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:

'Since 1996, all new cars sold in the United States have been required to have an emissions-control system called OBD-II...'

'...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.'

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.

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?

Comments

Open standards in car electronics ?

[OzPixel]

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.

Modifiers Cars

[UberChuckie]

If you can't afford to modify a real car, you can always play with these.

The Ultimate Car For Tinkerers

[the eric conspiracy]

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

Not Any Time Soon

[MBCook]

I don't think you'll see tinkering any time soon. First of all, there is (as stated in a story a while ago) the legal question of who's fault it is if I tinker with my cars computer and it screws up or something. But besides that, let me tell you about why this won't happen any time soon.

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.

Re:Not Any Time Soon

[Jonny 290]

Yet there is no standard stereo.

Is there a standard hard drive?

There is a standard SIZE (I think) but I can't just pull mine out and slide a new one in.

Yes, there is a standard DIN chassis size, and your car is a fucking moving vehicle that can at times reach speeds of 100 mph. 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? Cars are built a little bit more robustly than computers, and yes, screws and bolts are always needed.

I'd have to take off my dash (I assume) and get to a ton of screws. (I have a 2k Honda Oddessey).

You're perfectly right. Of course, swapping a stereo isn't supposed to be a ten-minute pull swap. It shouldn't take more than a half hour to completely take off all parts needed, and if it takes one longer than that, they shouldn't be trying to install their car stereo.

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.

Yeah, and I want a Firewire port for my ECU - but 99 percent of other car driver's don't. (well, maybe more people want it with my car than with average joe car)

wanting to have any controll over the chips in your car easily is a LOT to ask.


It's not a safety thing. It's an auto shop conspiracy thing. You think the car dealers WANT tuners to be able to plug in a serial cable and reprogram their fuel maps? Hell no!

A company like reprograms ECU's for turbo usage, adjusted fuel maps, improved injector capacity, etc. You'd be shocked at how crippled Japanese imports are compared to domestics.

Re:Not Any Time Soon

[MBCook]

Is there a standard hard drive?

Yes, there is. There isn't a standard capacity, but the interface is standard (IDE) and the form factor is too (3.5" drive slot)

You're perfectly right. Of course, swapping a stereo isn't supposed to be a ten-minute pull swap. It shouldn't take more than a half hour to completely take off all parts needed, and if it takes one longer than that, they shouldn't be trying to install their car stereo.

I agree that it shouldn't take 30 seconds. But I should be able to do it easily. It should at least say how to do it in the owners manual. As far as I can tell, instructions aren't published anywhere.

Yeah, and I want a Firewire port for my ECU - but 99 percent of other car driver's don't. (well, maybe more people want it with my car than with average joe car)

I think alot of people would like the ability to simply plug something into their car stereo using a standard earphone jack. I'm just saying that there should be standards for how you extend a stereo (the tape/cd changer/minidisc drive interface).

It's not a safety thing. It's an auto shop conspiracy thing. You think the car dealers WANT tuners to be able to plug in a serial cable and reprogram their fuel maps? Hell no!

Must everything be a conspiracy?

Remember?

[kruetz]

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 ...

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 ... hey! I can't stop! Aargh!"

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.

Re:Remember?

[mmckinstUM]

Acutally, I don't think he ever said that, but it did produce some funny stuff....

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart,in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought "CarNT," but then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "general protection fault" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.

9. The airbag system would ask "are you sure?" before deploying.

10. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, you car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the cars performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13. You'd have to press the "start" button to turn the engine off.

Re:Something /. always forgets...

[Noodlenose]

So, maybe you'd think that we'd all be more free if the government tells us what we can and can not drive, or if you think you should dictate my life based on your preferences, but personally, I don't care

It's not about me or your government telling you what to drive, it's just that the age of enlightenment obviously passed by you and your kind.

Personal freedom does not mean you're not allowed to make rational choices.

...and isn't contributing to the future and common good of the nation a paramount goal for every american? I always thought you guys are so patriotic. Obviously not at the fuelpump.

Monitoring is easy, tuning is difficult

[Matt_Bennett]

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.