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Cars for Tinkerers?
Lots of interesting things on the automotive front. First off, jotap starts us off with this question: "The 'smart' with its auto/semi-auto sequential gearbox, traction control, electronic managed turbo engine, electronic accelerator and clutch control, G force sensors, and more. Some companies sell chips to upgrade the engine power and change the (slow) original gear shifting timings. It would be nice to have a custom control panel on board and change the settings with a click. I think there's no other car with a better price/technology/size ratio then the 'smart', or is there?" The more modifiable they are, the better!
While we are on the subject, let me relate some of the other interesting car news that happened to be lying in the bin. io333 notes: "These direct quotes from this CNN article are self explanatory:
You may not know it, but there's an interesting relationship between VisiCalc and cars! index72 explains: "Ever wonder what happened to Bob Frankston, the inventor of VisiCalc? Ever the computer pioneer, he proposes the creation of a generic programming interface for automobile data displays."
So it sounds like car enthusiasts and tinkerers might be in for some interesting times in the upcoming months. If you guys do manage to come up with something cool, please do share some pictures?
'Since 1996, all new cars sold in the United States have been required to have an emissions-control system called OBD-II...'There are two versions and they really don't cost very much. Unfortunately my car is one of the few listed that this won't work with, but I thought some of you might find it useful." ThatTallGuy sent in the Business 2.0 version of the story, which you can read here.
'...One company, Davis Instruments, has a new device that probes and records what our OBD systems see, and is trying to find a broad market for it....'
'...Called the CarChip, the product is a small recording plug (about the size of a 9-volt battery) that you attach to your car's OBD-II port, which is usually hidden under the dash but easily reachable from the driver's seat. Once installed, the plug records and time-stamps a selection of OBD data (speed, braking events, coolant temperature, and several other, more technical data points) every five seconds. When you remove the CarChip and plug it into your PC, you can download the information and see graphs of what your car's been doing.'
You may not know it, but there's an interesting relationship between VisiCalc and cars! index72 explains: "Ever wonder what happened to Bob Frankston, the inventor of VisiCalc? Ever the computer pioneer, he proposes the creation of a generic programming interface for automobile data displays."
So it sounds like car enthusiasts and tinkerers might be in for some interesting times in the upcoming months. If you guys do manage to come up with something cool, please do share some pictures?
I thought most car electronics used proprietary systems that can't easily be tinkered with - thus mechanics have to fork over big money to get the necessary diagnostic equipment.
David.
If you can't afford to modify a real car, you can always play with these.
Unless you enjoy buying new parts alot. You need far more testing equipment than you probably have at the moment.
;)
I prefer a car that works myself
I have to say... there's quite a few of these cars around here (Switzerland), they're the ugliest cars I've ever seen. And I wouldn't want to get driven into by another car while driving one of these... there wouldn't even be pancakes left of the occupier. Might as well drive in a papier maché car...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Caterham Super Seven. Available in KIT form. The Superlight R500 version has the highest power/weight ratio of any street car and is the fastest 0-100-0 MPH (11.44 secs) road car in the world.
The Classic version is the car driven by Patrick McGoohan in the opening sequence of the TV series "The Prisoner"
In production for 40 years and kicking every day.
http://www.caterham.co.uk/news/index.htm
Cars have had radios (of some sort) standard for a VERY long time; and they were an option for a while before that. Yet there is no standard stereo. There is a standard SIZE (I think) but I can't just pull mine out and slide a new one in. To start, I have no idea how to get to my stereo. I'd have to take off my dash (I assume) and get to a ton of screws. (I have a 2k Honda Oddessey). I found this out while trying to find out how to plug something into my car stereo. I wanted to plug in my iPod through a standard dual RCA stereo cable, but I can't do that without buying an aftermarket stereo. And if I did that, chances are the volume thing on my steering wheel wouldn't work.
It seems to me that untill I can just swapout the stereo on my car like swapping the harddrive on my laptop (just one screw), wanting to have any controll over the chips in your car easily is a LOT to ask.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
It's not pretty, but there are some ugly things elsewhere. The Aztec (Pontiac I think?), Honda's new Element (it's a square boxy delivery van looking thing), and many others. Where has all the taste gone? My other complaint on car looks is "What's with Mercades?" They have nice cars, but on alot of them they have HUGE emblems on the front that are just hideous. Otherwise, they are nice.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Car manufacurers get inspiration from the stranget places...
