The V8 Owners Forum -

Have been trawling the net for a definitive answer to the GEMS engine immobilizer problem when running stand alone.
I am still a bit confused!
I found this gadget and wondering if anyone has tried or heard anything about it.
Please don't suggest Megasquirt or carb's!
Cheers
[/img]http://labtronxcomau.businesscatalyst.c ... g_px07.jpg

I looked at this before going to a vems standalone ecu, the gems ecu can have the immobiliser part of the bcm programmed out or disabled then the ecu can run in another car or setup, problem is its very expensive to do so, think people like mark Adams could do it when I looked at it, and I remember it was close to £750 to have the ecu chipped and immobiliser turned off.

Don't think enough people go this route so information is hard to find.

Scott

Never heard of that gadget - what is it?

Chris.

That's the link corrected

A picture of a blob with wires coming out of doesn't tell much. Is there a description of what it does?

That's assuming someone knows what a GEMs unit expects to see - and doesn't when it is removed from the donor car. I'd guess it probably talks to another processor or two in the car, and if they aren't present it shuts down.
But only a guess.

In it's home environment there would be at least the BCU and then probably more ECU's controlling various parts of the vehicle's functions like suspension and the boxes would cross-communicate in order to correctly function. There may also be a CANBUS connection involved, just to complicate matters for the OP.

Removing it and using it elsewhere would almost certainly require it being tricked into thinking that all is well in the world, hence the blurry gubbins of unknown provenance.
It's probably also why things like the unmentionable Megasquirt et-al are so prolific, because they remove the need for electronic deceit and control just the engine with no other distractions.

I have a Range rover P38 so its a GEMS system, or was until Overfinch got hold of it , the ECU in my car is based on a TVR Cerbera and is a bastardised version of GEMS. This worked so badly that I now have a Megasquirt controlling the engine, I had to keep the old ECU as well so the car is tricked into thinking things are OK.

GEMS uses a combination of the engine, gearbox, body and other ECUs to keep running so it appears to be almost impossible to remove one part of it without completely messing up some other part of the controls within the car.

Might be worth a read of this excelent manual by David Poole:
http://www.gomog.com/allmorgan/GEMS/GEMSbyPoole.pdf
and also googling "Lucas 10as", as thats how they keep the gems happy on a morgan (and NAS defender 90's iirc)