I've taken my time to help you poor misguided souls with the deadly VATS. This either ought to be a sticky or a tech article.

HERE IT IS

 

Wow, I could have used that a couple days ago!!! Great article, good luck getting the resistance values past the powers that be.

MILT

 

vats resistor values are not a secret. check with your local car alarm shop, some employees probably have the values memorized because of numerous remote start installs.

is a ~5 minute timeout after trying an incorrect resistor value, so it would be impractical for a theif to try to guess the proper resistor value. i.e. try first resistor value, wait 5 minutes, try next resistor value, wait 5 minutes, try next, etc.

after all that work of guessing resistor values, the car still may not start if an aftermarket alarm or kill switch has been installed.

 

Based on your earlier advice, I measured the resistance of the key. Mine was exactly 1.87k ohms. Instead of getting another pigtail connector, I simply disconnected the wiring going up into the steering column, then skinned some insulation away from the two wires going to the VATS module and soldered a 1.75k resistor across the two wires.

I realize that there is a 120 ohm difference between the two values, but that was the closest I could come, and it now runs great. If it ever does mess up, then there will be no doubt about what componene is messed up.


Again thanks !!!

 

as a thought, it would be helpful to many individuals to put some info on ohms law & resistor color codes onto the vats page.

 

There are 4 color bands on most resistors.
Bands one and two, (nearest the end) are the first two digits of a resistor, and the third one is a "multiplier"

Color Digit Multiplier

Black 0 X1
Brown 1 x10
Red 2 x100
Orange 3 x1,000 or "K"
Yellow 4 x10,000 or "10k"
Green 5 x100,000
Blue 6 x1,000,000 (million, but commonly called "meg")
Violet 7 x10,000,000
Gray 8 x100,000,000
White 9 x1,000,000,000

Band 4 is the tolerance: Red is 2%, Gold is 5%, Silver is 10% and no the band means plus or minus 20%.

Finally, the color of the body, with brown or blue, tells us what type of resistor it is. Brown is a wirewound resistor, and blue is a metal film resistor.


Examples:
Red, yellow, brown, gold would be 2, 4 and times 10, or 240 ohms, with 5% tolerance.
Green, white. orange, silver would be 5, 9, and times 1000, which is 59, 000 ohms, with 10% tolerance. If you ask for a "59,000 ohm resistor" however, they would immediately know that you are a beginner. If you ask for a "59k resistor", they will then ask you "What wattage?"

Resistor size is another matter altogether. When in doubt about size, just ask for a 1/2 watt.


It's pretty simple once you know how.

 

You're going to find a lot of people get very whiny very quick about the VATS values. I ran into that when I was trying to "hot wire" my own car that the key had been stolen from. Not a single person was willing to give me the values so I could try them one at a time.

It doesn't matter to these people that professional thieves already know all the values, or, more likely, have a tool to get around it; nor does it matter to them that the average street punk who is looking for a joy ride probably couldn't measure a resistor to save their life. All that matters is you're releasing information that might someday allow someone somewhere to steal somebody's car. Because of this attitude, I finally ended up simply purchasing a new VATS box. GMTech offered to scan my VATS box and tell me what the "key number" was, but even he wouldn't give me the resistor values.

I'm not goign to say any more, I ruffled a LOT of feathers the last time I posted my mind on this.

"When VATS values are outlawed, only outlaws will have VATS values."

 

Then call me an outlaw! It takes more than resistor values to steal a camaro. Think of the steering wheel lock. Well, I guess it depends on the approach. If anyone were wanting to steal a 3rd gen camaro, all they had to do was hang around this board. It will tell you everything about the security system.

 

The easiest way arround VATS is to take off the side kick pannel on the drivers side floor and find the relay, take the cover off the relay wrap a twisty tie arround the entire thing, a plate of metal and a "magnent" which is pulled togather when the car is started. This basicly over rides the system so you can start your car when you are in the middle of a cemertary when a precession comes up behind you, and you gotta move, instead i just pushed the darn thing out of the way cause i dident know that. Instead for three months while the garage tried to figure out the system I started the car by poping the hood and useing the wire i branched off the battery and hittin the starter with it. By the way the car still has the dumb twisty tie on it.

 

two parts to vats, fuel disable & starter disable.

sounds like you've figured out how to get around one part, the starter disable. but unless you get fuel flowing through the injectors, the car is going to be very difficult to drive.

 

true very true... id imigine that there is a relay for that too

 

No there is not. It has a VATS module that puts out a "pulsed frequancy" code to the ECM to fire the injectors when the correct value key is in. No way to duplicate that.

 

Are you sure? I mean, I've not tried it myself, but check out this post:

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=100662

 

Jza, I guess I should re-phrase "no way to duplicate that". There always IS a way but I don't think 80% of the board understand what that guy was saying, let alone copy it. Hell I'll bet 1/2 of the members don't even know what a 555 timer is.

 

a good percentage of people on this board don't appear to know what an ohmmeter is either.

 

an interesting point. gm integrated vats into the caprice/impala ss ecm during the last couple years of production. rather than design a seperate ecm for 9c1 police cars, they put a replacement vats box under the dash. since police cars were not equipped with vats, the box transmitted the fuel enable signal without reading the resistor pellet on the key.

not sure on the gm part number for the vats bypass box, nor do i know if gm will still sell you one.

 

I agree that all VATS info should be freely exchanged among members. If someone wants your car, they will get it (I'm sure most of us have read the "how to steal a 3rdgen" article). If you are paranoid, install your own security device. Most of the info is of great (legitimate) use to the people who ask for it. Moderators should think of it this way: you post the above article as a tech article, and it will cut down on the dozens of identical VATS posts that get posted.

MILT