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David’s 2007 Hummer H3 Passlock Fix
David bought a 2007 Hummer H3 in November 2018 for his sons to drive. On paper it was the perfect find.
“In a word, the car was immaculate. It only had 34,XXX miles, the paint was almost perfect and there was a clean Carfax report; everything looked great on paper. It still had that new car smell. I test drove the vehicle and everything appeared fine. We made the deal and I took the car home.”
One week later
“Within a week the car would not even attempt to start. You would turn the key and nothing; no cranking, no indications lights, just nothing. Come back to the car 10 minutes later and it would fire right up like nothing ever happened.”
Note the ten minutes. That is not the car cooling off or a connection settling. It is the security system’s learn timer completing, and it is one of the clearest tells there is.
“The final straw was when I went to pick up pizza and ended up leaving the car in the parking lot over night due to it not starting. The next morning it turned over as if nothing had ever happened.”
Thirty years of GM ownership, and he had never seen it
“I turned to the internet for advice and found a whole slew of posts, most 5+ years old, about issues with the security system on certain GM vehicles preventing the car from starting when it should. This issue with the Passlock system was all new to me. I have owned GM vehicles almost exclusively for the past 30 years and have never had this issue before. Regardless, I wanted a solution; not a band-aid.”
A solution, not a band-aid. That distinction is the entire difference between a resistor in the key wires and removing the check altogether.
Before ordering he did the sensible thing and asked:
“I emailed NewRockies and gave them the make, model and exact description of my problem and asked if their module would fix my problem. They replied within a day and told me it would.”
A properly done install
David’s account of the work is worth reading if you are about to do your own, because he did everything right:
“I read through the instructions and wiring diagrams and compared them to the schematics for my H3. The wire colors for my car lines up with the provided instructions so I took the plunge and started the installation. I removed the front passenger seat because I don’t fit in cramped spaces too well and I soldered all my connections and put heat shrink over the connections.“
Three things there, all of them good practice. He verified the wire colours against his own car’s schematics before cutting anything. He made room rather than working folded into a footwell. And he soldered and heat-shrank rather than relying on crimp connectors.
“Once it was installed I went through the relearn procedure. The instructions were easy to follow and the car started just like they said it would. Once I was satisfied I secured the NewRockies module behind the existing wiring with a wire tie so it would not rattle, I installed the kick panel and door sill, then put the passenger seat back in. Start to finish the install took me close to 3 hours.“
“I have been driving the car on small errands around town for the past 2 weeks. I make sure I at least start the car every day. It has not failed once.“
David W.
Why a 34,000 mile car does this
Because mileage is not what wears this system out. Time is.
Passlock reads a resistance value from a sensor in the ignition lock cylinder and compares it to a value the Body Control Module has stored. Contacts oxidise, connections age, and the stored value slowly stops matching what the car is producing. An immaculate low mileage H3 that has spent years sitting is, if anything, a better candidate for this fault than a work truck that gets started twice a day.
Which is exactly why David’s Carfax was clean and his test drive was fine.
If you have an H3
The H3 shares its wiring with the Colorado and Canyon, and it is all in the 2004 to 2012 Colorado, Canyon, Isuzu i-Series and Hummer H3 installation guide. The BCM is behind the trim panel by the passenger’s right foot, and you will need connectors C1 and C2.
Follow David’s example: check the colours against your own car first, solder your joints, and if anything does not match, send us a photo of the connector before you cut.
If your GM is doing the same thing, the NEWROCKIES PRO Module is the permanent fix.
Related stories on the blog. Same platform, same fault: Shawn’s Colorado in Honduras and George’s Canyon, sold to him with the fault disclosed as a quirk.
