I have my brother's 97 Camaro Z28 for the week, and he has thrashed it a bit. His buddy definitely helped him too much in a drunken rage. One of his obvious faults is that the yellow "security" light above the "unleaded gas only" is always on. He has stock everything on the car. His VATS keys start the car normally, and his keyless entry still works. When I start the car, the security light is on, and it doesn't turn off. It has been this way for a couple of months, but it has never hesitated to start. The security light is always on, but there is never any problem related to it. Got any quick fixes (I don't have a scanner to program the VATS out, and I don't want to).

 

There are a multitude of posts about VATS in the General Tech forum. The VATS is in "fault enable mode". The most likely reason is that the key pellet cannot be read. The key cylinder and/or it's wiring are the most likely suspects. If you want it to function again, replacement is probably in your future.

 

I went through this in the not too distant pass.

My understanding is this:

The key was read and the car started. Then at some point the key could no longer be read so the light came on. The car continued to start because it was in "fauly enable mode" since it remembered reading the key previously.

However, my understanding is that if the battery is disconnected, the VATS will "forget" about that and if it can't read the key, it won't start the car.

The solution is to test the key cylinder against the key itself with a DMM. That will tell you if the cylinder is bad. If it is, then you have to buy a new one. For the short-term, I would bypass it if it's bad with a resistor in the wiring, an then once you get the new one, you should be good to go.