K series immobiliser fob reprogamming

[panickyjabofoppo]

Chaps,
I've finally lost the two button immobiliser fob for the caterham. It's a 1600 minister roadsport b k series car from 2003/2004. I've sourced a couple of secondhand rover fobs and have arranged for someone to come and program them to the car. Can i just check with you all that there is no possibility of the non-caterham mechanic accidentally 'wiping' the caterham ecu map when he presumably plugs in to the obd port to program the new fobs to the car? Is there even a 'caterham' map for these 120hp minister engines, or is it pure rover?

[fewingsm]

Hiya, although mine's a 97 car, my understanding is that it's not the ECU that's changed, but the fobs are sync'd to your ECU (mine was a small ECU under the dash), I sent the ECU and fobs to a guy who'd worked for Rover and had all the stuff to do it, he did 3 fobs for me, I've temporarily lost his details, can look if you want? Good luck!

[gareth h]

I sent my ecu to Z and F they remapped it and removed the immob, no need for blippers anymore

[panickyjabofoppo]

That's reassuring, thank you.
I've already booked someone from Hammond Automotive to travel over to the car to sort it. I just had an 'oh sh!t' moment after booked everything this morning, wondering if there was potential for a comedy map-wiping incident.

Off topic, I'm still interested to find out whether or not the base model Caterhams and/or the low power K Series race engines use a bog standard Rover map. Anybody know? A well known Caterham independent service person recently told me the race engines run rich for better cooling/reliability, which leads me to believe that either the map is altered, or there's a mechanical change, perhaps an increase in fuel pressure. No idea. Can anyone shed some light on this?

[gareth h]

Have a chat with Mark at Z&F he will advise, it would appear that the ecu is fairly conservatively mapped, his remap certainly perks things up

[panickyjabofoppo]

Sounds interesting. I'm not after more power, it's more that the comment about the racers running rich made me wonder whether the slight 'choke' that my engine has when you open the throttle suddenly (eg when heel and toeing) could be due to it running rich. There's also a photo in a recent thread on blatchat of the top of some forged pistons from a k series racer, and they're quite black, which if my classically 'internet' style mechanical 'knowledge' is correct, again points to the racers running rich. If they do, I'd put money on the remap leaning it out a bit.

[pscandoteu]

If these cars are anything like the Rover system then the immo fobs are programmed into a separate ECU known as the 5AS and so programming in immo fobs does not need to touch the engine ECU at all.

We are now selling the equipment to do this yourself but I have no idea if it works on a Caterham. It would be good to find out though.

[panickyjabofoppo]

Thanks for that. I eventually bought two spare fobs on eBay and had them programmed to the car at a non-Caterham garage, which would suggest that your Rover reprogramming equipment would also work on Caterhams.