Hello,
I am experiencing a problem with my Civic Silverstone '97 Hatchback. around 5 weeks back, the car started acting up. The green key light that normally turns on before I start it, but suddenly after a nights sleep, I wouldn't start anymore, it's not even cranking and the light won't come on. I've tried reading around the forum, and I can find similar problems, but not that the car won't crank or the green light is flickering. So i checked all the fuses, but there's nothing wrong there either. Since this is my first car and i dont have a lot of experience, I decided to take it to a garage and let it get fixed there. It's been around 4 week since I brought it there. They've look at it and concluded that the reason was, that the immobilizer was broken and they wanted to bypass it in the ECU. Now I was wondering how likely it was that this is the problem. And I was wondering how easy it is to bypass it and how much time that would take. I've also read that it's not possible to turn the immobilizer of that easy on every ECU, and sometimes, you would have to do a OBD1 swap with a p28 ECU. I'm really hopeless right now and i can't wait to drive. Any help would be appreciated. I do want to note that the night before it broke, I was putting in a radio, however the car worked fine after that and it was the next morning it didn't work.

Thanks!
Anton

 

What happened with my car is it would crank over, but wasn't getting spark and fuel. The immobiliser ring by the key must have been damaged because I swapped it with a spare and my car started right up.

 

Yeah so on mine it just goes to position 2 and ac and everything turns on, then i go to start position and ac turns off and no crank at all. I have no idea what it could be and i cant wait to drive it

 

My immobiliser on the EM1 doesn't disable the starter.

 

It sounds like the key switch pigtail (electrical portion of the ignition switch bolted to the opposite end from the key slot) is damaged. This is a common problem with the '96-00 Civic platform. It can be tested for proper voltage distribution or you can unplug it from the under dash fuse box and try plugging in a "known good" one and test to see if your problem has been solved.

 

Thanks for you message! I will take a look at it. I can’t right now, since it’s still at the shop. But as soon as i hear more of it i will definitely take a look at it. But i wanted to know if it can still be an immobilizer problem. Because i don’t really know what exactly the shop looked at. But he was determined that it was the immobilizer. And it looking for a person to bypass it. Will this likely resolve the issue aswell or not?
Thanks!

 

If the green coloured light with the key symbol is lit on your cluster, its deactivated.

 

So when i got the car the light would be on until i started it. So you are saying that the immobilizer was already deactivated? Or do you mean that the if the light turns on now that it’s not starting at all? Sorry if i don’t understand very well. It my first car and I haven’t worked on anything ever. Tanks again trying to help!
Edit: I do have a second key that didn’t work when i bought the car. Which makes me think thay it wasn’t deactivated but i could be wrong

 

Turns off when the car is running.

 

I’m assuming you’re not in the states since immobilizers weren’t included in ‘97 Civics. Either the transponder is going bad or the key ring transmitter is bad. Had to replace the key ring in my old ‘00 Integra. Acura TL/CL 01-03 will work.

 

Thanks guys for the responses.
So I got word back from my shop and they fixed the issue. They ended up disabling the immobilizer and that worked.
if that didnt work I was gonna look at the tips you guys gave me, but I'm glad that it is fixed.
Thanks!
Anton

 

But now you've removed one of your security measures. The immobiliser is what stopped thieves stealing my car.

 

Well, here in the netherlands, and especially in my area, a stolen car is a common as a plane crash. But i do understand the risks, and for me this would prevent another possible failure i guess. But thanks very mich for the help!