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Hack Your Ride
LukePieStalker writes "Monday's Boston Globe has a story on the global market for car chippers. The article describes a global subculture of "drivers who reprogram their vehicles and the companies that keep them supplied with high-performance software and silicon chips".
One nice hack: a car chipped-up for the race track can be set back to factory specs for the street simply by pushing the cruise control button."
How long before we can wi-fi-cluster cars, and let the network arrange speed and routing through congested urban areas?
I want the future now!
You can get an extra 30-35 HP out of the Evo 8 right off the lot with a reprogramming of the ECU. Many performance cars are the same way though this is an extreme example.
My WRX has 3, count 'em, 3 catalytic converters. These are not needed, either. Many of the overseas versions come stock with one cat only. But if I take them off, I may be putting them right back on next time I have to get an emissions test.
I'm currently involved in writing assembly for my car's ECU. It's a 92 DSM Turbo AWD. The difficult thing is it's a proprietary OEM variant of a Motorola HC11, with lots of unknown opcodes, but there's a good movement to try and figure them all out. Right now, I've written a stutterbox, and other people have figured out where all of the timing, and fuel maps are, and where the variables for injector sizes are. It's pretty great. Writing assembly is fun, and ha>0ring my car is even more fun :)
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I thought that Japanese sports cars were falsely restricted because of their export regulations?
A friend of my Grandfather has a Skyline which can be chipped for an extra 100hp. This is because they are intentionally derated to allow them to be exported.
Is it possible to retune for maximum durability? I could give a shit how fast my car can go, but I really want it to last to 200,000 miles with minimal problems.
It's a Honda Accord V6, so I'm guessing it already is tuned that way, and that manufacturers probably favor durability over high performance anyway.
Hondata (http://www.hondata.com) has been doing this for years on Hondas/Acuras. Ever since Honda started using flashable ECUs in the most recent generation of cars, reprogramming Honda ECUs is a piece of cake. Just connect an OBDII cable to your programmer, press a button and your ECU is reflashed. One caveat is that Hondata spent a year or two decoding the fuel map codes. Unfortunately, they have to decode each model's ECU, but from what I understand, they are fairly similar (plus they have years of experience in hacking ECUs).
You can also get a VW beetle to run an 11 second quarter mile on a stock engine, but it won't last much longer than that 1/4 mile.
Your point about the WRX (essentially a factory rally car) is that Subaru engineers decided to add two extra cats for the fun of it. I find that doubtful. Subaru won't be adding platinum plated mufflers just for ballast.
As to 35 HP in the Evo, aren't they turbo'd? That's a matter of trading engine life for power. An extreme example of this is in the more expensive classes of racing, where the life of the 1500 hp. engines is less than one mile.
Meanwhile, to argue that the Evo doesn't have all the power the engineers could reasonably get out is flawed. The Evo even has lightweight body panels for extra speed. If you're getting extra power, your greatly shortening your engine's useful life. That car was built for speed and little else.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
I remember some time back that J. Geils actually left music because he was having a more lucrative career fixing Ferraris. Maybe not more lucrative, but certainly more fun for J. Geils himself.
He started out just fixing his own...then friends of his with Ferraris would ask him to tinker with theirs...one thing lead to another.
At least this is what I remember from memory. I think it's cool also.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Yes, we tuned an aluminum Ford 427 side oiler with multi-port fuel injection. It has 623 horsepower at sea level, but we're in the mountains. Since the ECU maps are all for sea level, it took several days of driving fast on mountain roads to get the map sorted out for high altitude.
I really like my job.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
I've "hacked" my 2004 Prius so to speak to include the EV Button which comes stock on the Japaneese and some European versions of the car. The American version not only doesn't have the button, but doesn't even have the wiring harness present to do this. Someone was able to figure out which pin on the engine computer triggers this function, and we took it from there. While some of us used the factory button imported from Japan, others have wired it using Radio Shack parts, or into the headlight flasher or the cruise control button as well for a more stealthy appearance.
This purpose of this buttion button is to allow the driver to force the car into electric-only mode for short distances at speeds under 55km/hr (34mph). This is great for sneaking home at night in close quarters, saving gas till you back out of the driveway, or for sneaking up on the old ladies in mall parking lots before laying on the horn.
If you could plug the car in, you'd even have a short range EV car. Now if only they had a button to improve gas mileage while making it do 0-60 in 4 seconds.
$ man woman *
-bash:
I'm a MINI Dealer, and chipping a MINI will lift the little 1.6 litre petrol engine from 90Bhp to 130Bhp for about 500. We honour the warranty for it. It's quite safe indeed, and it's only downgraded at the factory so they can sell the more expensive model/meet emissions laws.
Owen.
Quite simply, a while back I had an older car. It developed an electrical problem, and when I went in to get it fixed, they told me they'd have to start working through the whole electrical harness to find it. In the end, I decided to live with the problem.
Now, these guys weren't great, I'm sure, but there is something fundamentally flawed with the current system of electrical harness. Ideally, the harness should be easy to maintain, not requiring you to rip out molding everywhere.
