Compustar 2WSS-AS DIY Installation Guide

[bruha]

In response to all the threads on the Compustar 2WSS-AS, I’ve made up an easy DIY guide to installing it. It is a very easy install for anyone who is able to crimp wires together. It takes some time and patience, but it is well worth the money you save and the experience you gain.

In the following posts I’ve posted pictures of which Compustar wires connect to their respective RSX wires, as well as the location of every wire. I also wrote some quick comments about things you need to consider for each Compustar connector. This guide was meant for the Type S, the automatic transmission RSX might have some differences.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions about the install I’ll be glad to help you out.

[bruha]

Connector 1

I ran a dedicated power wire for the alarm brain/ DEI module using a 12-gauge wire. Use whatever method to run the wire to underneath the dash, and use a 40A fuse close to the battery. Before running the power wire, read the section on the ‘Tachometer Sense’ wire in Connector 3 below.

To gain access to the ignition harness, remove the three screws underneath the steering column and pop the two pieces apart. On the right side, you’ll see the brown ignition harness connector, as well as blue and green connectors. Unplug these three connectors, and remove as much black tape / conduit housing as you can to expose at least 6 inches of the wires. For tapping wires the 12 gauge wires in the ignition harness, I used the yellow tube-like crimp connectors. To tap into a wire, first cut the wire and strip both ends. Strip the end of the alarm wire you are adding, then twist the alarm wire together with one end of the newly cut wire. Crimp one end of the connector to the two wires twisted together, and then crimp the other end of the connector to remaining wire. Try to make the connections streamline and not bulky, otherwise you’ll have a hard time putting the steering column back together.

Connector 2

To gain access to the security unit, remove the two panels under the dash. Remove the drivers side kick panel while you are at it. The security unit is a white box located near the clutch pedal with two connectors going into it. Pull down on the white box to release it, then unplug the two connectors. Remove as much black tape / conduit housing as you can to expose at least 6 inches of the wires. The two plugs are hereby referred to as ‘A’ and ‘B’, where ‘A’ is the larger of the two (refer to the picture below). Use the red colored quick connect taps to tap into the 18 gauge wires.

[bruha]

Connector 3

Above the brake pedal there is a connector with 4 wires for the brake pedal switch. The BLK/WHT wire needed can be tapped into here. For the parking brake wire, I disassembled pieces around the parking brake itself and tapped into the GRN/ORN wire.

To bypass the clutch for remote start, locate the yellow connector with 2 wires at the very top of the clutch pedal. With the pedal fully engaged, a switch closes to allow the car to start. Cut and strip a short piece of wire and bend it to look like a staple. Unplug the yellow connector, and plug in the short piece of wire into the female end to short the two wires together.

For the door triggers, the easiest thing to do is to connect the GRN and LT GRN/RED wires for the security unit A together. Use one of the red quick connects, run both wires through it, then snap it shut.

For the tachometer sense, there may be easier ways to do it, but this is the only way that worked for me. Open the hood and look behind the driver’s side headlight. You’ll see a mass of wires in a black conduit with a single blue wire taped to the outside of it. This is the wire you need. Tap into it, and run a wire (along with the power wire if you decided to run a dedicated wire) to underneath the dash. To test the wire, set your multimeter to AC voltage. With the car off, it should read 0V, when the car is on wire should read 1-8V AC.

Connector 4

Above the drivers side kick panel, you’ll see a blue box that all of the wires coming in from the door connect into. Find the WHT/GRN and WHT/BLU wires for the door locks there.

[bruha]

Connector 5

Mount the siren somewhere in the engine bay. I found that by taking off the front bumper there are many places to hide the siren behind it. Run the red siren wire to underneath the dash. You can cut the black siren wire short and just ground it to the chassis—it doesn’t need to be run inside the car.

The remaining connectors are just simply plug-ins for the LED, shock sensor, antenna, etc.

DEI 555I module

Connect the 555I to the same power and ground as the alarm brain. All of the wires can be found off of the blue and green connectors by the ignition harness. Follow the included instructions on how to program it. You should have the Compustar completely installed with the remote start working before cutting the YEL/BLK immobilizer wire and connecting the 555I.

[bruha]

Miscellaneous notes

Run the antenna wire up the A-pillar and headliner. I mounted the antenna on the passengers side so it wouldn’t obstruct my view.

The easiest place to mount the brain / DEI module is behind the dash directly below the coin holder. I taped the 555I, one of the relays, and the inline fuses on top of the Compustar brain in an effort to compact and organize things.

When running wires, use 1/2" black plastic conduit to make things look nicer. I grouped the wires into 3 different conduits. One with all of the wires running up the steering column for the ignition; one with all of the wires going towards the security unit; and one for the power and ground.