They ran out of money for the Aztec 3/4 of the way back :) :D
Honda's Element grew from the same intent as Pontiac, but they had enough money and sense to finish the tail end and install rubber floor-mats. Because Honda builds appliances, they succeeded where Pontiac didn't.
Just jokin around
Does anyone remember when Billy G criticised the automotive industry, saying that if it had progressed at the same rate as computers, it would cost $0.02 of petrol to travel 100 miles, and so on and so forth ...
... hey! I can't stop! Aargh!"
One senior official from GM replied that this would be true, but also mentioned that
(a) you would need to upgrade your car every year to continue using the roads
(b) depending on which brand of car you have, you would be limited to certain roads
(c) you car would crash once a day (we're talking windows)
Anyway, back on topic, this got me thinking - the automotive industry is heading down the software path and there are some potential pitfalls they'd want to watch out for.
DON'T let them use Windows CE or WinXP embedded edition. NEVER. I don't want my car to have a software crash, causing the fuel injection, braking, etc to fail. I also don't want my car to have exploits so that any cracker could pop the hood while I'm shopping and 'fine-tune' my car's settings.
Also, just like BIOS tweaking, some things can be taken too far. "Dude, if turn down the brack coolant valve, I can get more petrol throughput and go faster
They are gonna need to do a huge amount of QA here. (I wonder who would legally be at fault if the car's software fucked up? the vendor or the car's maker?) This may well be a great opportunity for knowledge-based computing and expert systems to demonstrate their value.
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
Cars have required tinkering until the last 20 years or so. While electronic tinkering may be new, mechcanical tinkering has been around as long as cars have.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Wouldn't advise it if your vehicle is still under warranty; its a sure bet you WILL void your warranty. Screw it up with aftermarket crap and then come back to the dealer and try to get it fixed under warranty; the service manager will politely tell you that you will have to pay for the repairs (then he/she is gonna be laughing about you later with the service advisors and/or mechanics...trust me, I work in a dealership and have seen it happen).
Parts departments love tinkerers who screw things up and then try to fix it themselves. Some serious jack can be made from one know-it-all who keeps messing up one thing after another because his aftermarket chip or part started a chain reaction. It just means a little more money in the gross profit (and for employees a little more money in their pockets each month to pay the bills).
If you really have to tinker...don't buy aftermarket performance parts; buy the manufacturers performance parts. You are assured of quality and a warranty on the part. Plus, some struggling dealership parts clerk will get to pay his/her heat bill this winter.
5000$ this guy's a virgin back there too.
Apart from it's tinkerability the nice thing about the Smart is it's fuelconsumption and innovative approach on individual transport: less is more.
As usual though, this is probaly read by some idiot who thinks his personal freedom and personality are expressed by a huge V 12 sportscar/SUV in his garage.
sigh
Super-7. What the prior posted didn't fully explain, is that in the US, your only option when buying new is to order a kit..it arives from England in a couple of large crates, and you bolt it together yourself.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
... about ways to mod your car for higher efficiency than more power. *G* I mean there's a thriving aftermarket in higher power output accessories... why isn't there one for more efficient accessories?
:P
...."
As long as the car still meets the minimum performance specs for the way I drive, of course.
Of course, a totally modular car would be neat, too. I had a vision of something hybrid based, not the current types of parallel (electric motor boosting a gas engine) hybrid but one that's a series hybrid with swappable components. Say, a generator (using diesel currently, upgradeable as technology progresses) hooked to a temporary energy storage device (your choice of lead-acid, ultracapacitors, gyroscopic battery, or whatever) then to some electrical motors (variable number, say minimum 1 for a RWD vehicle, up to multiple per tire if you're really nutzo and want lots of horses).
Is that too much to ask? Huuuh?
And can't you see the spec discussions?
"I've got a 1 terawatt storage system!"
"Yeah, you don't have enough drive motors to burn that energy, though"
"Well, my next upgrade
etc etc
"supercar"-class paddle-shifting or maybe tiptronic-style, but i'll stick with 3 pedals thankyouverymuch.
The communications are usually done using an SAE standard (don't know the number).
As for why you aren't allowed to tinker? SAFETY! Modern cars with faulty electronics are hazardous not only to the driver, but all that happen to be in the vicinity of such a vehicle.
What you do is connect the tester to the diagnostics pin of the ECU, turn on the ignition, press the button for three seconds then let it blink out the fault codes on the ECU. For example, on my old Citroen, for the suspension ECU, connect up, press button and "1 2" - start fault codes, press again "2 4" - suspension control valve continuity, press again "1 1" - no more stored codes. Press and hold button for 15 seconds to clear. The codes are readily available from garages.
Newer, "multiplexed" electrickery is much more difficult.
The smart does not have a 'electronic managed turbo engine'. The 'pulse' and 'passion' models do have a electronically managed waste gate while the waste gate in the 'pure' model is only mechanically controlled. The original gear shifting timings are not slow but the same as the average human can achieve (0.8s). The software cannot change anything here but the new models have a more powerful actuator and achieve 0.4s. :)
Also the more power one can get with a chip tuning comes with a high price. The guarantee is gone most of the times and the motor is more likely to blow up. This is a 599cm three cylinder motor after all which has 45/55hp originally and up to 80hp and more with chip tuning.
Yes, I do own one of those fuel powered roller-skates myself
While you can monitor your car pretty easy with devices to read things like the OBD, but actually changing how it works is pretty difficult. The car companies have some obligation to the EPA (in terms of making sure their cars are (somewhat) clean, and keeping them that way, by making it difficult for the average joe to twiddle with his ECU like he used to be able to twiddle his carbeurator. From the factories, cars are tuned for the optimum performance/emissions that satisfy the EPA and the marketers, virtually anything you do to improve performance will make emissions worse.
Some carmakers have gone to the extreme to make it difficult to change the ECU maps- Ford's (now obsolete) EEC-IV used a special version of the Intel 8051 (the 8061) and EEPROM that Intel (and their 2nd sources) were *only* authorized to sell to Ford. There were some modifications that could be done to improve performance, but those were a kludge that used a diagnostic port. [I worked as a co-op for Ford in the late 80's]
If you really do want to tinker with your car's engine, look to cars with engines that have been around a very long time- such as the Chevy 350, people have been tuning and playing with the 350 for decades, even as it has gone from carbs to EFI. There is a huge installed base and tinkerers are everywhere.
At the moment, lots of companies are selling aftermarket fuel injection kits for older engines. These things include direct interfaces to laptops where you can tinker to your hearts content. Rebuild the engine to understand the internals or just slap on a new manifold and fuel rail. It really isn't that tough. One of my pals converted his '90 Tahoe to multi-point EFI. More power, more efficiency, and sometime later this week it will be for sale on ebay. He needs a new vehicle to tinker with.
I was recently looking at some homemade PC-based car mp3 players and I stumbled upon this site.
This guy has a PC in his car with data acquisition software/hardware that allows him to gather engine stats in his 300ZX. He can keep records of 1/4 mile runs to see air/fuel ratios, rpms, shift timing, etc, and even adjust them in real time. I guess newer cars with all their sensors and electronics can allow for some pretty cool hacks like this.
i live in southern california, so i see lots of cars being 'tinkered' with all the time. mostly people adding stupid looking kits or custom mufflers to make their civic look cool.
i drive a civic, but jeeze, i don't make any bones about the fact that its a base model, no mods.
anyway...
i was watching a show on new cars and concepts shown at last weeks la auto show. one manufacturer (i can't for the life of me remember who it was, but i believe it was a gm brand) was talking about a modular approach to this specific car they were showing. the rep said that they would sell the basic model and allow you to easily upgrade the car to add various features. so if a kid got the base model and got money for his birthay, he could get the nicer looking dash instruments, or a radio upgrade. it sounded like it would be an easy to do by yourself kind of thing... interesting (though i'm sure not entirely original) idea anyway.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
VW and Audi have a history of catering to the "tinkerer". There was recent news about congress mandating the auto makers to release their computer fault code information (GM in particular was enjoying their monopoly on service). VW and Audi have always released this information to the public. In addition, there is a $200 product from ross-tech.com that allows you complete access to all the onboard computer's functions - absolutely everything that the dealer's diagnostic computers can do. And it's a read-write device, so you can change onboard computer settings too! Couple that with the VW/Audi 1.8T engine which began as a 150 hp model - tuners have bumped this baby up to 350+ hp with just bolt-on components and software changes!! No internal engine modifications whatsoever! Gotta love those wacky Germans for making the best cars on this earth.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Plus there are plenty of other "hard" ways you can "mod" your car (cams, exhaust, sway bars, shocks etc, depending on what you need to improve).
Gotta agree with the Landrover.
Fantastic car to tinker with, in fact it's pretty much mandatory!
If it goes a few months without something strange happening with it then you've not looked at it properly!
I had (and probably still do) a fantastic problem with my series III, the indicators stop working when you pull out the choke!
That sounds fairly sensible until you realise that the choke on mine is not connected to anything electronic, at all! It's not even mounted near anything electronic.
I remember when I'd driven to a local beauty spot, lovely view, about a 600ft hill, with a road running almost the whole drop pretty steeply. I parked, went for a walk. When I came back and turned the key to start there was just a whirring, nothing else. So thought I, just bump start it - no problem, sounds like the starter motor isn't engaging. Now it was a little strange that trying to bump start down this very steep road that when I lifted the clutch, one of the back wheels went backwards, and made skidding noises... and this was with FAT tires too...
Eventually I got a tow home, and when I got there I removed the starter motor housing and the bendix fell out... in half!
Gotta love a repair job like that which takes 5 minutes flat!
Oh, and you'll need a whole new tool kit, Series landrovers use AF spanners, a "standard" all but forgotten...
That and they do 0-60 in about a week, although mine once got over 80... lost my hearing for about an hour, but it got there...
So much fun, I need to get some welding done on it to play again!
-- You ain't seen me, right?
They ran out of money for the Aztec 3/4 of the way back :)
:o)
I had the same thought about the Honda CRX, about 10 years ago.. or, I figured the designers took the blueprints to management, management said "hmm, it won't fit in our manufacturing bays!" so the designers said "No problem", and tore off the rear 1/4 of the blueprint.
In any case, the first time I saw an Aztek, I thought - "Ahh, so that's what a CRX looks like when it grows up!" (Which also explains why you never see CRXs on the road anymore
If you've got a Honda, here's the place to visit for tinkering: www.hondata.com.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
We're working on this exact thing. Our project is called dashpc, and while it's still in it's infancy, the code can be found on freshmeat and sourceforge. Our site is here.
We currently have GPS capability, Kismet, ODBII interfacing, audio, etc.
We can always use help, so anyone truly interested in this and programming skills (java preferred) feel free to help out.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Do you want your radio to just 'slide in and out', possibly decapitating you or smashing your chest in when you get into a headon wreck at 140mph combined speed?
Will it make any difference at that speed?
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Come on guys! Think outside the box. Is your car's computer proprietary? Doesn't provide all the outputs you want? So ditch it and build/buy one that does. It only cost me $600 to convert my car to a user-programable digital ECU that controls all aspects of the fuel injection and ignition timing. From the cockpit I can do live tuning, data logging, live monitoring of injector pulse width, ignition timing angle, manifold pressure, coolant temperature, intake air temperature, exhaust oxygen content, rpm, and throttle angle. And that's just the begining. You can extrapolate and display/datalog your fuel consumption rate (useing injector pulse width, rpm, injector flow rate, and fuel pressure. Some other guys are working on adding gear selection monitoring also. By monitoring gear selected and knowing the gear ratios, weight of the car, and monitoring ECU output of rpm change over time you can do real-time extrapolation and display of torque/horsepower. Put that on your dashboard LCD and smoke it.
:) The other nice thing about programable ECU's is that they can be moved from one engine to another (4, 6, 8 cyl. rotary, it doesn't matter) so next year I can move the ECU to the new engine I'm building this winter. ;)
You don't need a brand-new high-tech car to do this stuff. I race a 30yr-old Porsche 914 in SCCA solo events. I also drive it to work on a daily basis. Converting to the digital ECU (from a dying 30yr-old analog system) I picked up about 10hp (before/after dynomometer runs) AND an additional 7mpg! See, you CAN have your cake and eat it too.
Most programable ECU's have RS232 input/output so you can do all kinds of cool stuff with them - EASILY! Do a google search for PerfectPower, Autronic, SDS, Wolf 3D, Megasquirt, Haltec, Motec, Hawk EC21...
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