Hack Your Car 838
gurps_npc writes "The New York Times has this story about hacking your car's chip. You can get significant horse power and torque boosts (+18 horsepower and +70 foot pounds of torque in the given example), as well as improve (or decrease) fuel efficency. The car companies do not like (surprise surprise) people personalizing their vehicle's programming and warn of burning out your engine with bad code, and voiding your warranty."
I dont think I would hack my car (Score:4, Insightful)
But on the other hand, if I make a mistake with a car I could hurt or kill myself.
I think I will just leave them alone and keep hacking my Xbox and Tivo, I cant die if I screw up my Tivo.
Overclocking... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why why why (Score:2, Insightful)
The same goes for Microsoft and their crappy console, and the thousands of other companies that blatantly spit on their best customers.
Quality Control of hacked code? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a hacked code being anywhere near as reliable. Even if it makes the changes you want, your car might end up stalling as often as windows crashes.
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
But if it wasn't for the smoke... (Score:5, Insightful)
"But if it wasn't for the smoke, I'd be happy with it," is I think the exact reason why car makers are underclocking the potential power of cars. This could be an enviromental problem waiting to happen if this catches on.
Re:Overclocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
No different than overclocking and many people have been very successful doing this...
Because we all know an internal combustion engine, with hundreds of moving parts, metals with critical temperature points, etc, is exactly like a CPU.
Re:Why why why (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a question of responsibility. If you do tests in a controlled environment and with crash dummies, there is very little chance of hurting someone versus if you openly encourage every Joe Blow to mod his car...
And the impact on the environment? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, these high performance mods probably turn the car into serious emitter of nasty gases.
On the other hand, the added stress probably shortens the lifespan of the engine and gets the car off the road that much sooner.
It works at first... then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The device blocks the upstream communciations frequencies so your box can't call home, but allow the broadcast frequencies to pass through so you still get watchable signals. However, after a few months, the party's over. The cable company sends down a signal cutting off your service, and tells you you'll have to let the digital box call home before you can watch anything again. Guess what, the box has been keeping count all along. So you pay full price for everything you thought was free, and you're out the money you spent on a worthless device...
If somebody's selling an unathorized upgrade without being willing to stand behind their product, you better watch out. Something's not right with the deal.
Re:Overclocking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry to be so unclear, but the analogy still stands. It's not everyone that is only specialized in one particular field and doesn't have a clue about anything else...
Re:Why why why (Score:5, Insightful)
Hackers aren't engineers. Get that through your head. The auto company learns NOTHING it didn't already know when people reprogram engine computers.
Hacking cars does not make you a better customer, it just makes you a hacker. They have your money either way, but from their point of view they are likely to get dinged with warranty repair costs they don't deserve when somebody hacks. And the truth of the matter is, they're right.
Same as overclocking. You think it doesn't cost Intel and AMD money? I guarantee you it does. People break their CPUs overclocking and abuse warranties to get them replaced all the time.
Re:Overclocking... (Score:3, Insightful)
--RJ
Re:Overclocking... (Score:1, Insightful)
My father-in-law used to do pretty good business taking out the electronic crap in new cars and replacing it with normal stuff; you don't need any of it, unless you have a engine that was never designed to be normally aspirated, in which case never mind.
But if you have a decent sized engine, throw on a dual-point distributor, a high-rise intake manifold and a holly 6-pack; you not only will pass emission control tests, but you'll get all the horsepower and torque you are supposed to get.
You do have to manually adjust it every month or so, but it's easier than compiling.
Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why why why (Score:3, Insightful)
I would think the Microsoft analogy is flawed, simply because if something goes wrong with the console, you just lose your $200 (or whatever) piece of hardware.
On the other hand, you mess up with your car and do something stupid, people would have accidents. They could get hurt. And they could die.
And no guesses as to what would happen then - these companies would get sued to kingdom come by some opportunitistic f**ks.
And guess what? There will be a thriving blackmarket industry that will promise all kinds of things, which would result in more problems for the companies.
Hurt + Death + Blackmarket + Increased Responsibility == Bad Bad Idea
They're better off simply not letting you do all this rather than risk the consequences.
On the other hand, there is hardly even a thriving blackmarket area for stuff like hacking consoles (unlike cars, where the duplicate blackpart industry is BIG).
So why Microsoft is not letting you do all this? I have no idea. Probably coz they're a bunch of megalomaniacs.
