remote start on 2004 Sequoia, good idea?

For openers, auto starters are not that good for the car engine. If you leave it idling more than roughly 30 seconds before driving it off, you risk the unburned fuel getting past the piston rings and diluting the oil.

It only takes about 15 to 30 seconds to get the oil circulating everywhere in the engine, including the hinterlands at the back of the camshaft. A bit more if it's way below zero outside and you are using regular oil, a lot less on full synthetic oil. As soon as you pass the 30-second point, it's actually better on the car to drive away gently and take it easy for the first few blocks - this allows the transmission, axles, etc to also warm up slowly.

If you really want the engine to be pre-warmed up and getting the car toasty the minute you get in and start the engine, install a block heater and have the timer set for a few hours ahead of your normal departure time in above-freezing weather, and all night if it's way cold outside. Below 30F would be my threshold, YMMV.

And if it's a stick-shift, fuhgeddaboudit. There's now way to make sure it's in neutral and /stays/ in neutral, and you could find the car a few miles away...

That said, Auto Start is best installed integrated with a burglar alarm - That's how I did it several moons ago, though I rarely use it, it was more of a "can I do it?" exercise. A simple auto-start would leave the car running without the keys in the ignition, and all a crook would have to do is get inside (slim-jim or break a window with a big Channellock or pipe wrench), break the steering wheel lock (same big wrench on the cylinder) and drive away.

With the auto-start integrated in the alarm system, the engine dies if the alarm is tripped. The auto-start button doesn't disarm the alarm, you have to hit the disarm button immediately before entering the car, and you have a time limit to put the key in the ignition and turn it to "Run".

And it's looking for the proper entrance sequence, including watching the 'key in ignition lock' sense line to see if the cylinder is being forced instead of a key being used like normal.

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