GEMSTONE - THE GEMS IMMOBILIZER ISSUE REVISITED ONCE AGAIN (2015)
by Lorne Goldman

I woke up to a flurry of email inquiries this morning. The almost two decades old GEMS immobilizer problem reared its weary head once again on one of the Morgan forums. Sadly, the information imparted was apparently hard for many to understand and extremely dated. Most importanty, the world keeps finding new solutions for everything and Morgan GEMS is no different!,

The issue is a simple and a familar one. The GEMs immobilizer is known to regularly lose its communicative synchronization with the Body Control Module. In layman's language, the ignition key and the car lose their connection. So when this occurs, the vehicle engine will not start. There has been no permanent "fix" found, but it can be quickly cured by an immobilizer reset. This is not the tedius task it was many years ago but today's Morgan forums do not keep up on these things as they once did and bad information quickly goes viral, costing scores of owners unnecessary thousands and much frustration. :(

First and foremost, there is no longer a need for a GEMS Morgan owner to spend £1000 (as a Morgan Forum recently suggested) on software devices like Testbook (originally $30,000USD!!) or the later simular devices like Rovacom or Faultmate, etc. I fiddle with the bespoke Morgan Dealer Diagnostic and Programming Unit> All these items are fun to work with for those of us who enjoy such things and it enables us to help others but don't bother with them if you are looking for a cheap simple, far less cumbersome solution to this immobilizer issue. You only need a quick reset solution.

A generic OBDII cannot do that but............

That quick reset can be done instantly with a newer thingie developed in the USA called the GEMstone Tool. The device resets the GEMS defaults and the immobilizer. It is very reasonably priced at £135. They are also being sold by retailers on ebay.co.uk for a bit higher. It takes no space so simply leave it in your glove box for the times you need it. It has no learning curve. Please don't waste a £1000 as recently recommended on the (shiver) TalkMorgan forum. They mean well but there is little reliable expertise and a lot of bad advice.

GEMS uses more than three times the sensors and inputs than the earlier Hotwire system. Many are very sensitive. There is very little that can be done with a generic OBDII reader. To manage GEMS, Landrover developed a notebook computer at the outset which they referred to as TestBook. It can be connected to the main diagnostic plug. These units were sold to LR dealers for 30K originally. Landrover was not too keen to sell it to consumers and the vital software was largely kept between their dealers.

  But this situation soon began to change. A company called Automotive Logic Technology, run by former Land Rover executives, developed it's own software   and diagnostic tool (picture below), called Rovacom. This was designed for the professional aftermarket and sold in the $5000 range in the later 1990s

In 2001-2004 Morgan itself sold their dealers their own diagnostic and security system unit for Classic Morgans. It could read Rover Hotwire and the Fords and reset the security systems. However, it could not go as far with GEMS as the Rovacom unit.

In the mid-2000s, a Testbook/Rovacom unit was finally made for the amateur garagiste. (GEMS ceased being a current operating systems for Land Rover in 2002 and in 2004 for Morgan). It was called Rovacom Lite  and it could be installed and used with domestic laptops. It was purchased with either all-vehicle or specific vehicle modules. The price dropped to $800.00

At the end of the 2000s, Rovacom Lite was dropped and a new product, from Blackbox Solutions, called Faultmate, became available. One bought a Faultmate base unit with the Morgan GEMS Plus 8 module for it. The Faultmate FCR was designed and manufactured specifically for Reading and Clearing all possible Fault Codes. Designed as a personal use item for individual vehicle owners, the Faultmate FCR will lock itself to the VIN of the first vehicle it is used on, however, this feature also acts as a theft deterrent, because there is little point anyone stealing the unit, as once used on a vehicle, as it wiill not work with any other vehicle. (It is important to provide this information to the thief before he steals it!!!) Each Kit came complete with a FCR Unit, an OBD/Interface Lead, a USB Cable and User Guide - everything you need to start Reading and Clearing your Fault Codes. There was another similar system sold, but eventually these gadgets go the way of all flesh (aka they are only available on ebay now at muchly reduced prices).

But by 2009 you could also get by with even less and at a much lower cost. Sadly, as the mainstream cars that have the system disappear, so do the fixes.  

IMMOBILIZER May 2023.

Here is my Chrome translation