The More They Overthink The Plumbing, The Easier It Is To Stop Up the Drain

The title of the post are the words of Mr. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the movie Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock. Scotty said these words after he sabotaged the Excelsior.

The past weekend these words came back to haunt me when I had trouble with my car. The car would not start, but the "Theft" light on the dashboard was blinking rapidly.

The problem was a failure of the factory installed anti-theft system. When the car is started it interrogates a microchip in the ignition key. If the key matches, the car starts. If the key is not recognized then the driver will experience what I did.

$30 immobilizer transceiver located at the ignition key had failed and would not communicate with the microchip in my ignition key. That is the ring around the ignition key lock in the second photo.

Now the reason that "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain" came to me is because in the 12 years and 96,000 miles that I have driven this car, not once did I need this immobilizer transceiver to do its job. The only time it seemed to work was when it failed to do its job.