Anyone know a trick on spi/rover immobiliser?
Turbo Mini Forums

Anyone know any tricks on bypassing/removing the immobiliser? A friend has a 90's sidewalk spi n i believe the immobiliser talks to the ecu? Is this correct? His fobs are not communicating to the alarm to turn it off so stopping playtime!

Depends on the year..... 90's is a bit vague lol as they nade minis in every year lol.

The Coded ECU's only really were fitted mid 1995 onwards. As its a sidewalk spi, unfortunately, your right in the mix.

Replace the fob battery and press the unlock button four times to re synchronise the fob. If the fobs are broken, often just the buttons, you need to either have them repaired or have new fobs coded to the alarm ECU.

You can replace the engine ecu with an uncoded one then a little wiring mod will get you on your way.

No magic fix im afraid if its deffo the coded ecu.

Off top my head its a 96? M/N reg? I think hes said the chips in the fobs are goosed.. i shall forward what youve said on to him ta

See the response to my question here...

http://www.theminiforum.co.uk/forums/topic...an-immobiliser/

Sounds unlikely that both fobs are dead, try the new batteries and resynch first.

Mine is 96 N reg, and for what its worth, I've studied the MEMs pinout but fail to see how the ECU talks to the imob. I'm not 100% convinced they're actually linked. I still have my ECU wired up to my PC and fake trigger wheel signal. Should be easy enough to tell if its immobilised without the alarm connected.

They do talk, or at least one way. The alarm ecu sends a code to the engine ecu. Only the lat model SPi and onwards have it. These cars are easily identifiable with the 24way fuse box in the engine bay. The body loom to engine loom connector has an aditional wire not on earlier models, for the code transmission, colour white/grey. Its only one way, alarm ecu to engine ecu. The engine ecu listens for the code. Without it, or the wrong code, ecu functions are inhibited. The alarm ecu serves as a simple imobilizer too, cutting the starter circuit.

Edited by Sprocket on 5th May, 2016.

On a side note, a lot of the K series tuners use the Emerald after market ECU's, as Emerald have cleverly included this imobilizer function, which can learn the code being transmitted, thereby retaining the imobilizer function if desired.

Edited by Sprocket on 5th May, 2016.

Doh.. so no easy way of just tricking the ecu into thinking the alarm is always off? I believe resyncing fobs is out of the question as 1's completely useless and the others circuit is now broken? But i shall get exact problems from him rather than all this off top my head.. poor guys minis stuck at his folks place

My car never had an alarm, but all the wiring is there. In place of the alarm ecu was a similar box with the same connector, but all it did was link through the starter circuit. The engine ECU was non coded.

I've now installed an alarm ECU (i dont need the engibe code). I bought the alarm ECU and refurbished fobs from this guy http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&...8236171&alt=web he supplied the later two plug version of the ECU and the extra connector and fly loom so i could wire up the light flash too.

Thanks have passed that link on

I bought a none running '96 SPi a few years back and had to do a lot of reserch about the immobilizer.The engine cranking can be bypassed but the ECU needs the programmed code.What I did find ( but can't find the link now) was a black box which pluged into the alarm plug ( sounds like Sprocket's) that bypassed the cranking and sent a code to the ECU automaticey when the ignition was turned on. My problem which is proberbly unrelated but did show up on a Rover technical bulleton was that somebody had "probed" the alarm connector and although power was at the plug it wasn't getting through to the alarm. Another problem when working on these cars is that all the available wiring diagrams listed for '95-'96 minis are wrong, the wiring for the loom with the 24 way fusebox is a combination of Spi '92-'94 and MPi. I have managed to reverse engineer the proper loom wiring diagram.