W203 A209 No Crank - No Start - Drives Great

[hofnerpres1]

No mate - already working on it - see my latest saga. The car that keeps on giving.....

 

[hofnerpres1]

Well as warned dear reader, we celebrated too soon. Yesterday whilst doing a few test stop starts the whole damn EIS dance went back to where we started last summer. Replacement ECM and the old one both refused to recognise the key and allow the ELV to unlock or the key to turn. As a delicious twist I was using the standard wiring set up rather than the steering lock bypass gadget which kept me going last year, so now I have an unmovable car. What joy this all is. My thoughts are that the ECMs are unlikely to have suddenly developed the same fault at the same time - also the EIS is new and twice tested ( Yes - tried the warming up with a hair dryer trick ). This all points at the oily wiring harness occasionally loosing the CAN authorisation signal from the EIS. I will try and do some more scanning and signal testing whilst hoping for the happy sound of the lock activating. When it does it will be removed and used as discus throwing practice and a bypass start button will be fitted - enough is enough. It's interesting that an emulator "happy talks" to the EIS and all the chassis and engine functions are then permitted as the key is turned apart from the crank signal. The lack of correct key signal arriving at the ECM must block the crank permission. Just as an aside on this system is there a lock out feature when a fixed number of failed starts have been attempted ? I may be getting paranoid.

 

[hofnerpres1]

Just to round up the saga. Rather than keep throwing money at this flaky immobiliser sytem the dashboard now has a descrete starter button and lock emulator (see other post on how to remove dead ESL ). Then another surprise - The UK MoT rules state that if a steering lock was fitted as standard ( post September 2001) it must work or if removed an alternative immobiliser must be fitted. This leaves some room for interpretation since some testers see that a modern computer coded key serves this function. Talk to your local test centre first. An intercooler air pipe joint let go during the test but it still gave excellent emissions figures - passed. Never a dull moment.