So let's try some standards: First, let's have color coded wires. We need black for ground, pink for 5 V, red for 12 V, and Orange for anything higher. Negative voltages have a single black stripe along them. Positive are unstriped.
Periodically, on the insulation wires, are resistor type markings that name the voltage.
So that handles all the power. Next, there's data. Data doesn't travel in wires per se, so much as in shielded ribbon cable.
Now, there's the switching. Get a simple chip like the 8051XA, program it to handle simple switching, pop on some Power Mosfets, and remanufacture the whole thing into a single thin, strong, electrically shielded box with a number of jacks for power and data. At about $20 per box, you could have 20 of them in and around the car.
Now, data and power can route from any of them to any other, along the existing lines. Want to buy more? Fine. Hook it up to a few others, program your onboard computer to tell the others to recognize it, and you're in.
Make it all easily user-programmable. You want to tie in some mega speakers into the back of your car? Fine. Hook them into the nearest switchbox, inform your car that they're there, and instantly you have Dolby BLAST(TM) Surround Sound. Or whatever.
Suppose two wires short out? The nearest boxes figure it out, isolate the short, and inform you of the short, the location, and what needs to be replaced. You can then go in and fix it yourself, replacing either the wires, or the box.
Anyhow, that's my basic idea.
There'd be a wonderful market for these things as aftermarket items, too. If your current electrical system goes bad, it might be cheaper just to replace the whole harness, replace your radio with a onboard computer, insert a CD to program it to your used car, and go digital.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Ironic. My first "electronics" project as a child was abusing my dad's 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder by opening it up twisting the belt around to force it to run backwards. I recorded the "strange foreign language" in J. Geils' No Anchovies Please, unhacked the tape recorder, and played the message backwards to discover the shocking secret:
"It doesn't take a genuis to tell the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad."
I've waited most of my life to use that line in context. I am complete! w00t!
Which is worse: someone who mods the heck out of their car and pours love and attention into it, or the guy in the beater who never checks his tires and has a headlight out?
Dangerous mechanical problems don't really plague that spectrum of car owners. A block exploding won't destroy your steering column (although maybe it'll lock up your wheels), but you hear a lot more about tire failures than you do engine explosions.
his sounds like it might actually work if you could get enough amps out of your electrical system to run the leaf blower. Are there reasons why this wouldn't work? None, really. The problem is getting enough amps out of a 12V electrical system. 1hp = 64A at 100% efficiency, and a supercharger takes at least 5-10hp to run. Factor in losses, and you'll need one mean mother of an alternator. Maybe when makers move to 36/42V electrical systems ... Even then, 10HP at 80% efficiency will require around 260A.
-b.
Mine too. Minus a few fuses. Pontiac 1970 GTO >=D
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Change the fan turn on temperatures for a 160 thermostat
Program the transmission to perform similar to a shift kit (1994 and newer)
Power program the car for use with premium octane gasoline
Remove the top speed limiter
Correct the speedometer and transmission for gear and tire changes
Correct for the use of a larger throttle body.
Change idle settings and restore drivability with cam installs
Correct for larger injectors
Correct for larger displacement (383, 396, etc....).
:)
Unfortunately, he only does GM cars and I own a Ford. Oh well... If you do own a GM car, check out his site... He may be able to help you and and you may be able to help him pay for college!
Well, do what we do around here when fuel gets ridiculously expensive - go to a small local airport and fill up with AvGas.
Anonymously, due to mod points:
Yeah, AvGas is generally 100 Octane, and has a nice blue tint (may be green--been a while since I got in a Cessna). But when you buy it, note the designator on the truck--100LL. The LL is for 'Low Lead'. This might be true compared to the old-school red fuel, but compared with old leaded gas for cars, I believe 100LL had several times the lead.
If you're the type that cares for such things, you are releasing a fair amount of tetraethyl lead into the atmosphere. Perhaps more importantly (depending on your views), it's going to kill your catalytic converter (if you still have one).
--Ribald
My 1986 Saab turbo has a 'tweaked' boost controller in it to alter the boost profile. You simply twist a couple of pots in the APC (Automatic Pressure Control) computer to adjust base boost, peak allowed boost, and knock sensitivity (the APC system listens for knock, and retards boost in small increments until the knocking subsides), and presto! 20+ extra HP. My '92 Saab 9000 turbo has an actual digital computer in place of the old APC system, and I have chips in that one too. Now here's the real deal : I'm currently in the R&D phase of installing a P-III 1GHz EBX format all-in-one motherboard in the car's dash, complete with 7" touch screen lcd. Not only will it play DVDs, MP3s, have GPS with moving map and wifi, but using the board's PC/104 connector and a digital IO board, I plan on integrating it into the car's electronic controls. This particular car is at the right age where all of the components are digital, but they are not so tightly integrated (later Saabs use an actual proprietary data bus for the different embedded controllers to communicate), so this should be fairly successful.
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/