MI5

It has long been held on these pages that dealerships know little to nothing of the workings of the S. Unfortunately, my own experience can only confirm this, albeit I did get a better resolution than many.

Following my recent MOT by Honda (pass), I later discovered that my alarm and immobiliser were not working. The car still started, the green key still appeared, but the fob did nothing and the little red light on the centre console did not come on. So did usual things, check fob battery, check connections and various fuses in the key lock system. I could still secure and open the car with the keys and as I said the car still started, effectively bypassing the immobiliser. Read all I could on the forums and even checked the alarm motherboard for dry soldered joints and any overheating - nothing. Spoke to Honda who asked me to bring it in and they would do a diagnostic check on it. Car was duly delivered.

Later received a call from Honda who said they had spoken to Hamilton Palmer (H&P) and in their opinion the motherboard was at fault, and they had confirmed this with the leccy who could find no feed to the motherboard. Replacement would cost £422 including labour and VAT and did I wish to go ahead with this. I declined, because this did not sit well with me. I do have a good knowledge of cars and my gut instinct was telling me the fault was something simple.

The next day I phoned H&P and spoke to JIm, our car alarm guru, he only works Wednesday and Thursday. I gave him the symptoms and straight away he said its not the motherboard. He told me what it was, and where to find it. I followed his instructions, found the item, changed it and everything worked again. What was it? a 3 amp fuse, the cost 60p. Bit cheaper than £422!

I then went back to Honda who were suitably embarrased and apologised and refunded the £48 fee for the diagnostic check. They also now know where the fuse system for the H&P alarm is situated on the car, something they admit they did not know before. More worrying for us, is that I now know by removing a 3 amp fuse I can disable the alarm and immobiliser on any S fitted with an H&P system but still leave it driveable.

martin j

Almost unbelievable, almost but it doesn't surprise me.

Nottm_S2

electrics are never their strong point but aftermarket added stuff probably even more so

isnt the immobiliser separate to the alarm? the alarm is aftermarket but the green key light isnt

lovegroova

Some dealerships, but not all. Crown Bushey and Brayley Hemel have been excellent for me. Certainly better than my limited experience with TGM.

All the advice here if you have an H&P alarm is to contact H&P directly in the first place (in case anyone stumbles across this thread in future).

And to answer Notts' question, the immobiliser is separate to the alarm, which is why a key needs to be coded before you can start the car with it.

eSeM

The immobiliser is built into the ECU .... therefore if you swap to an aftermarket ECU (Mugen, Spoon etc) it can be bypassed.

dan_bourne

starting to hear more bad stuff about tgm, whether or not its the small amount of people with bad experiences being vocal i dont know, maybe getting a big enough that they think their reputation is untouchable?

SuperHamz

Wonder what issues these are and how frequent they are. I've not had a bad experience with them so far.

Crown Bushey is around the corner from me though, will have to try them out - thanks for the vote of confidence LG!

MrM

I've voiced it before but TGM did big service and geo for me. Nothing obvious wrong with service, but the geo wasn't great. Handling wasn't as good as before. I drive so few miles it took me a while to notice and not local to query. As time went on the handling wasn't confidence inspiring so took it back to Center Gravity who did it originally for me about 10 years ago. They commented that the whole car was ever so slightly out of alignment like the TGM calibration equipment was out slightly. Chris worked his magic and am back on track.

That was 3 years ago but I'm not sure I'd trek down to TGM again myself.

Tim S

Go on then - where is the fuse?

I've got an AEM ECU and my immobiliser appears to work in the same way as ever - i.e. car needs to have been recently unlocked via the fob for the start button to work and the fuel pump to prime when the key's turned. Or is that a function of the alarm?

titch

I have a J's ECU and my immobiliser still works as it should (ie, if I unlock the car, but don't start it within 30s the immobiliser rearms and I need to 'unlock' the car again with the fob).


Same as Tim above with the AEM.