Simple, CAN bus messages have priorities. the highest priority message will always take center stage..... regardless of the ECU fitted. if the CAN bus messages are saying "shut engine down, disengage clutch, enable ABS locking, disable fuel pump,etc etc etc" then even with a swapped ECU the end result will be the same . . . . a shut down engine and locked breaks as all modules are listening to the CAN bus.
But thats a CAN based immobilizer . . . the traditional immobilizer uses one or more "cuts" to disable various functions that enable starting the motor. such as starter motor/fuel lift pump/electronic main fuel pump/ignition supply/starter relay etc etc etc. If you had this fitted then the only way around it is to spend time removing panels and tracing wires to override this type of immobilizer.
The advantage of the Ghost is that there are no wires to follow to find cuts, its tiny and can be hidden anywhere, its just not worth the time involved to override it.
agreed these measures will only slow down a determined thief, and they easiest way would be to just lift the van..... But if you want to make it difficult for them then this is what you have to do.
As Loz says, so far im not aware of a BLACK BOX OBD2 hack for this van.... Or even a ECU swap yet as you need to swap multiple encrypted modules . . . . There is no Key-less entry (relay attack) to worry about, and thankfully we have an actual Key and steering wheel lock... which is all great.
so all the above measures is just for a bit of piece of mind and hopefully will make the scumbags think again and just move on to some other poor sods motor .
To be fair, I'd been using mine wrong for about 3 years before I picked this up in a review I read lol
