I just had my Viper 5701 installed at Best Buy and they didn't hookup my trunk, and told me they wanted to charge me for an extra relay which I thought I already paid for with the $5 for materials.

Anyway, I've been looking at the diagrams and have read that I need a strong ground from a relay. Can I use the body as ground or would the best way be running a 12 awg wire from a ground point in the engine bay?

 

If you use a body ground, be sure to sand the are down to metal at the contact point. Also $5 is not going to cover the relay you need but, I have never heard of them not hooking up the trunk release

 

It depends on the store...and install techs. Most of the time, they won't go by the "book" and will not try to up sell you "trunk option", they will just do it...

$5 for a relay, wow? they usually run around $20 at best buy

 

Just a note, if you tamper with the install and they find out, you will void your lifetime warranty on the install of the unit. And yes, we do charge extra. IIRC relays are $10-15 and its about $20-30 to wire trunk pop if it is needed. The reason why is some vehicles can be just hooked up to the red/white off of the brain. Maxima's have a "high current ground" trunk pop, so a relay is needed and extra labor also

 

I expect it from BB, but terrible from the mom and pops with their up charges. A simple SPDT relay will run you way less than $5 at the shack.

While I don't advise YOU doing it, it is still a quite simple 2 minute connection .. 87 ground, 86 fused power, 85 input from alarm, 30 output to trunk. Done.

Not sure what all the talk about 12Awg wire runs and $20 relays ..