Hi Guys,

2001 Corsa 1.0 Comfort


Question about my key!

Bought the car used, now, the key looks 'good condition', but I Can tell it's not genuine. It's a cheap exterior anyway, which looks like the real key and has a new 'plastic' version of the rubber lock/open buttons. BUT, it lacks the little red IR light/square that emits the signal I presume. SOMETIMES, it will lock the car. It has never opened it.

I was able to drive the car a fair bit to get it home and use it normally for a few weeks, and despite having a fuel filter leak and oil switch (both of which were repaired), it suddenly wouldn't work one day while I was out.

I started the car, and noticed it was revving irregularly, as if it was being starved of fuel.

Here's the difficult to understand bit, we replaced the sparks, coil pack, even tried another air flow sensor from a working Corsa C and nothing worked. Not a single error code. It DOES, however work a little bit better with the air flow sensor DISCONNECTED which is strange. A professional mechanic couldn't seem to diagnose the problem at all which worried me too. Until I contacted Vauxhall, who kept asking me about the keys...

My theory is this:

The remote is sending dodgy/incomplete signals SOME of the time to the cars ECU. The car starts, but the immobiliser (which can disable one of three things apparently) is disabling the fuel injectors causing the car to stall out shortly after it starts.

I can move the car around car parks etc, having to restart it each time it dies, so I can't imagine anything majorly mechanical has 'failed', it rather seems to me that the immobiliser is deliberately causing a problem which the engine is unaware of, meaning it tries to work, but is prevented from doing so shortly.

I'm not getting the spanner icon flashing either, but I have seen this, and can only guess that people seeing that have a different key problem, which is causing the immobiliser to disable the STARTER, which is why victims of that cannot start their cars at all. I understand that the immobiliser ca( disable one of three things, even two of them at a time, to prevent theft.


What do you guys think? I really hope this IS the problem to be honest, as mechanics are telling me the only other way to diagnose a problem is to strip the thing down, which they all agree isn't worth it... I'm also quite disheartened that mechanics cannot at least tell me what the problem is... but that's another problem

PLEASE reply if you can help even a little bit, as my last resort is Vauxhall.. and I know that they aren't cheap!!