Went down to start the car this morning and the remote wouldn't disable the immobilizer. The remote was purchased new last fall. The LED on the remote was bright so I think the battery was fine, but I changed it anyway and it still wouldn't work.

Luckily I was home and have the backup remote.

So can the immobilizer remote just forget its programming?

 

I'm not an expert here by any means but since you don't program the transmitter (key fob) it's the immobilizer in the car that reads the transmitter and has to "remember" the code. In other words the car has to be taught to respond to the specific code the transmitter sends. As such it seems logical that you have one of two problems: either the transmitter has packed it in (possible but not likely unless it's been dropped a few times or gotten really wet), or the immobilizer has a problem and "lost" the code. I'm not sure the best course of action at this point (others may have good ideas) but I'd want to be really alert to any other signs of problems with the immobilizer itself. If anything else seems to be wrong with it then my guess is it's time for a new immobilizer. If your other key fob continues to work just fine then you might be lucky and just need a new transmitter. I hope it's the latter.

 

Of course--that makes sense. I'll try to reprogram the failed remote this weekend and see if it works.

 

The backup remote did it fine. The new one is definitely not sending anything that the immobilizer wants to receive.

Oh well, we'll see what Vertex's warranty is like.