Immobiliser problem
Discussion
Can anyone tell me how to disable/remove a pesky immobiliser? On MY vehicle, I should add ;-)
Here's the deal:
The troublesome black box is a Clifford Concept 50, installed years before I bought the car. Pics below of the connector that hooks it into the wiring loom.
In theory it shouldn't be doing anything anymore, as it was mostly disabled when a second immobiliser was fitted at my insurance company's insistence about 5 years ago. But it is definitely playing up and causing intermittent problems.
<tedious detail>
When the second immobiliser was fitted, the installer left the Clifford unit in place, but disabled all its functions apart from the remote central locking, which I wanted to retain. In retrospect a bad decision.
For several years it all worked fine, ie. my Clifford remote operated the central locking, but did nothing else, and the AutoWatch immobiliser took care of the minimising-the-chance-of-TWOCing business.
Eventually the remote central locking became unreliable, and I stopped using it.
More recently, an intermittent fault has developed whereby the old Clifford immobiliser is kicking in and shutting everything down. All's well once the engine is running, but I quite often have trouble starting because the act of turning the key in the ignition is the trigger that makes the Clifford throw a wobbly. I'm quite sure it's the Clifford because when the problem manifests itself and the electrics are offline, I can hear relays for the (long disconnected) alarm clicking away in the body of the Concept 50.
I suspect there's some kind of ground/short problem somewhere that is contributing, because the tricks that *sometimes* bring the electrics back to life include: disconnecting and reconnecting battery terminals; creating a brief short across battery terminals; touching the battery ground terminal; turning the headlight switch on and off.
The wiring under the dash is pretty hard to follow - not much space, and an awful lot of 26-year-old wires bundled and cabletied together.
</tedious detail>
Any ideas folks?
ps. I can't seem to upload a second image, but it was only the connector that fits into the port on the immobiliser, shown in the pic below.
![](http://thumbsnap.com/t/xFfGAstF.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/uCMeUwzQ" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/t/uCMeUwzQ.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/uCMeUwzQ" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/t/uCMeUwzQ.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/uCMeUwzQ" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/t/uCMeUwzQ.jpg)
Here's the deal:
The troublesome black box is a Clifford Concept 50, installed years before I bought the car. Pics below of the connector that hooks it into the wiring loom.
In theory it shouldn't be doing anything anymore, as it was mostly disabled when a second immobiliser was fitted at my insurance company's insistence about 5 years ago. But it is definitely playing up and causing intermittent problems.
<tedious detail>
When the second immobiliser was fitted, the installer left the Clifford unit in place, but disabled all its functions apart from the remote central locking, which I wanted to retain. In retrospect a bad decision.
For several years it all worked fine, ie. my Clifford remote operated the central locking, but did nothing else, and the AutoWatch immobiliser took care of the minimising-the-chance-of-TWOCing business.
Eventually the remote central locking became unreliable, and I stopped using it.
More recently, an intermittent fault has developed whereby the old Clifford immobiliser is kicking in and shutting everything down. All's well once the engine is running, but I quite often have trouble starting because the act of turning the key in the ignition is the trigger that makes the Clifford throw a wobbly. I'm quite sure it's the Clifford because when the problem manifests itself and the electrics are offline, I can hear relays for the (long disconnected) alarm clicking away in the body of the Concept 50.
I suspect there's some kind of ground/short problem somewhere that is contributing, because the tricks that *sometimes* bring the electrics back to life include: disconnecting and reconnecting battery terminals; creating a brief short across battery terminals; touching the battery ground terminal; turning the headlight switch on and off.
The wiring under the dash is pretty hard to follow - not much space, and an awful lot of 26-year-old wires bundled and cabletied together.
</tedious detail>
Any ideas folks?
ps. I can't seem to upload a second image, but it was only the connector that fits into the port on the immobiliser, shown in the pic below.
Edited by zogster on Friday 2nd May 22:42
Its a pain but the best bet is unpick and trace back anything that isn't OE then decide what you really need ie just a simple immobiliser ,then reconnect the vehicle loom back to itself ,I doubt there will be much actually connecting to it
Its time consuming but satisfyingly when you rid something of a load of spaghetti and it looks tidy remember
Simple is reliable!!!
Its time consuming but satisfyingly when you rid something of a load of spaghetti and it looks tidy remember
Simple is reliable!!!
I hear you on the simple is reliable thing, no argument there...
Was hoping to find a slightly quicker solution than tracing wires and interpreting a wiring diagram getting a crick in my neck in the drivers footwell - but that's the kind of thinking that got me here, so maybe I'd better just knuckle down to it
Was hoping to find a slightly quicker solution than tracing wires and interpreting a wiring diagram getting a crick in my neck in the drivers footwell - but that's the kind of thinking that got me here, so maybe I'd better just knuckle down to it
h when the only way to do it is upside down, feet through sunroof and head in footwell. But I cracked it and just have to tidy up now!I have found a lot of these so called professionally fitted alarms from yesteryear have been lazily fitted, Quickest I have disabled one was 3 minutes, 1 minute of that was removing the cowling from the column and the other 2 were sussing which wire was which and cutting it to crimp the original loom back together....
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