Modern Vespa

I'm troubleshooting a problem for my parents- unfortunately, I'm about 600 miles from the bikes. (The bikes are also about 600 miles away from the nearest dealer, which makes this a rather tedious situation.)

Both bikes are 2002 ET4s.

Background: My mom's bike was running pretty badly at the top of the RPM range earlier this summer. My initial thought was garbage in the carb, but now I wonder if it was the auto-choke stuck on. Anyways, she quit riding that bike, and moved onto my Dad's ET4.

Now my Dad's ET4 isn't running at all. My mom gets back on her bike, but that one won't start either. They didn't see spark, so they swapped a coil out, same result.

I sent them copies of the manuals from the tech repository here, and my dad now notices that the immobiliser light on both bikes is giving the same pattern- .7s, off, 3 .5s blinks, off, steady on.
The manual says that the Imobiliser is programmed, the transponder is not recognized, and ignition is not possible.


This is happening on both bikes, regardless of which keys are used. (They have both blue and both red keys.)

Is there any common thing to look at that would cause something like this to happen? The Red keys haven't seen general use, so it's unlikely that even if my mom was has an EMP-generating device in her purse that nuked both blue keys, the master keys should be fine.

The battery in my mom's bike was good earlier this summer- and the battery in my Dad's bike is 2 months old, with a good charge provided by a battery tender. (2A).

My dad swears that the Immobiliser (or CDI) hasn't been swapped between bikes.

If the Immobiliser/CDI combo weren't so expensive, I'd try replacing one of them, but that's an awfully expensive proposition for a theoretical fix- and since both went bad nearly simultaneously, I'd hate to have a bigger issue that needs to be fixed first.


Any good steps to start with? Given the remoteness of the bikes, it may be worthwhile to remove the CDI/Immob and ship that out to the shop here, and see if they can fit those to a bike for testing. That's the best thing I can think of that doesn't involve hauling a pair of bikes 1200 miles round trip. (But I'm hoping you guys have better ideas.

Alarm bells... first post and immobilisers??? f

Well, I normally frequent the boards of the "not modern vespa" boards variety. I've done as much homework as I could before coming here- I figured you guys might be a bit more help than my normal circles.


Anything newer than my P, I'm pretty much useless on. And I'm mostly a crap mechanic on everything older than that too, but at least I've got the Haynes to give those a go.

[ background: I've had VNB for about 10 years now. A P for about 8. My mom really liked my bikes and wanted a scooter. Because she was so far away, I was reluctant to suggest a vintage bike, as I couldn't wrench on hers. In 2002 a local "Vespa Boutique" opened up, and my dad ordered a pair of ET4s, and I trailered them out to my parents. The bikes have been mostly trouble free for the past 6 years, and they've gotten serviced at the Honda Dealership in their town. (Cleaning a carb, and snipping out the evaporative filter on one of the bikes. This filter was causing problems once the shop accidentally knocked over my mom's bike- both filling the filter with gas (and making it useless!) and cracking the full-height windscreen fitted on the bike.)

So, I'm not a regular on Modern Vespa because I don't interact much with modern vespas. My mom and dad aren't regulars on Modern Vespa because they're ok with email, but don't tend to frequent bulletin boards. Basic problems we've dealt with in the past, but now I'm hoping to get help of a more complex nature, and this looks to be a good place to start. I swear these things didn't "fall off the back of a truck". But I still can't figure out how the heck we've got two bad bikes or 4 bad keys. ]

Not everyone is a scooter thief! I'll vouch for Nate and his parents non-starting ET4s.

Check out this excellent post
https://modernvespa.com/forum/topic36894#498097 Since they've tried both red and blue keys there's nothing you can do at home. It's not a loose antenna, the easy fix. I think only a dealer and new black box can fix it. Jimh would probably know if there's any other options.

Regards
Harvey

That's what I'm afraid of- but how two bikes show the same symptoms across 4 keys over the course of two months (I rode them both in early August!) is amazing.

I've read about swapping chips between keys- prying the key open and removing the chip and transplanting it to a new key. I realize this isn't going to remedy the situation, but a key with no chip would at least let me verify that the transponder flashes change appropriately. How difficult is it to remove the chip inside these keys, and not break anything?


They've owned the bikes for 6 years now, so it's not like my folks don't know what the heck they're doing for daily operation. They must have just gotten more creative in their ability to break a bike.