Help! My bl**dy immobiliser is stuck on!

vet8

I just have to rant on here for a while.:mad:

I have an old knackered Rover 416, the most basic model. It has old style wind up windows and most of the spaces for buttons on the dashboard are blank, BUT it has this stupid immobiliser. When I bought it second hand I was concerned about this as I have known loads of people who have had trouble with those damned things.

Now it has jammed and I cannot start the car at all, it is useless. :mad:

It happened first a month ago and the garage guy eventually got it going after a great deal of swearing and cursing. He said they were always going wrong. Since then I have used the car very carefully. It is really stupid, but I never set the alarm or even lock the door, but if you turn off the engine and open the driver's door the immobiliser sets itself. So I have been climbing out of the passenger door for weeks. Now, today my husband opens the driver's door while the car is parked. :eek: He then comes in and says, "Oh I have just opened the driver's door on your car. Is that all right?"

It is stuffed again. I do not want to call the garage man again, so has
annyone got any ideas, please. I don't have the number code which is supposed to come with the car and the garage man last time said that these immobilisers were really good and stuck in the car and you could not bypass them. The car is not worth much so it is not worth spending loads of money getting it fixed.

What really makes my blood boil about this, is that this is all due to the greedy insurance companies trying to save their profits. They insist on these alarms and things as they are paranoid that your car may be stolen. I think that if the car won't start and you are stranded in the middle of the night miles from home, that is far worse. When I insured this car the very first question I was asked was, "Does it have an immobiliser?"

Yes it has and now it does not bloody well start.:eek:

Keith

Try a local auto-electrician and ask them to remove it, you'll only be saving around 5% if even that, without an installation certificate the insurance company won't care about the immobiliser.

I paid a local auto-electrician £80 which was around 2 hours labour to remove my last one which kept jamming.

steveo3002

any half handy diy person should be able to bypass it ....theyre pretty basic really

brazilianwax

Ummmm, I doubt any insurer would insist that there was an immobiliser on a Rover 416......... And your cover is probably void if the car isn't alarmed and the doors unlocked.

In any case, as others have said, it should be pretty straightforward to disconnect it/bypass it.

As for the husband, I'm sure you'll come up with suitable punishment. (Mine would be wired up to the mains! :eek:;))

tomstickland

I'd remove it. Most immobilisers are pretty simple; they tend to tap into the fuel pump power and ignition circuit. The universal models are just a black box with, say, 6 wires to provide 3 switched circuits. So if you have time to follow the wires it's pretty obvious which wires need connecting back together.

epninety

Rover 416 is the infamous K series engine IIRC. The immobilser talks to the ECU so it can't be easily removed. The ECU is also coded to the engine, so you can't easily swap ECUs from another vehicle.

I believe it can be removed, but needs to be unlocked first, and it isn't a simple job like removing an aftermarket immobiliser. It also is not likely to be cheap.

The following may help :-

http://7faq.com/contribute/owbase/ow.asp?Electrics+-+Immobiliser+problems+(K-Series%2C+Rover+2-button+plipper)

http://www.bba-reman.com/5AS_rover.htm

http://forums.mg-rover.org/archive/index.php/t-942.html

(The last part of the last link may be v. useful or not, depending on what codes you do have, if any)

anewman

tomstickland wrote: »

I'd remove it. Most immobilisers are pretty simple; they tend to tap into the fuel pump power and ignition circuit. The universal models are just a black box with, say, 6 wires to provide 3 switched circuits. So if you have time to follow the wires it's pretty obvious which wires need connecting back together.

Apparently some of the after-market immobilisers skoda installed on their cars in the early 90's had decoy wires which made the job more difficult.

mx-3

If its factory fitted, you can not just remove it. if its chip in the key you could try having it reprogramed.Failing that its going to the scrapy for a ECU/Immobilser and key all from the same car.You may be best geting rid of the car...........