Re:Chip (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst of scum are the people who run mod chips in their car for several years, put the original back in, then trade the car in at a dealership.
If you do this, you are really screwing someone. Sleep well now, for karma will visit later.
Automotive engineering involves compromises (Score:4, Insightful)
Many compromises are made in designing the control systems, and a mod chip just selects a different set of compromises. Some of these are:
Of these, manufacturing cost (and emissions, if you're environmentally inconsiderate) are they only compromises for which your criteria are likely to be different from those of the manufacturer, and hence the ones where aftermarket modifications might help. I don't see why the particular firmware in the chip would affect manufacturing cost, so it boils down to the other issues.Ignition timing. Advanced ignition timing may result in higher performance, but also may cause pre-ignition (knock) which will damage your engine unless you use premium fuel.
Fuel economy.
Driveability - throttle lag, stumbling, rough idle, run-on, are all issues of concern.
Emissions. High combustion temperatures send NOx emissions through the roof.
Maintenance intervals.
Longevity.
Manufacturing cost.
Re:Why why why (Score:3, Insightful)
"You *told* me I could tweak it, and now my car's dead because I overheated the engine and warped it! It's cost me a week of work, plus the car, plus my suffering having to walk..." being the least of the lawsuit woes.
I'm sure they could care less if you hose your own car by screwing with it - as long as you don't come back to them whining about it and costing them time and money with warranty repairs they otherwise wouldn't have to do. They already did the research for those values - they had to to ship a solidly working car. If I had to solve complex multivariable minimization problems to get my bloody car started after dropping a wad of money for it, I'd buy one from someone else instead!
Cars are not part of what I do for a living or a hobby - I don't want to have to tweak them at every step. I just want it to work. Kinda like non-geeks using a computer....
ECU? What ECU? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why bother with electronics, when you can do something that's time tested and proven -- mechanics. For every advantage electronics give you, there's an associated disadvantage -- Biggest disadvantage? More things can go wrong at any given moment in time, and the older the electronics, the more prone it is to failure and the harder it is to come by replacement parts.
This simple maxim is just as true for stock cars as it is for modded cars. Case in point: My 1983 Nissan 280ZX is fuel injected, so it has an ECU. It has a stalling problem, yet all of the mechanics are fine. The problem is electrical -- most likely related to the ECU, but I'm not going to go pay someone $400 to find it, and then charge me a buttload more to fix it.
With my van, since everything is mechanical, it's easy to find the problem... symptoms are fewer when a problem occurs... There's not too much guesswork in diagnosing it.
Want to upgrade? Easy as pie. New cam, intake, exhaust system and a good quality carb. My choice? Edelbrock. Everything's designed to match, so the guesswork's been taken care of.
Top that with an ECU upgrade that you'll pay just as much for as I did for the entire mechanical upgrade, and I'll guarantee you I have a buttload more HP per dollar spent.
And I also guarantee I'll win in any tug of war against your Honda Civic.... Replacement bumpers anyone?
-Phyre
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act (Score:3, Insightful)
65 or 70 mph depending on the state. If you're not going the speed limit by the time you get on the freeway either the on-ramp was very poorly designed or you're a very bad driver.
Hacking cars is OK (Score:3, Insightful)
- It would take too much time to learn and do
- It needs expensive, specialised tools
- It needs more skills/tools than I have just now
- It's a horrible job
As for the original article, that's old news. Enhanced chips and programmable chips have been available for years. The good ones do more than extend the fuel map past the programmed maximum, it's really important that they take into account stuff like the EFI's fuel delivery capacity, many, many chipped cars have been ruined because a badly programmed chip leaves the top end too lean. Buy any magazine about high performance 4 cylinder cars.
Xix.
Xix.
Or, this can IMPROVE your car (Score:5, Insightful)
You pulled that "100 hp" out of the air: nowhere in the article is such a claim made.
However, significant gains can be made in some areas without running afoul of your first failure mode. If you are willing to commit to always using high-octane fuel, for example, then you can safely derive significant benefit by changing the ignition advance settings in the ROM maps.
Other useful features can be added to your ECU as well. Consider the products from TechnoMotive [tmo.com]. You can add security so that the engine will only start if you tap a secret code on the gas pedal. You can make instrumentation display many different data -- helping you prevent the types of failures you mention. You can even have bugs from the manufacturer fixed:
ObDisclaimer: not associated with TMO in any way, but have heard great things from their customers.
