First, let me intro myself. I am just another sales man cum installer of car alarm system which had a few years of experience in this field. In the past few years, i found out that many people doesn't really know what a alarm can help them to protect their beloved rides, their belongings, them self and most importantly, their family members like spouse and children. This thread serve a purpose to be a basic education material that most car owner should know about it, the important and functions of car alarm system.

For a car alarm to works, first we need to know how it works. Many people thinks that car alarm is just open and lock the door, some people cut the siren connection because of faulty alarm that always trigger, some installer adjusted the triggering sensors too sensitive until it annoys people, some choose fancy alarm with multiple functions but lack of security. These were quite common problem that a car owner always do and it don't really serve a purpose of alarm system. In here, i highlighted a few criteria to make a alarm system worth it's name.

1. Able to react when alarm being triggered.
In this point, many people will think that their alarm able to perform this. But how many percent of success rate is that? Common problem with local market is the trigger zone. Try to arm your car and open each of your doors included hood and trunk, is that 100% of them can trigger your alarm? This is the first point to become a security system without leakage.

2. Do not fault trigger
This point means that the sensors, door switch, and any other triggering device working at stable state and do not sending fault signal to alarm system and trigger it. Normal problem in local market is shock sensor sensitivity, door switch faulty and short circuit of alarm wiring especially those car that transplanted their engine and wiring. Check with your car's sensor and switches to make sure they working perfectly as they designed to. Not too sensitive.

3. Do not perform any action when not needed
I had saw some lower end alarm system react weirdly, some auto lock/unlock itself, some auto start itself, some start engine in geared state, some doesn't shut down the engine, some trigger itself with no sensor/switched installed. These problem can be avoided by reading carefully about the alarm functions, understand the installation chart, and most importantly, find a good installer to get it done. If you got a alarm system that react like these, better get it checked to prevent more troubles.

These were the most important point for a good alarm system, of course there's much more to talk about, but i won't state all at here today. Readers should be adding comments and i will add them from time to time to make this an information center for alarm and security systems.

So now we talk about other safety features like immobilizer and anti-hijack.

An immobilizer is a device that used to cut off the certain power supplied to either ignition, ECU, starter, fuel pump and etc. Immobilizer work when the alarm is being triggered. It's a cut off device work when alarm being triggered, it cut off certain part from above to prevent the thief from starting the engine. Most alarm comes with immobilizer now. So this is not a big issues.

Anti-hijack, it's a features that cut off any devices that might shut down the engine. Normally is ignition, fuel pump, and some are ECU. Normally peoples find that anti-hijack is widely available in most of the alarm. But, for an anti-hijack to works safely, you should consider the react time delay of the anti-hijack. Most normal alarm with built in anti-hijack will react immediately when the button is pressed. This is a big NO actually. Read case on below.

"1 day a robber get's on a car with driver inside. Robber asked the driver to drive the car so that no one notice he had got the car. The driver cleverly think that giving the car to the robber will be a wise choice instead of him driving the car with the robber, because he had got the anti-hijack feature that can stop the car immediately after being robbed and he's outside the car when the car being shut down. He gets off the car and press the anti-hijack button on the remote, his alarm react immediately with blinking lights and siren sounds. At this point, the robber knows that you had activate the anti-hijack feature and the car is gonna shut down soon. He get's off the car with eager and hurt the driver with weapons"

In the case above, how can we prevent it? Normal alarm can't remote the car if the robber drive the car away because of short remote distance, the response of the driver is too slow to press the button and the robber drive the car away before he activate anti-hijack, 2 way alarm are not reliable enough to send the anti-hijack signal because robber drive the car very fast. These were the common problem of normal anti-hijacking feature.

To solve this problem, a good anti-hijack system will have a reaction time delay before they react, so that the driver get some distance between him and the robber and the robber couldn't reach the driver after the car had been shut down.

"from case above, if the driver leave the car to robber and he pressed the anti-hijack button, the robber doesn't know about it before the delay was over. Thus, he happily drive away the car and created some distance with the driver. At this point, the engine shut downed. The robber and driver were seperated, driver get chances to escape from the angry robber"

But sadly, 95% of alarm system sold in local market doesn't have any time delay, and most user don't even know how to use this features. This make our robbery case increase flawlessly in these few years.

Today stop here, think about any question you wanna ask, post it here, i try to answer. Hope this thread helps.

Howie Choo

just wondering, how do we make the immobilizer and turbo timer work together

turbo timer is design to let the car idle for a certain time to let the turbo cool down rite... but when the immobilizer is active, for sure the engine shutdown thus negating the timer's function

i haven't came across a timer that can be connected to immobilizer
but my timer will not activate if i don't pull up my handbrake..for safety reason..

dats preventing me to install immobilizer in the first place... but then, who wanna steal my kancil buruk ehehe...

my timer oso have to pull handbrake to activate... that's a safety function standard to timers

p/s: my current alarm system got shock/sonar sensor and not so long range 2 way remote (500m)... hope thats enuff

immobilizer is not for you to stop your car while it's running. It's for you to prevent somebody start your car when the engine is not running.

Immobilizer only works to cut off starter normally. There shouldn't be any problem to install turbo timer to any car with immobilizer, unless to a minority of cars.

Bump: Immo is standalone device to cut off engine starter. it depend on which type of immo and t.timer you use. In some case, immo activate after a certain times after it detect engine is off, it may cut off the engine running. So your timer timing should be lower than the immo kick in time. Hope this help.

May I know what are the standard cutoff for an immbilizer?

starter :>

since u're a salesman, need ur suggestion on below,

I'm looking for an immob which is around RM2k max, no knight rider alike fancy talking alarm + weird sound, no weird functions, build-in gps tracking system, proven never ever been hijacked and friendly user to the car owner

pay me a visit then. i got at least 1 product suitable to u.

thanks.and where's ur location..

pls get captor security system TQ

i just looking for any system that can "Stick" my car to the ground when i'm in parking mode & magnet my wheels from the hub to prevent some1 'rape' them....

somehow, until now, still no any system that really works...

unless......

unless......Abang Jin invents it n patents it!...heehee

You mean like a tyre clamp. ;)

yep either captor or blackjax in my mind now. i've used viper before but the functions were too fancy..so no more viper for me..