Just another way to get the job done. I’ve seen people do kill switches on the fuel pump, e-brake, etc. This one I cooked up uses an off the shelf harness to interrupt power to the starter button. This allows retention of the remote start, and no wires to cut. Just about everything can be defeated but I figured this would at least add another layer of “fuck you” to the key-cloners. And 100% reversible to stock with no footprint at all. Primarily intend to use it at hotels and when I’m on the water with my boat. I’d be really pissed to come back to no truck and no trailer.
Anyway, this is the harness:
OEM Style T-Harness for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep 2013+ push to start and standard key vehicles. THAR-CHR7 T-HARNESS FOR PUSH-TO-START & STANDARD KEY CHRYSLER, DODGE, JEEP VEHICLES. 1x THAR-CHR7-A Harness.
www.ebay.com
Guessing it’s for some kind of remote start system but I cut 90% of it off anyway.
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Peeling back the onion, these 6 pin connectors are what we’re after:
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Note that only 4 pins are populated in the truck’s harness, so I de-pinned the blue and orange wires. Dunno what they do, but they ain’t there in the TRX. In this aftermarket harness, there are also long wires teed into the blue, white with green stripe, and black wires. I got rid of the tees and soldered just the two ends back to each other as shown. Note that the one wire has a green stripe on the male plug and red stripe on the female, but they do go together and are in the same pin position.
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I then extended the red wire leads to go out to a kill switch using the excess wire from this kit.
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Next up is the truck-side of the work. I pulled the knee buster down, and reached up to push the starter switch out of it’s hole.
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There are two tabs on top and one on the bottom.
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From there it was a matter of installing my tee harness:
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I taped over the connector to make it a little less apparent and harder to disassemble. Anyone who’s dealt with Tesa tape knows it’s a bitch to unpeel.
Obviously the way to defeat it is to unplug the tee harness and plug the factory harness directly back into the switch. To avoid that possibility, you can hardwire without the tee harness. That would be more secure, but I just didn’t want cut wires. I never ever do, and won’t start now. You do what you want.
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Last step is the kill switch. Any simple SPST on/off switch works. I used a high quality Carling marine switch because I just didn’t want problems. I soldered my wires right to switch and heat shrunk and taped over them.
You can put the switch anywhere you want. I found a pretty neat location. Very difficult to find while being comically easy to reach. The steering column has a leather thing around it and a hole where the tilt adjuster lever passes through. I pulled the headlight switch (just pull!), and mounted the kill switch to a brace that is facing the adjuster lever. I have the switch positioned so I can reach in the hole in the leather and flip it. The switch does not restrict the adjustment lever movement and is totally invisible. Switch is on the metal bracket with the slot running down it.
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This is the view from below. Yes, you can kinda see it, but it’s way up there and not obvious. You wouldn’t be likely to find it in a rush, and you wouldn’t be able to feel it or reach it from below. Good enough for me.
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Now, I did highlight it’s weaknesses, this is not the perfect solution. I am aware. I just figure for $70 this is way better than nothing. It is easy to install with no factory wires to cut and could supplement other security measures such as my S&W 500 mag. Or maybe a dummy OBD2 port, wheel club, etc. I’m not super paranoid, just wanted to do a little something.
