Immobiliser woes - a cautionary tale
Discussion
I wanted to make this much-delayed post to update everyone on some issues I experienced with the immobilser on my Chimaera. I imported the 1998 car into Alberta and knew that, because it would be such a rare car in Canada, (certainly the only one in Alberta and if there was more than one in the entire country at the time I would have been surprised), the normal TVR `foibles' would be exacerbated by the lack of a knowledgeable local community. I'm in Calgary and, while I was pleasantly surprised by the awareness of TVR there, the technical knowledge available to support the car met my low expectations as everyone who was working on it was basically `learning on the job.' Since this was the first TVR I had owned, I was also trying to figure things out from square one. Nonetheless, all was well until I started experiencing problems with the immobiliser: when you stopped the car, you never knew if it would start again.
The novelty of this feature pretty quickly wore off, as you can imagine. I spoke to the local garages and no-one was prepared to touch the problem so I reached out the broader TVR community and was surprised at how many times I was told that this information shouldn't (& wouldn't) be shared. While I got the point about keeping the cars safe, making them drive able is also important and we were at the point where we wouldn't take the car out if we had to stop it on the trip. Eventually, Dave Byron from this forum contacted me and gave me some invaluable background & told me that this was quite a common problem in cars of this age. When I forwarded his guidance to a local shop, they built on it and eventually disabled the unit so we could enjoy TVR motoring again. I am indebted to Dave for his help (and won't publicly share the info I got).
The novelty of this feature pretty quickly wore off, as you can imagine. I spoke to the local garages and no-one was prepared to touch the problem so I reached out the broader TVR community and was surprised at how many times I was told that this information shouldn't (& wouldn't) be shared. While I got the point about keeping the cars safe, making them drive able is also important and we were at the point where we wouldn't take the car out if we had to stop it on the trip. Eventually, Dave Byron from this forum contacted me and gave me some invaluable background & told me that this was quite a common problem in cars of this age. When I forwarded his guidance to a local shop, they built on it and eventually disabled the unit so we could enjoy TVR motoring again. I am indebted to Dave for his help (and won't publicly share the info I got).
Glad you got it sorted 
To be honest a TVR Chimaera is quite a simple beast so all you really need is a proper old school mechanic to look after your car, a respected local mechanic/restoration shop familiar with a mix of Brit classics and North American hot rods would be ideal.
If he's good with electrics that always helps with a TVR too
Working on a Chimaera can feel a lot like the car is part Triumph TR, part Range Rover, and part kit car.... so if you can find someone with experience of all three and tell him to Google the Piston Heads forum for anything he's not sure of he'll have the car demystified in an afternoon.
The car is mostly made up of parts from other vehicles because TVR being a small company didn't have the budget to develop their own parts, this makes it very tempting to source parts from those donor cars to save money. But there are plenty of pitfalls in doing this, so given your location I would use one of the trusted TVR parts specialists here in the UK to be sure you're getting the right part first time.
Enjoy
To be honest a TVR Chimaera is quite a simple beast so all you really need is a proper old school mechanic to look after your car, a respected local mechanic/restoration shop familiar with a mix of Brit classics and North American hot rods would be ideal.
If he's good with electrics that always helps with a TVR too
Working on a Chimaera can feel a lot like the car is part Triumph TR, part Range Rover, and part kit car.... so if you can find someone with experience of all three and tell him to Google the Piston Heads forum for anything he's not sure of he'll have the car demystified in an afternoon.
The car is mostly made up of parts from other vehicles because TVR being a small company didn't have the budget to develop their own parts, this makes it very tempting to source parts from those donor cars to save money. But there are plenty of pitfalls in doing this, so given your location I would use one of the trusted TVR parts specialists here in the UK to be sure you're getting the right part first time.
Enjoy
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