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Hack Your Car
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 don't know what he's talking about. My '86 Toyota Camry doesn't have a chip, except where that modded '04 sports coupe flew by me.
I would never drive or be a passenger of a car that is running my own firmware.
Never.
But if you think you're going to get another 70ft/lbs of torque in a Honda Civic by just doing that, think again.
Everyone knows that the only way to get 70 ft-lbs more torque from a civic is to cover it in Type-R stickers and put a big wing on the back.
For a good laugh at the riceboy industry, surf on over to www.ricecop.com.
Hang on - Americans don't drive cars, they drive agricultural machinery with leather seats, aircon and cupholders. One of the principal features of this type of vehicle is enormous mass of between 2 and 3 thousand kilos, thus it's perfectly understandable that one of these things should require over 300 hp so it might keep a reasonable pace with delivery vans, passenger cars and pizza mopeds.
Normal passenger vehicles in the rest of the world are plenty fast if their engines produce 200hp. Sadly, Americans don't know about the rest of the world and think motorsport equals monster trucks, drag racing and something called an 'oval'.
That was classic intercourse!
DISCLAIMER!!! The above statement is unfortunately not based on the posters personal experience.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Oh oh I seen this episode ... this is where they made Kit evil by putting an Atari 2600 cartridge into his car stereo!