And most importantly, test all of your wires and connections. For example, after tapping into the parking brake wire, use a multimeter on Pin 1 of Connector 2 to see if the voltage drops to 0V when the parking brake it on. When the parking brake is off, the voltage should go up to 5-12V. For the door lock inputs, use a short wire and ground the Pin 4 of Connector 4 to see if the doors unlock. Ground Pin 5 then to see if they lock.

[bruha]

There you go. I'll take some pictures of the unit and the antenna and post them up here when I get a chance.

If anyone wants the Excel worksheet from which I made the pictures, PM your e-mail.

[pb_red]

wow, an actual alarm diy. i've been putting off buying an alarm because the only features i really want are passive arming and remote start. other than that, i don't think that any one actually pays attention to sirens when they go off and the stock immobilizer is good enough to prevent theft of the car. anyway, having a type s i didn't know how big of a deal it would be to do a remote start. i searched this and other forums for alarm diy's and all i could find was - if you have never done it before take it to a shop - and - i installed my alarm but don't ask me for a diy.
i have never installed an alarm but i'm not afraid to cut a few wires especially since i have a helms manual which has all of the wiring diagrams. as bruha said, doing it yourself saves money and gives you experience.
so first of all i would like to say thank you very much bruha for posting the diy. i just have a few questions about the install:
1) how long did it take from start to finish?
2) do you recommend purchasing the alarm from any particual place? i think ebay is popular for these items...
3) is the excel doc you mentioned something you got from compustar or was it something you put together yourself?
4) were there any tricky parts that you had to stop for?

thanks again.

[MueveloNYC]

nice - I'll add this as a sticky until I add it to the FAQ.

[bruha]

Originally Posted by pb_red

1) how long did it take from start to finish?
2) do you recommend purchasing the alarm from any particual place? i think ebay is popular for these items...
3) is the excel doc you mentioned something you got from compustar or was it something you put together yourself?
4) were there any tricky parts that you had to stop for?
thanks again.

pb_red,

You're right about nobody listening to alarms, thats definitely why having a paging system is nice. Compustar has the longest range on the market. And of course remote start is the other reason for getting the Compustar--it is the only system specifically designed to work with manual tranmissions. So the Compustar 2WSS-AS was the clear choice for me.

1. Start to finish it actually took me a long time. I spread it out over three days. I spent 1 hour taking the inside panels off, 1 hour running power/siren/tach wire through firewall, 4 hours routing all the wires, and maybe another 4 connecting everything. At all times the car was driveable so I wasn't without a car or anything.

2. Buy it off of Ebay. I don't think you can get it anywhere else without having the place require you to have them install it.

3. I put the Excel doc together. I had 2 different RSX install sheets, the Helms, and the Compustar manual so I had papers everywhere.

4. Suprisingly no. Currently my steering column pieces won't snap back together correctly because I made the connections in there too bulky and thick. I haven't had a chance to go back and clean things up a bit yet.

[blu-by-u]

nice job compustar is the only way to go!

[just4kinks]

Nice writeup, bruha.

Do you have any pics of your setup? I'm worried about what the antenna looks like.

[CrashNBurN]

Originally Posted by just4kinks

Nice writeup, bruha.

Do you have any pics of your setup? I'm worried about what the antenna looks like.

[bruha]

Antenna Comments and Pictures

The antenna comes in two pieces. Assemble it by removing the black grommet out of the base, then snap the metal antenna into the base, and slide the grommet back down.

The antenna cord is around 6 feet long, and has a connector at both ends so you don't have to worry about which end to run first.

I mounted the antenna horizontally on the front windshield, as recommended by the manual. Others on the forum have install it vertically on the A-pillar, I don't know how the different positions really effect it though.

Another possible location to mount the antenna I considered was on the glass in the rear hatch, BUT I don't think the cable is long enough to run it back there.

[bruha]

Ignition Harness Pictures

Shown below are the 3 connectors located on the steering column. Connector A is the "ignition harness", with the starter, ignition, and accessory wires. The blue connector B is where you find the 'key sense' wire for the DEI 555 unit. Green connector C is for the immobilizer, with the 'data' and 'immobilizer ignition' wires.

[just4kinks]

Nice writeup, and thanks for the pics.

I'll definitely be getting one of these soon. I need to work on the budget first.

[rsx m-3]

can you post pics of all the other connections you made?

[bruha]

Originally Posted by rsx m-3

can you post pics of all the other connections you made?

Yeah I'll post pictures up this week, as well as a DIY guide to one-touch auto up/down window operation (via the DEI 530T).

