gcmlear said:
My previous ride a BMW convert had a aftermarket motion alarm which I thought was a great idea ( at least a warning there was an active alarm as a deterent)
The installers tell me that I cannot hook up to the existing alarm (add a motion sensor) and must install a complete new system, which I am reluctant to do as I am sure any future electrical problems under warranty would be pointed at the aftermarket alarm ( went through that with BMW) Any thoughts? Appreciate any input. An afterthought, I just read that corvettes are one of the most stolen cars. Are they being just towed away, my car is in heated underground condo most of the winter. Thanks in advance for any advise
I used to be a factory rep in the car electronics industry, selling car audio and car security systems so I like to think I do know at least a little about this subject. It's been a number of years since i've been in that field and many things have changed, but the basic stay the same.
first off, installing a security system in the car will NOT void your warranty. Dealers and service writers at dealers will try to tell you that if they see one installed just so they can try to "pass off the blame" of anything wrong with the car. Have them show you where it's specifically written in the warranty saying you can't install a security system or the warranty is void and they can't. After being a factory rep I managed a few car audio shops and we went through this a lot with customers and dealers and NOT ONCE did the installation ever end up voiding the warranty on a car of any brand. In fact, we did a LOT of work for the dealers themselves who offered security systemsfor sale on their cars and we sold and installed the systems for them. If doing this it would have voided the general car warranty the dealerships would not have done it.
Having gotten THAT point out of the way, I'm going to agree with C4C5specialist and tell you my recommendation is not to bother installing an alarm on the car. The biggest "well-known secret" in the car security industry is that they don't do anything to truely protect your car! Yes, it will proably deter an amateur such as a kid just looking for a car to go on a joy ride but if a professional really wants your car NOTHING will prevent him from getting it.
If you were really, really concerned about securing your car from anyone short of a professional car theif, the proper method would be a mutli-layer system approach putting numerous barriers in the way so that it would just take too much time to get your car and they would give up and go onto something easier.
Since you already mentioned you didn't want a full system installed that wouldn't work for you anyway. .
without or without a full security system installed I would strongly advise to avoid the proximity sensors. Of all the various types of sensors that can be installed as part of a security package, this is the most unreliable and most annoying. i found that a large percentage of people that had them installed had them disconnected within a short time later. The way these sensors work is that they transmit a field around the vehicle typically in an egg-shaped pattern and anything that disrupts this field will trigger the sensor and therefore the alarm. Usually it's a 2-stage type warning. the first stage will emit a warning chirp or seies of chirps and the next stage sets the full arlarm off. The sensor has a sensitivity adjustment to adjust the size of the field for how far outside the car you want it to expand. you could adjust it low so it only goes off if someone would reach instead an open window or roof panel or set higher so if someone would come within a certain range such as maybe 3 feet to the car.
There are many problems with this type of sensor and they tend to cause more false alarms than any other type of sensor (therefore the reason a lot of people end up having them disconnected). As air teperature causes from cold to hot or hot to cold it can cause the sensor to react, something as simple as a fly or insect flying through the field can cause it to react, people walking close to the car without meaning harm can cause it to react (such as someone innocently parked next to you).
When it's set too high it goes off too often and people turn it down. When it's turned down too far it useless so why bother having it? getting just the right sensitivity can be an exercise in futility simply because as i mentioned earlier the ambiant air temperature will affect it and at one temperature it the sensitivity is at a certain level but it will change as the air temperature changes.
Since I sold security systems I did have one of these sensors installed on my car 9 I had pretty much a top-of-the-line system with everything so i could demo it to customers, but the proximity sensor was such a PITA that i ended up wiring in a simple toggle switch on it. for everyday use it was completely turned off and non-functioning but when I needed to demo the unit for customers that insisted on it I could flip the switch to power it up and demo it.
As far as the rest of my top-end security system, I never once from day one ever depended on it to actually protect my car from someone serious about wanting to steal it. I only had it on there for two reasons; first, so I could demo a system for customers, and second, for the convience items. these systems ARE cool to be able to wire them up so the keychain remores would loack/unlock my doors, roll my windows up or down, open or close my sunroof, pop open my gas cap door, even one push on the button could lock the doors, roll up the windows, close the sunroof, and turn on the alarm. A lot of times we also wired the systems in so the extra buttons on the remore could control custom applications on the custom audio systems, etc but that's another story.
