Hello All,

I feel like the luckiest Landy owner driver alive to have had my Defender 90 TD5 stolen by, and lets not beat around the bush here - Pikeys, and to have had it returned to me following a long story about which you can read in the Stolen Vehicles section.

Whilst having had her cosmetics touched up following forced entry by said pikeys, the Garage (not my garage of choice I might add) were completely unable to restart her. Having experienced a number of different reasons for failed starts or difficult starts, I tried a few tricks I have had to master over my albeit short time as a proud landy owner, but to no avail.

Eventually after some alleged diagnostics by a vehicle electrician they came to the somewhat dubious conclusion that the ECU was knackered - they claimed that it seemed as if it had been submerged in water - a fact that I refuted with some passion. They removed the ECU cleaned it out but on returning it to the main garage stated that it contained an immobilser that could be disarmed using a 433 mhz key fob, Which they handed to me with the spanking new set of keys for my landy.

This seems odd, and I can find nothing in the usual literature that explains this, for a number of reasons that I hope somebody may be able to shed some light on:

1. landy was hotwired to be stolen - garage claim is via interior light? is this really possible? and would it have flummoxed a standard immobilser if indeed this mystery beast actually exists? or is this actually part of the ECU safety system which actuated as a result of being hotwired.

2. I now have a key fob with the two traditional lock/unlock buttons, but no indication that the vehicle is either immobilsed or otherwise.

If anybody can shed any light on this I would be grateful.

Regards

Quilkyn

At least you got it back!

As long as the new fob works, it's a good result.

However, you might like to think about fitting something extra to prevent hot-wiring from working.

Quilkyn said:

Hello All,


for a number of reasons that I hope somebody may be able to shed some light on:

1. landy was hotwired to be stolen - garage claim is via interior light? is this really possible? and would it have flummoxed a standard immobilser if indeed this mystery beast actually exists?
If anybody can shed any light on this I would be grateful.
Quilkyn

Click to expand...

Without giving anything away, then yes the factory fitted alarm/immobiliser can easily be fried, and therefore rendered useless, by shorting some particular circuits. The vehicle can then be hot wired if the steering lock is broken.