[bruha]

My digital camera really sucks, and its tough to get pictures under the dash with it, but here are a few pictures that might be useful:


The first picture is under the dash above the clutch pedal. The security unit is circled in the red dashed line. You peel back all the tape and plastic conduit to expose the wires and make the connections with the light red quick connects as shown.

Circled in green is the clutch switch and the plug head. In the plug head, use a short piece of wire and short the two connections as shown in the higher of the two green circles. You can lightly plug the connector back into the socket after the jumper is in, and tape it together so it stays in.

For reference, the lower clutch switch is circled in blue. It is not used.

The two wires circled in yellow are the auxilary outputs from the Compustar I just taped there for the time being.



Here is another view of the same angle, but you can see the brake switch connector circled in red.

[bruha]

I ran a separate power wire and placed the connections under the dead pedal. The power wire is the smaller gauge blue wire right in the center of the picture where the purple wires cross it.

For grounding the Compustar and 555I, I unbolted the 12mm bolt circled in red, crimped the wires into a connector like the one shown with the purple wires, and bolted it back together.

[bruha]

Right above the kick panel, you'll see some blue, white, and green connectors. The blue connector with the door lock wires is the one closest to the engine, and has the green plug on top of it (circled in yellow). Unplug the blue connector and peel back any tape or conduit to expose the wires, and make the connections with the light red quick connectors.

For reference, the yellow clutch switch connector is circled in red.

[bruha]

All of the Compustar connector heads, the DEI 555I connector, fuses from the connector 1 on the Compustar and 555I fuse, and the pre-wired second accessory relay end up under the dash behind your left knee.



Again, it is best to go buy some 3/8" or 1/2" plastic wire conduit to make everything a lot more cleaner. You can see the conduit for all the wires going up to the steering column (ignition harness, immobilizer, key sense wire, etc.) following the green dashed line. The second conduit, following the red dashed line has all of the wires going to the security unit, brake pedal, etc. The third conduit I used, which isn't pictured, was for all of the power and ground wires.

[sk]

hey bruha got a few problems with the installation of the alarm.

1. how do i disable the stock alarm completely?

Originally Posted by webxfx

ya - just go under the drivers side and look for a white/cream color box, and unplug the two black conectors. Your factory alarm is now unpluged

Note - after doing this you can still use your Acura remotes for lock and unlock still

i hope this was correct cuz this is what i did. can anybody confirm this? bruha?

2. how do i get the 1 way remote to function with the pager? is it even possible? or can i only have 1 programed at once?

3. when i arm the car through the remote pager it actually UNLOCKS only... it doesnt lock... wtf? whats wired wrong? when i hit arm its unlocks and the pager flaps the doors...

4. the turbo timer... i hold 3 + 4 for 2seconds and nothing happens... whats wrong? bad wiring?

i need help asap!

[bruha]

Originally Posted by sk

1. how do i disable the stock alarm completely?

Why do you want to disable it? The Compustar works together with your stock alarm, it doesn't hurt to have both systems working.

Originally Posted by sk

2. how do i get the 1 way remote to function with the pager? is it even possible? or can i only have 1 programed at once?

Yes it is possible, others on the board have mentioned it in other threads. I haven't tried programming it yet so I don't know what to do yet.

Originally Posted by sk

3. when i arm the car through the remote pager it actually UNLOCKS only... it doesnt lock... wtf? whats wired wrong? when i hit arm its unlocks and the pager flaps the doors...

You probably have the unlock / lock wires reversed when you installed it. Check to see if you have the connections for the 'lock', 'unlock', and 'door trigger' connected properly.

Originally Posted by sk

4. the turbo timer... i hold 3 + 4 for 2seconds and nothing happens... whats wrong? bad wiring?

I've never used the turbo timer, don't know what to say about this.

[sk]

Originally Posted by bruha

Why do you want to disable it? The Compustar works together with your stock alarm, it doesn't hurt to have both systems working.




Yes it is possible, others on the board have mentioned it in other threads. I haven't tried programming it yet so I don't know what to do yet.




You probably have the unlock / lock wires reversed when you installed it. Check to see if you have the connections for the 'lock', 'unlock', and 'door trigger' connected properly.




I've never used the turbo timer, don't know what to say about this.

i dont like the stock alarm cuz it flashes the lights, i have hid's... which is no cool cuz i dont wanna burn out that expensive ass bulb... if i rearm it for sure it wont trigger the headlights right?

[kabe]

Originally Posted by sk

i dont like the stock alarm cuz it flashes the lights, i have hid's... which is no cool cuz i dont wanna burn out that expensive ass bulb... if i rearm it for sure it wont trigger the headlights right?

you can cut the wire from the stock alarm that causes the lights to flash