Does anyone have any idea what this is...
Discussion
![](http://thumbsnap.com/sc/a15vMgda.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/dVkfkB2y" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/sc/dVkfkB2y.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/GoSpj8ND" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/sc/GoSpj8ND.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/jO0d8vLt" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/sc/jO0d8vLt.jpg)
You mean the black cylindrical thing? Well I could be wrong but...
In my previous job I worked in car security (car crime in Teesside was massive in the early 90s). At the time the daddy of all immobilisers was called the Vecta, typically it was £500 to have one installed but it did come with an insurance guaranteee that the scrotes would not nick your car by beating the Vecta.
One day we got a Nissan 300ZX in; it belonged to the owner of a DIY store in Hartlepool. His house had been burgled and the scum had taken the spare keys and immobiliser 'fob' for the ZX's Vecta.
So he had the car back at Nissan for a new set of locks and then brought it to us to have the alarm and Vecta stripped and replaced.
Once we'd done it, one of the other techies sat eating lunch, idly playing with the Vecta and found that instead of being sealed ('potted') in hard resin, the case was sealed with a rubbery filler. He was able to pick it out in lumps until he got to the circuit board, then lost interest.
I took the Vecta home and traced the entire circuit board, ending up with a full circuit diagram for it, then I connected a power supply and got the thing working on the bench (we had the original fob of course). Now, as the circuit board was such a close fit in the box, it became apparent that if you were to drill through the box at just the right place you'd break through the circuit board tracks and the immobiliser would drop back into circuit allowing the car to start. I mentioned it at work next day and we resolved to bring it to the Vecta rep's attention next time he visited... which turned out to be a couple of days later.
Before we could discuss it, he whipped out a new product: the Vecta Mk2.
Apparently the scrotes had also worked out that if you drilled through the case the immobiliser was defeated.
Their fix was to pot it in hard resin this time... inside 6" of black waste pipe. That way you couldn't tell how far in or at what angle the circuit board lay, thus where to drill.
So I could be wrong but it does look a lot like a late Vecta
If anyone of electronic bent is interested, the 'fob' was a matrix of 4 high-precision resistors. With the fob inserted, each resistor became part of four resistor networks feeding the inputs of four op-amps. As long as all the resistors were of the correct value, each of the op-amps would turn off, dropping out a transistor that in turn switched-off the immobiliser circuit relays. It's called a 'window comparator'. A small delay was included to stop someone connecting 4 variable pots and randomly twiddling them to hit the right values.
In my previous job I worked in car security (car crime in Teesside was massive in the early 90s). At the time the daddy of all immobilisers was called the Vecta, typically it was £500 to have one installed but it did come with an insurance guaranteee that the scrotes would not nick your car by beating the Vecta.
One day we got a Nissan 300ZX in; it belonged to the owner of a DIY store in Hartlepool. His house had been burgled and the scum had taken the spare keys and immobiliser 'fob' for the ZX's Vecta.
So he had the car back at Nissan for a new set of locks and then brought it to us to have the alarm and Vecta stripped and replaced.
Once we'd done it, one of the other techies sat eating lunch, idly playing with the Vecta and found that instead of being sealed ('potted') in hard resin, the case was sealed with a rubbery filler. He was able to pick it out in lumps until he got to the circuit board, then lost interest.
I took the Vecta home and traced the entire circuit board, ending up with a full circuit diagram for it, then I connected a power supply and got the thing working on the bench (we had the original fob of course). Now, as the circuit board was such a close fit in the box, it became apparent that if you were to drill through the box at just the right place you'd break through the circuit board tracks and the immobiliser would drop back into circuit allowing the car to start. I mentioned it at work next day and we resolved to bring it to the Vecta rep's attention next time he visited... which turned out to be a couple of days later.
Before we could discuss it, he whipped out a new product: the Vecta Mk2.
Apparently the scrotes had also worked out that if you drilled through the case the immobiliser was defeated.
Their fix was to pot it in hard resin this time... inside 6" of black waste pipe. That way you couldn't tell how far in or at what angle the circuit board lay, thus where to drill.
So I could be wrong but it does look a lot like a late Vecta
If anyone of electronic bent is interested, the 'fob' was a matrix of 4 high-precision resistors. With the fob inserted, each resistor became part of four resistor networks feeding the inputs of four op-amps. As long as all the resistors were of the correct value, each of the op-amps would turn off, dropping out a transistor that in turn switched-off the immobiliser circuit relays. It's called a 'window comparator'. A small delay was included to stop someone connecting 4 variable pots and randomly twiddling them to hit the right values.
No problem. I was about to say they didn't try very hard to hide it but the wedge cabin doesn't lend itself to squirelling things away. Anyway, these days the scrotes don't mess about with wiring, they just threaten you with a baseball bat until you give them the car keys. I'm afraid they'd be giving me the bat because I don't keep the keys at the same premises where I keep the car...
Gassing Station | Wedges | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff