Rasheeda’s Oldsmobile Alero Passlock Fix

Some cars are just transport. Some are the last thing you have left of somebody.

Rasheeda was twenty and a junior in college when her mother died of ovarian cancer, one month after her birthday. She inherited her mother’s Oldsmobile Alero, kept herself in school because finishing was one of her mother’s dying wishes, and graduated in 2012.

And then the car her mother left her began refusing to start.

In her own words

“I was struck with the dreaded faulty security passlock system during a time of great strife in my life about 6 years ago. I was 20 years old and a junior in college with my whole life ahead of me. Then one month after my 20th birthday, my mother passed away from ovarian cancer. I was a young college student with a measly part-time job now expected to run a full house all by myself with barely any income.”

“I was slowly moving on from my mother’s death only to be plunged right into yet another nightmare. I was trying to go home from work one day and the car wouldn’t start. I didn’t know what was going on, never heard of ‘passlock’ until after I’d payed a towing fee to get it to a mechanic shop.”

What the shops offered her is what they offer everybody. Wait it out, or spend a great deal of money to postpone it:

“The only solutions the mechanics could give me was the dreaded ‘wait for 10+ minutes with the switch on’ when it activates and pray that it will crank the second time or pay $1000+ to only delay the problem for a few years.”

What an unreliable car actually costs

This is the part people who have never been in it do not see. A car that might not start is not an inconvenience when you are the only income in the house. It is a closed door.

“So, here I was stuck with no real reliable way to leave and pursue my dreams. People aren’t quick to hire someone who doesn’t have a reliable mode of transportation. And I couldn’t afford a new vehicle and my mother’s car was dying not because of a bad motor or transmission, but because of a faulty security system that I, or no one for that matter, asked for.“

Read that last line again, because it is the whole problem in a sentence. There was nothing wrong with the car.

“I kept telling myself ‘A permanent solution HAS to exist in this world SOMEWHERE!'”

“It was like a dream come true”

She found us by accident, and she did not believe it:

“Then one day after endless searching with no results, I was about to give up until I stumbled upon this website completely by chance. Admittedly, I was REAL skeptical about all of this. All of it seemed too good to be true. But I was at the end of my rope at this point. So, I took a chance, purchased the PRO Module, had someone install it for me (I didn’t trust myself enough to even try) and…..it was like a dream come true.”

“It’s been almost two months or so since I purchased this PRO Module and I haven’t had to deal with that terrible passlock system issue at all. My mother’s car was saved from the junk yard. I don’t have to worry about being stranded anymore. I don’t have to worry about wasting time waiting on the car to decide if it will start in ten minutes or longer. New life was breathed into this vehicle.”

“I thank NEWROCKIES from the bottom of my heart for saving my mother’s vehicle. All of you have no idea what this means to me. And now I can apply for jobs in my field (psychology) anywhere without worrying about not having a reliable vehicle.”

Rasheeda J.

What was wrong with the Alero

Nothing mechanical. On an Alero the security is Passlock, and it works by reading a resistance value produced in the ignition lock cylinder and comparing it against a value the Body Control Module has stored. If the two disagree, the BCM shuts down the fuel injectors. The engine cranks, and it will not run.

That reading drifts as a car ages. A worn cylinder, a corroded contact, a sensor that has taken the same measurement tens of thousands of times. Nothing has broken. The system has simply stopped recognising the car’s own key.

The ten minute wait the shops told her about is not a fix, it is the system’s relearn timer running. And the expensive repair is a replacement lock assembly that will drift out of tolerance again in a few years, which is exactly what she was told and exactly why she refused it.

The PRO Module removes the check. There is no value left to drift and nothing left to disagree with. Here is why the cheaper resistor trick does not hold.

If you have an Alero

The wiring is in the 1997 to 2005 Oldsmobile Alero installation guide, which also covers the Pontiac Grand Am, Chevrolet Malibu Classic and Oldsmobile Cutlass of the same era. The BCM sits under the right side of the dash, by the blower motor.

Rasheeda had someone else fit hers because she did not trust herself to try, and that is a perfectly good decision. Any competent shop can follow the guide. Not sure which system your car has? Identify it here.

Our thanks to Rasheeda for trusting us with a story that was never really about a car.

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