DIY Installing a $25 Keyless Entry System

[BMWManiac]

Ok, I was going to run the red wire to the antenna power wire (red and next to the white wire, correct?), black wire to a brown ground wire, green wire to the green/black wire, and the blue wire to the green/purple wire.....sound good so far?

So, my next question, other than soldering, what is the best way to connect the wires?  I tried using butt connectors, but the wires from the module are just too narrow!  They are not the same guage as the car wires.....thoughts?

[Jimmy Lewis]

Have any of you guys with this installed ever had any reliability issues with the eBay kits? My locks are really sticky, and my drivers door only locks the door, leaving me to unlock the car by the trunk.

[ak96ss]

You can either use butt connectors specifically designed to connect wires of different sizes, which are probably not in stock at your local Autozone, or you can get creative a couple of different ways: either use the same size connector you would use for the stock wire and twist the smaller gauge wire together with the larger gauge on one side, or you can use the inline splice connectors, or, last resort, solder.

I would avoid soldering if at all possible. If you aren't pretty experienced at it, you stand a good chance of creating more problems than you are solving if you get a bad solder joint. Plus, solder generally doesn't withstand the environment of a car too well - it can if done properly, but if you end up wicking excess solder up the wire or use the wrong kind of solder or generally screw it up, it will cause you more issues down the road.

I'm partial to the heatshrink butt connectors available from Waytekwire.com - not only can you get stepped connectors that have different gauges on each side, you can get them with heatshrink tubing instead of that crappy plastic/vinyl you'll find at a parts store. They'll last forever.

[ak96ss]

I dunno about the eBay kits, I installed an Alpine alarm system instead of just keyless entry. I can roll my windows down and up, autolock and unlock the doors, blah, blah, blah, all with the remote.

[Danny707]

my drivers door only locks the door, leaving me to unlock the car by the trunk.

My drivers door doesn't work at all and the keyless is working perfectly.

[BMWManiac]

Thanks, I'll try and find some with different sizes....are my wire orientations correct though?  I was wondering if the antenna wire was a constant 12v?

[Danny707]

Thanks, I'll try and find some with different sizes....are my wire orientations correct though?  I was wondering if the antenna wire was a constant 12v?

Yes.

At least I'm pretty sure you are.

But the red is a constant, yes.

[BMWManiac]

My buddy hooked it up....soldered everything, used the red antenna power wire, everything works as it should!

I hated having to lock everything from the trunk all the time....now, no more...best $25 ever spent!

[darknight]

This is interesting. Can you explain why would you want to deadbolt the trunk and clarify how you made the connection to the "lock" wire? Thanks!

I installed a keyless entry device in the trunk as described above. It worked great. However, I found that I could no longer deadbolt my trunk using the trunk lock. When I deadbolt my trunk, the trunk lock would keep the "lock" wire (green/black) grounded. The central lock controller would then ignore any input from both the "lock" and "unlock" wire coming from the trunk. That means the keyless remote can no longer lock/unlock the doors/trunk.  (It still accept inputs from the lock/unlock wires from the doors. Thus central lock still works if you use the key on the doors.)

My solution is to permanently cut the trunk "lock" wire from the trunk lock. The cut is made between the point where I tapped into it and the point where it connects to the trunk lock. (i.e. after the cut, the trunk "lock" wire is then only connected to the output of my keyless  entry device).  I did not have to cut the "unlock" wire.

I can now deadbolt my trunk and can use my remote to lock and unlock my doors. If my trunk is not deadbolted, then the remote will lock/unlock my the doors as well as the trunk.

Note: only do this if at least one of your doors can be locked/unlocked with the key, that way you know you can still lock/unlock your car with the key when your remote stops working.

[darknight]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I left the trunk deadbolt as-is because I don't think I'd ever deadbolt it anyways.

The install was super easy - 4 wires total. I took longer making the wiring look nice than it took actually installing the unit.

I bought my keyless unit from tintnelectronics on ebay and had a good experience.

[kenika65]

I dunno about the eBay kits, I installed an Alpine alarm system instead of just keyless entry. I can roll my windows down and up, autolock and unlock the doors, blah, blah, blah, all with the remote.

Any more info on this Alpine alarm?

[ak96ss]

It's just an alarm with a bunch of extra features added on; I scored it NIB on eBay for next to nothing. 3-button remote lets you control whatever you've wired to it; I think there are four or five available channels. I wired one channel to the auto-up windows and one to the auto-down. If I had a power sunroof, I could control that as well. With relays, anything is possible!

Wiring an alarm in is really not significantly more difficult than the keyless entry, and gives you more features. The biggest difference is that you have to hide that brain somewhere up front and there are, of course, more wiring connections to be made.

[cagedbunny]

I have no experience with any sort of keyless entry, so pardon my question;

Will this work if my original locking system is completely fubar'd?  As is, each lock tumbler on the car works fine, but only individually.  The central locking on my car is otherwise completely inactive... can't even lock the doors from the trunk lock.  Will this kit do me any good?

[ak96ss]

Not really - the module just sends lock/unlock signals to the central locking module. Now if the power locks themselves are working (as in the solenoids still function properly and it is the central locking module itself that is broken) you could run the lock/unlock signals to separate relays and then to the doors locks themselves, but it would be a fair amount of wiring.

Have you done any troubleshooting to figure out why the central locking isn't working?

[roundel318]

There is a fab diagnostic for the E30 central locking system that has a step by step matrix of tests, it will help you narrow down whats wrong. http://www.unofficialbmw.com/repair_faqs/central_locking.html