Re:Tree huggers... (Score:2, Insightful)
i'd consider a vehicle which can perform incredibly impressive physical feats to be just as awesome as a supercomputer.
When was the last time that you ran from 0-60mph in 5 seconds?
Using a supercomputer for word processing is kinda boring. Maybe you should stop using your car just to get from point A to point B
Re:hackable eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) Annoying other law-abiding motorists:
As opposed to the 65-hp Honda Civics than can't get the fuck out of their own way and have the "super-kewl" fart-cans to make them SOUND fast? Just because I *have* 350hp in my car, or 175hp in my bike, doesn't mean I taunt other motorists.
2.) Breaking the law
Right. And ONLY high-horsepower car owners break the law? Again, I know plenty of Buick Park Avenues that can break the law. Run a stop sign, speed in a residential, etc.
3.) Killing pedestrians.
Seriously, this merits a big "Oh, fucking bullshit." I can kill pedestrians with a Dodge Neon just as easily as a Dodge Viper. Your argument is like equating birth control with abortion.
4.) Impressing young boys
Actually, 350hp or more is for MY enjoyment. I enjoy running against other people with high-performance vehicles on the track on Sundays, or in race events against equivalent drivers and vehicles. What the fuck is the point of smoking little Johnny in his Mommy's Beretta? Oh yeah - none.
Your attitudes are ignorant, dangerous, and in most cases, completely wrong.
In the same vein, I'd challenge:
The ONLY uses for Overclocked computers and Linux are:
1.) Annoying Microsoft and SCO - obviously, they are making good products, and any attempts to mess with them are wrong. And making your computer faster than the advertised chip you bought is stealing - if you wanted a 2GHz processor, you should have PAID for one!
2.) Breaking the law: Linux is 'open-source', and SCO and Microsoft both oppose them. Why would you need anything other than what Microsoft gives you?
3.) Killing capitalism: Without the valuable R&D that proprietary software companies do, there would be no innovation and no advancement in the software industry.
4.) Impressing young boys: D3wd, my b0x is s0 lee7! C43ck 17 0u7!! 1 700k a Athl0n1200 and pushed it to 2200! Totally teh sw337!
In other words, sir.... Feh to you and your ignorance. Don't condescend to my hobbies.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act (Score:3, Insightful)
im 6'2" and i appreciate the room i get in a full sized american car. i also like being able to take 5 ppl or so with me. maybe i dont want to drive around in a 800lb piece of tin with 1 carburetor per cylinder(sure, sure, theyre efi now, its a joke). ill give credit where its due, f1 racing is WAY better than nascar or indy. roundy round just seems boring. also, european cars have their place, just like american cars do. id love to own an m5, for instance. i dont think a comparable car exists factory in the US.
concerning US motorsports:
so autocrossing, rally, and trans am dont exist in the US? talk about ignorant. also, ever heard of the viper? yeah, the one that kicks a lot of tail in germany for a lot less $$?
okay, how about early 90's eagle talons with awd turbo motors that can see 13's stock and still outcorner your aston for thousands less?
to each his own, have you ever driven in a 2600lb car with 500hp? i have nothing against european cars, but you wanted to troll... drive the car you want the way you want, but dont talk trash about my choices in the matter.
What's needed is a hack for the Body Computer (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the real fix necessary!
the block is a chunk of metal. (Score:3, Insightful)
There were no similarities between the engine parts aside from the block. The pistons, connectors, cylinder heads etc. are all substantially beefed up and radically different in the F1 engine, obviously.
Similarly, in NHRA racing, they use big block engines that probably ran 200 hp in their stock version, but are quite capable of running multi-thousand in NHRA.
And
Re:I dont think I would hack my car (Score:2, Insightful)
Car work takes the same type of thought process as computer troubleshooting and work. You must be VERY diligent in your work, must think EVERYTHING through before you begin, and most of all, have confidence in your abilities. Some things a novice cannot do, for lack of proper tools and work environment (i.e. strut replacement, if you don't have a good breaker bar, torque wrench, and maybe an impact wrench to make the job easier, along with a bench & vise to hold it), but there are many many things anyone can do with enough determination (spark plug replacement, air & fuel filter replacement, etc.)
You find as you do more and more car work, that you buy more and more tools to enable you to do more sophisticated work. Think of these tools as an investment--you buy the tools once, but you usually recover the cost several times over as you do more and more work, since you are essentially saving yourself the money you'd normally pay a mechanic as labor.
