Disarm or not to disarm?

Taz, from my experience you should count yourself lucky. I agree with every word Trev wrote. It should have been an option. In the US at least Ferrari's are such a low profile theft target they are needless in my opinion.

 

Brian- Probably so, but with all the resources we have now that can pull PINs from red fobs and Alarm ECUs and build matching sets of fobs, we are in much better shape with the system than we were in the past. Eric355 and I supplied around a dozen sets of 3 fobs with new PINs to owners in the past with no failures, but only to those with their PIN. No need to do that now.

 

I'm not overly concerned about the usability, you get used to its quirks of course, its the fact the electronic components are now over 20 years old and regularly failing with expensive results. Many boards where produced in the 90s. The first gen version on some early 99s actually had no mechanical relays and very high quality components and they still die... The second gen as used in majority of 360s is a ruthless cost down and has parts which are failing. However it doesn't just effect the immobilizer unit..

It's can cause a cascade of expensive failures including of your battery, strain your alternator and charging circuitry, damage/or erase eeprom in your dashboard ending in an X, take out your engine ecus and some hw versions are beginning to become no longer available, damage your flasher relay and generally wreck havoc on all the electrical circuits in the car by applying voltage spikes all over the place. I could go on and on.. Like I said previously when they start to fail it can turn the car into a basket case of unreliability..

 

I've read all the posts here. I've owned my 2003 360 for a little over 2 years now. It has 25K miles on it. I have all the fobs (2 black 1 red). The immobilizer works fine.

What I'm curious about is, with my car, while the immobilizer works fine, it appears that there is not an alarm siren on it-- and frankly I have never looked for it. But suffice to say, the alarm has never gone off. The lights flash when I unlock/disarm the immobilizer but there is no siren "beeps" either. ???

I'm only slightly annoyed with the 120 second rule, but I have learned to work with it. BUT with that said, and alarm siren would be very annoying and I guess I should consider myself lucky that it doesn't work. I am the third owner and I have no indication in the extensive docs that came with the car that the alarm has been removed.

Your thoughts, Trev?

 

Possible siren was replaced with a non Ferrari siren which kills the red led but isn't wired identically so siren never triggers...

A large number of 360s I've seen have signs of failing immobilizers but the owners don't even realize because random events like doors locking or unlocking themselves etc in a garage wouldn't be seen or random click of the immobilizer relay behind the seats not noticed.. Starts slowly and then reaches a point of no return and big bills for damaged ecus. The big one is that's easy to spot is if your car off the battery tender cannot last at least 2 weeks and start the car.. Especially if you've just replaced the battery!

 

Taz, Trev and Brian in the same thread = win for F-chatters.

 

Thanks. I never use a battery tender. I drive the car at least once a week to keep it's legs stretched. So far so good. No unusual signs of failure yet but now will be on the lookout for sure. But with that said I would be happy to have the immobilizer gone. Looking forward to the "Swiss Army Knife" tool. BTW FWIW, the red LED on the dash does flash with the immobilizer activated-- just never had a siren event, thankfully. That would be very annoying.

 

All true but my bigger point is Why bother? The system is garbage, creates unneeded reliability issues and is a black hole to throw money in on a car that will almost certainly never be stolen.

I worry about my Harley being stolen, I worry about my truck being stolen, I worry about our Benz being stolen. I could park both Ferraris on the street with the keys in them and they'd never get touched.

 

Brian- Mine came with the car and works fine, so no reason to fiddle with it. Eleven+ years have taught me how to work with it as second nature, so it is not inconvenient. I even have a spare battery in a pill holder and a screwdriver on my keychain. You should have seen the look on my mother's face when her Buick fob stopped working and I pulled a battery out of my pocket and fixed it.

I like the system in my wife's GLE450 better, but there is a big difference between 2020 MY technology and 1996 MY (introduced with Motronic 5.2) or so technology.




