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3,563 Posts
What started off as a simple job today turned into a complete pigs ear all due to Cobra. As most of you know the GTR is fitted as standard with a Cobra tracker, the fees are extortionate and every experienced scumbag knows exactly where the tracker is fitted, especially when it does it's little party piece that most GTR owners know about. Anyhow today we were fitting my retrimmed steering wheel so the battery was disconnected, which has been done several times before, and after the job was completed we went to start the car and was met with a christmas tree of lights on the dash, every warning light and the engine check light flashing. We plugged in an Ecutek cable which suggested there was a starter motor relay problem, initially the wheel was taken off again to check there were no loose wires or shorts and then the relays and fuses were checked for the starter motor. Eventually Chris says, "I think it must be an immobiliser problem and it's just coincidence that it has appeared after the wheel has been off". I then vaguely remembered there being a thread on here previously where somebody had starting problems which turned out to be tracker related so I decided to ring Cobra. Receptionist answers so I say, " Hello, is it possible your system has immobilised my car even though I don't have a subscription or contract with your company?" " Yes, that's possible, I'll take all your details and get one of our technical team to phone you back straightaway." After 30 mins waiting I got fed up and phoned Litchfields and spoke to one of the mechanics, he confirmed what we already suspected that the Cobra had immobilised my car and gave us two suggestions to try, the second one was to remove the tracker and wiring! We went through and tried the first suggestion which failed to start the car so I then decided to ring Cobra again and demanded to speak to one of their technical team straight away. After a long discussion he eventually told us of a way to disarm the immobiliser by soldering in a wire across two pins, after the rewiring was completed car starts and all lights and fault codes are out but I cannot see this is acceptable that Cobra can randomly disable my car when I don't have a contract etc with their company. It was fortunate that I remembered the thread or we could still be trying to figure out the problem and a way of solving it. Cobra will be receiving my letter regarding this incident and an invoice to cover my costs. They are a bunch of tosspots! 