Emissions Tests (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act (Score:4, Insightful)
We Americans might have some other reasons to have and do what we do that the EU and Asian Types don't think about. While I am not personally a fan of the extremely big cars, you might just take note that we don't live in Europe or Asia.
When my wife who is from the Philippines was processing her papers to come here, I told her to get some training in driving a car. She said, "No I will just walk to the store and where I want to go." I countered, it is 8 km from my house to the nearest substantial store, you need to learn to drive. I do not live in the West USA, I live in a fairly populated area of the East in Madison County Alabama.
We Americans are likely to have to use our vehicles to haul furniture, and large items that EU types and East Asians are likely to have delivery services for. We are also likely to live where travel in the order of 150 km on a daily trip is not uncommon. (Yes I do know the Miles to Km conversions) I am also 1.88 m tall. I do not fit well in one of those little tin can cars that the world thinks I should use. I do own a large Nissan Quest Minivan. It is much more pleasant than my Honda Civic which is my other car. The economy in gasoline usage is about 22mpg city and 30 mpg Highway on the Nissan and about 32 mpg Honda Civic and about 40 mpg highway. My work is about to have to make me take a Transcontinental Trip. At my Size and carrying some luggage etc I need a larger vehicle.
I don't here too much about EU types having to travel say 3,000 km in 3 day with a wife 2 kids and luggage on board. I also don't hear about you buying plywood and lumber for building onto your property very often.
There is another point that the EU types and the East Asians miss when they start dumping on NASCAR and Monster Trucks and Drag Racing etc. (I am not a racing fan) Very nearly every innovation in efficiency or safety in Automotive Transportation has arisin from such types as the NASCAR Racers. It is their "Tweeking" that has brought about the new technology. These are the Tech Scientists on the Cutting Edge who brought about the prosperity of modern society. Resenting them is just plain IGNORANT.
EU Types also live in a world with streets built for horse and donkey tech. Their major cities do have some modern streets but London, Paris and many others are mostly narrow streets incapacitated for modern transport. The USA on the other hand was generally built to handle this. The comparison of our world and your world is simply not to understand that they are as alien as seperate planets. The reason we have brought the world cars, aircraft, farm tractors, and a lot more is because we don't think like the EU types. We don't live like you do and this is not to say that you are wrong for your world. It simply is to say that you are wrong about our world.
Our weather is quite different from yours. The comments about Airconditioning is a good example. I live in Alabama. Our weather finds that in the Spring, Summer and Fall I am subject to having the temperature in my car reach 80 Deg C in the mid day. Opening the windows finds the exterior temperature reaching between 35 and 40 Deg C. The Relative Humidity is often 95% or higher. This just doesn't happen even in southern Europe. You may get as hot but for the most part your Heat Index is much less. Also at your Humidity conditions a wet cloth cools you adequately. Here it just gets you sticky and hotter. In the winter I am subject to having my windows fog up not from temperature but from Humidity conditions and Air Conditioning is a Safety tool then! These conditions are not solved by opening windows.
Our conditions are vastly different here on so many issues that you simply don't know what is going on. While I know persons who love NASCAR and it is most definitely a very popular sport in Alabama (Number 1 or 2) it is hardly the "Obsession" that you think.
Being from Alabama I think you simply don't have a clue as to what is going on either. This isn't some Hick sport of the ignorant t
Some facts (Score:3, Insightful)
Some other pieces of helpful info: Chips frequently give you better gas milage and I've never heard of anyone (in the VW world) failing an emmission test because of it.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act (Score:2, Insightful)
That's rather strange, since I'm 190cm tall and I owned a Metro, which was plenty big enough for me. In fact, a '95+ Metro/Swift (now Aveo/Swift) has more legroom in the front and back than a '94 Cavalier. These cars look tiny from the outside, but there's some rather impressive engineering at work to gain a lot of space.
I have lived in Europe (Eastern Europe to be exact) and people do haul stuff around like you wouldn't believe! I've seen everything from bricks to cow shit (for fertelizer) moved in the trunk (which was often times in the front on many rear engined models) I've taken vacations spanning thousands of kilometers with a family of four. I've seen my grandfather hauling a trailer of fruits and veggies to the market with his 1968, 49HP Skoda 1000MB. Not to mention that the roads in Eastern Europe at this time were way worse than anything here, yet the little cars got the job done. It's all American perception that you need an SUV to go over a speed bump.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act (Score:2, Insightful)