The beginning of trouble…
Hi, I’m Luke. Here comes me, happy as a lark, no money in my pockets, a job waiting for me every morning and the only things I owned were my family and my car. And I didn’t know anything about GM immobilizers and anti-theft systems and VATS Bypass!
With a coffee in my hand and my head in the clouds (or vice-versa I don’t remember…), I get out in the morning breeze, ready to face my new day, but just in time to discover that my 95 LeSabre that always acted faithfully, now refuses to start and decides to sit on my driveway with that security light blinking at me.
Looks like hope, but it’s deeper trouble!
I felt somewhat disappointed, so I googled and googled and googled and finally learnt about immobilizers. And also about a resistor trick that everybody was talking about and they still seem to call VATS Bypass. That trick promised to save me… but instead it was the beginning of my horrible nightmare.
The resistor trick indeed saved me …but only for 48 days. I discovered later that this trick is not a bypass at all, but before discovering that, I found myself stuck again and this time it wasn’t my driveway anymore – it was a Walmart parking and on a Saturday morning. I didn’t know what to do, but I did know I only had the weekend to solve the problem before having to go to work on Monday morning at 7am.
The Birth of a full GM VATS Bypass Kit
You know they say those are the only moments when you are really able to find solutions. In fact that’s when I found it. I rediscovered I’m an electronic engineer and I took out that PassKey security system and spent the weekend digging it inside-out to understand what it was and how to kick it off my car. And I want to remark: MY CAR, not its car!!
I have to admit it wasn’t too difficult to break that system. It took me 2 full days just because I’ve been a Project Manager for too long.
On Sunday afternoon I had THE solution in my hands: a FULL VATS bypass module that would bypass EVERY single component of the GM security system: the key, the lock cylinder and the Theft Deterrent Module itself! …And before it was too dark, that beautiful Buick V6 was ROARING AGAIN. – Man, how I love it! I say those cars still have a soul!
Regrets, Craziness and… NEWROCKIES
My only regret …is I threw away the ex-security system instead of taping it to a brick and sending it back to the manufacturer!
Well, you always have some type of regret at the end, in everything you do, but the nightmare was finally over anyway and I was feeling that burning sensation that you feel when you discover something great and want to tell everybody around. So after bothering the people on the parking lot at 2am in the night, I ran home and first thing in the morning I attacked the neighborhood and then decided to go real big and tell the world!
That’s when my first simple web-page was born. All details were there and everybody in the world could start to bypass a GM VATS PassKey system the same way I did. It was working on Pontiac, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile and GMC – most of GM cars and trucks. And lots of people actually liked it and then started helping me out with a mountain of details and that page kept growing and growing till I ended-up with this website you are reading now and with the birth of NEWROCKIES.
An article I wrote GM Anti-Theft Systems:
