing. There is also a Kill button on the remote. (If you've got a flaky relay that welds itself closed, though, that will chew up your starter real quick.) Try swapping out the relay that triggers the starter.

> I'm goona call bulldog and ask how to stop it reading a "start" twice.

Tell us what they say, please. I called them twice and emailed them twice, over two weeks, and never heard _anything_ in reply. :-( The products are okay enough, but their Tech Support seems pretty bad.

Comments on Bulldog Security remote starter installation?
 

Okay, I know this is an old thread I'm dredging up but I got some new information on these problems now, based on some adventures with our '96 Trans Sport minivan in the past few days, having to do with reception/range and with the starter-grinding problem:

I was never real thrilled with the range of the remote either. I've got a second kit waiting to go in my Bonneville, so I looked a little closer at the yellow-wire antenna on that one to see what was so special about it, but it turns out to be just a plain 16- or 18-gauge wire that's apparently folded over at the end and capped with a bit of heat-shrink tubing so that it doesn't ground on anything. So last weekend I opened up the Trans Sport dash again and spliced in a much longer length of wire to the yellow antenna lead, running it all the way up the A pillar and all the way across the front inside the roof (it's a plastic roof in the '96 Trans Sport and the stereo antenna is up there as well). I soldered the original end of the yellow wire to the end of the extension, in case there was some Sooper Sekret component inside the tip that really needed to be there. Results are much better now and the range seems to be almost double what I had before.

So basically the antenna operates on a kind of line-of-sight basis, or in any event, you need to do whatever it takes to minimize the amount of metal in the way, and it does not appear to do any harm if you splice in an extension wire if that's what you need to so.

I'm almost positive I know what happened to you now: The starter was in Tach mode but it wasn't getting a tach signal. It may have been programmed that way on your original car, and perhaps when you swapped it into your newer one, the tach connection did not get set up properly. (Tach mode is _not_ the default setting, but once you program it that way, it usually remembers it even through a power failure or disconnection, including a swap into another car.)

This is just about the worst thing that can happen, because the controller is listening for a tach signal, isn't getting one, and so it keeps on grinding the starter after the engine has fired. Usually the starter _does_ disengage the flywheel after the engine starts in the first go-round, but the controller never notices this, and then 10 seconds or so later, it tries the starter _again_, and this time all hell breaks loose.

In my case, I was in a hurry to finish the job, it was a tight squeeze reaching the coil pack under the hood of the Trans Sport, so I had just said the hell with it and used a 3M Quicksplice connector to hook up the tach lead. Big mistake: the connector was the wrong gauge for the tiny wires, and after they'd been heated a few times by the engine, the connection let go. Fortunately I was near enough to the van when it went wrong that I was able to hit the Kill switch on the remote, and no damage seems to have been done to the starter. Last weekend I got under the hood and did a proper solder job on the tach connection, and everything's fine now.

:nxsmile: i`ve had installed a Predator remote/alarmn system ,....never had a problem really good system :pontiac: range of 1200ft unreal distance ...find my car anywhere in a parking lot .just listen for the rumbling sound :bouncingsmiles: