Alarm system

[casey]

I am going to put an alarm system in my k-10 any good ideas, Engine kill,doors, hood, etc. What should a guy do with the doors, seen the trucks don't have a door switch for the interior light? How would the alarm go off if the door was opened, anybody put power door locks in that work off your alarm remote? could use some Ideas guys

[bigvinnie]

you can buy pin switches and put em in the stock location pretty easily...

[Low68]

I bought a clifford car alarm and am somewhat happy with it. Sometimes it won't turn off with the remote. I will walk all around it and walk back and forth and it still won't go off. I have to get in and turn it off manually with the valet switch. I have the door pins and hood pin. I have a bed cover and have been thinking about putting a pin on that also. I had the alarm put in somewhere because they wouldn't sell me the kit to do it myself. If you can find one where you can do it yourself, I would do that. Just me though. I could have done a much better job than the guy at the shop did. It has a starter kill built in to the alarm. It flashes the parking lights and has a siren when the alarm goes off and it also chirps turning it on and off. You can hook it up to alot of different things so that you can remotely roll your window down with power windows, etc. I later put power locks on the truck. It had wires for that and I just had to find them. I didn't buy a kit or anything, I just went out and bought some actuators and some relays. They work alright. I need to get them lined up better. Sometimes they don't unlock all of the way. I love the power locks, they REALLY spoil a person. I want to eventually put power locks on my bed cover. Man that would be sweet. Oh well, enough ramblings for now. Any more questions?
Low68

[casey]

low68 yeh I do. Did the guy who put the alarm in put in the door pins, or did you, and is the door pins hooked to you interior light?I'm really interested in the door locks, what are they mounted to in side the door?

[jmanz69]

The door pins don't have to be hooked to the lights. They can just be hooked to the alarm. All they need to do is tell the alarm a door is open. I had some in the back part of the door, near the latch there is a hole that is the right size for a pins switch. Be sure to get a weatherproof one though. Otherwise it won't work after a couple months.

[87gmc]

thats right as previously stated all you need to do hook up a door pin switch there pretty easy to do, i just got done installing my alarm very easy if you good with your hands. Things to look for i an alarm are thing like extra trigger zones (the more the merrier) so if later on you want to add extra sensors you can. one way to tell a good alarm from a crappy one is usually a good alarm will have a dual stage shcok sensor this has two sensors instead of just one. it means that if someone is messing with your vehicle it will chirp 2-3 time to lwt them know you have an alarm and then if they keep messing with it in a certain amount of time it will set the alarm off. also look for ones with a starter kill voltage sensor meaning when anything inside your vehicle is turned on (radio, dash lights, headlights, interior light) if your alarm hasnt already gone off it will. i would mess with glass breaking sensors because the give off a lot of false alarms. but instead look into a motion sensor, you can set the field to detect just inside your vehicle and it will go off if any motion is seen inside your vehicle. anyways yeah that should just about do it.

[mtdave2]

how much modification needs to be done? like holes drilled and wires ran? i have been thinking of an alarm for a while now. i think the best part would be remote door locks. i just dont want to have lots of holes drilled and crap put on the truck,

ill have this truck till i die i hope, so i dont want to put crap in it.still dont know what to do... hum

[Low68]

My alarm was at an electronics store, and he put in the first pair of switches that I had. I got different ones when I replaced my cab. The cab I have is a later year that had the holes in it already so I just bought some stock ones. I am in class right now but will take some pics for you later. I will take some pics soon.
low68

[Low68]

ok, I took some pics that I will put on here. Like I said before, the place that installed the alarm put the door pins in the first time. It cost me something like 5 or 10 bucks extra each to have them put in. He also put a pin on my hood. I didn't take a picture of that, but it is about half an inch away from the hood bumper on my grill piece(keep in mind I have a 68) so I don't know if it would be doable in the same spot for a later truck. I do have the pins hooked up to my dome light. The way that they guy wired them up is stupid though. He wired the hood pin to the same wires for the door pins. So when I open my hood, my dome light goes on. I fixed that by putting in a switch so that I could manually override the dome light.

As for the power locks. I just got the actuators from the same place that did the alarm and they cost twenty dollars a piece or something like that. I then had to go to the auto store and get four relays. My dad figured all that stuff out and told me what to get. We went into the store and they didn't want to try to search for what we needed, so they told us we could go back and find it ourselves. That was all the parts I had to buy for door locks. The actuators came with some stuff to mount them.
I put the actuator directly under my latch mechanism. I ran the rod to the door lock stem that runs up throught the door. It came with a clamp that clamps the the door lock stem to the actuator rod. I just drilled three hole in the door to mount it. I drilled them behind where the door panel covers, so you can't see them. one thing to be thinking of when you do it is to get it lined up right. What I did was I held it as tight as I could and tried it out to see if it would unlock all the way. Placement is critical for it to work right. If it is mounted at too much of an angle, then it won't work nearly as well, if at all. After you determine the angle that it needs to be at and figure out the best place, take the second actuator and line it up so you can see where to drill the holes. THis makes it much easier to get it right the first time. If you get the holes drilled and it is pretty close to being lined up, but is not quite lined up, then just file down the hole until it lines up so that it works. Just so we are clear, the actuators mount on the inside of the door.

As far as drilling holes and running wires, you don't have to drill too many holes. If you don't have door pins, you will need to drill those. Likewise if you run power anything from your door, you will have to drill holes for some sort of through door wiring. So the only holes you would need to drill is for the pins and possible to mount the alarm unit, depending on how good of a job you want to do. The wires...everything that has wires are a pain. The kit that I bought had instructions available on the web, but I could not get the kit and install it myself for liability I guess. I have rewired most of it, but it is pretty strait forward I think. Here is a picture of the wire looms that I ran all of my wires through.
Low 68

[Low68]

Here is a picture of my door pin on the driver's side. You can see the part of the door jamb that is flat. That is the stock place for a pin. My old cab didn't even have that flat part sticking up. If you put on door pins, tell them that you want metal ones not ones that have a plastic shaft in them. The first ones that I had had plastic shafts and they broke fairly easily.

[crazy4chevs]

Low68, Where did you get the looms that you ran your door wires through?

[Low68]

Rb's
I think their site is rbsauto.com
They don't have an online catalog, but It would be worth it in my opinion to order one of their catalogs. They have some awesome stuff. Just my opinion though. Depends on what you want to do with your truck. I think they are $30 or so.
Low68

[casey]

I'm taking notes lots of good stuff, thanks low 68, anyone with some other good anti theft ideas besides the alarm? I know our trucks are prime targets for low life joy riders.

[Andy4639]

I would start by buying the door pins are getting them out of a junk car, then wiring them up to your horn and put a pin under the hood bed covers and anything you like, then run wire to a toggle switch under the truck somewhere so you can turn it on/off when you want. When you park it and flip the switch the horn will go off until it runs the battery dead are you flip the switch off.
Just a thought and a cheap one at that.

[wnc mountain]

carry a big fold up fence in the back. When you park put the fence up and let the b.a.f. dog out of the cab to watch over it and eat anyone that climbs over the fence. HE HE HE...