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I am happy yours has been trouble free but I also need to point out with your background you are not the average Ferrari owner. My business just like your old crew chief's or whatever the AF calls them is to put my clients in as reliable a car as I can and the Bosch immobilizer/security system just does not fit into that picture. It is a known problem that for 90% of my clients offers zero value.

 

Brian- I agree. For you as a pro, at the first sign of trouble not easily and inexpensively fixed, it would be time to yank the system.

 

I've fixed tonnes of them now and since last couple of years accelerating failure rates are going up rapidly!

 

Maybe I missed it but how do you delete the entire mobilizer thing. I put in a corvette unit years ago so no horn but it works OK otherwise. I have all three fobs so are you guys saying with all the fobs as backup that the system is not likely to konk out or would you recommend avoiding hassle of failure and just eliminate it before the trouble starts. I just pulled the 360 dash and restretched the leather so in the mood to keep on fixing stuff.

 

If you want to test to see if you have an alarm, simple lock the car with the FOB and pull the manual release for the frunk. That will set it off.

 

Its not the fobs that are the problem. The issue is very much 20 year old cheap electronics designed for mainstream cars like Fords with non-replaceable parts like mechanical relays (normally they would be socket mounted in a fuse box somewhere) except Bosch designed to solder them on the board and now they have started to fail with increasing regularity. The whole board has a built in design life, a shelf life that isn't typical of Ferrari life cycle. I.e. most cheap hatchbacks get recycled by their 10th birthday. Not so the typical Ferrari! The further problem is the data from your immobilizer is paired across into your ECU's so the ecu's need replacing too. And then you discover that Ferrari won't sell you one, only a pair to eliminate the issue of 2 different firmware versions fighting each other and causing impossible to diagnose issues! So even though only one is paired unless for diagnostic purposes they where swapped from bank to bank by your unsuspecting mechanic you still need 2 new units. So now your in it for at least $4k of parts.. Damn gets expensive quickly... New immobilizers, new ecus and even if you pony up some ecu parts are starting to get no longer available status. What do you do scrap the car if you cannot find the correct ones for your model year and geography? It gets ridiculous...

Also.... When for instance the voltage regulation circuit fails it starts pushing massive voltage spikes all around the loom and killing you battery and maybe even damaging other parts like your expensive dashboard pod. Seen cases where X ends up on the dash due to eeprom being erased from the high voltage.. Stupid stupid...

Plus the entire thing can be overridden with modern tools in a few minutes via access to just the OBD port..

Its why I spent many man hours developing Ferrari SAK tool. I now think its FAR better to fit an aftermarket alarm/immobilizer/tracker (delete as appropriate) if you are worried about theft and insurance and remove the entire hateful 90's system, alarm system included. You then pay normal prices for fobs, etc. and never worry about pins and old fobs and will it / won't it start again or arriving at your car to find the central locking is unlocked. Yes that happens due to flapping old relays. Bugger that system...

 

You buy an old Scottish Castle.. Do you

A. Live it in with no windows, heating and running clean water just to keep it 'original' *or*
B. Fit modern double glazing, central heating and clean water. Live happily ever after...

 

How do I kill the immobilizer? I am not worried about it getting stolen but after all the discussion it will surely crap out.

 

Technology is great when it is reliable. 360s are 20 years old now. How many of you still use a 20 year old smart phone? They were never intended to be in use that long and sadly Ferrari chose an alarm system that was never intended to last 20 years.

 

Isn't the manual release inside the frunk? Not sure how I could do that.

 

Totally agree. That's why I really think my 360 has all the tech I want in an F-car.

I love the looks of the 458--- but it's a tech laden beast. And I tend to keep my cars for a long time.
For me joy of ownership is directly linked to the $$ and time down that befalls my "fun" cars.

 

he means the button on the dash I presume.

 

I only have the electric solenoid release in the console next to the fuel door release. But I assume that's what you both mean. Anyhooo... I'll give it a go, thanks.

 

You clearly have never read the owners manual.

 

Not true. Ferrari provided an owners manual for a reason.