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Automakers Try To Keep Repair Codes Secret
An anonymous reader writes "Can't get the trouble codes out of your car's computer? Congress wants to help. I think it's odd that they think it's your God-given right to reverse-engineer your car, but not your XBox. Why aren't the automakers bashing these third-party code readers over the head with the DMCA while they still can?" This debate has been going on for several years.
I think it's odd that they think it's your God-given right to reverse-engineer your car, but not your XBox
Simple, a badly maintained car can cause death. A badly maintained Xbox will cost you $99 for a new one. Anyone else spotting the difference here? They arent helping YOU, they are helping the independant garages to keep your car in good shape and help prevent a fatality or two.
Congress allowing reverse engineering of repair codes will allow third party diagnostics systems available at prices the independant can truely afford to pay. This makes them better at maintaining vehicles.
Most common use for modchips: pirating games (illegal)
Most common use for car codes: fixing your car (legal - but most likely won't be possible with future cars)
The similarity is that game makers make less money if you pirate a game (instead of buying it). Car dealers/manufacturers make less money if you fix your own car (and down pay for their overpriced service and "genuine rippof parts").
Casual Games/Downloads
First off, when purchasing a "cheap" car, you get what you pay for. Most of the commercials you see on TV for Kia, Hyundai's and offer the 10-year warranty are crap for this exact reason. The car, a 2002 model is still covered under the manufactuers warranty, however, there's some stipulations. In short, it doesn't cover "user error". Here's a college student who has had the car serviced 12 times for the same problem, and each time told the same thing. Depending on where she lives, she may need to check into her state's lemon law.
I help admin a Mazda 6 enthusiast site and have never heard of anything like this before regarding warranty problems. Any check engine light, whether the drivers fault or not is taken care of without a charge. Paying a $120 fee each time it gets services is ridiculous! Again, just another use to show you the hooks and gimmicks of buying "cheaper" cars thinking that a 10-year warranty will keep you safe from any problems. Our group was lucky. With the help of Mazda service mangers around the US, we were able to get a complete list of trouble codes posted. As was stated in the article the AutoXRay is a wonderful tool to help. It is fairly pricey, but if you have no other way of determining the problem, this would really help and saves on having the repair shop diagnose the problem for you. Instead alll it takes is this scanner to read the codes, determine the problem, and have them fix it. From the article...
"Bryan Hanks, who has taken his 2002 Toyota Prius to his local Houston dealership four times since a single sensor malfunctioned and the Check Engine signal prevented him from using the car's electronic display, said automakers should incorporate USB ports in dashboards to allow consumers to download error messages to a laptop."
Any legitimate scanner will allow you to also download a freeze frame and trouble codes to your laptop or monitor real-time data that may not be available to you through dashboard guages.
IMHO, if after 12 times, I think common sense has to play a big part in the determination process of what's going on. With the advent of cars having tons of microprocessors and computers on-board to control everything from real-time air/fuel ratios to your cabin temperature settings it's no wonder why CEL codes will light up for inane reasons, the gas cap one being the most common. When the reason shows up on the diagnostic computer it most likely shows a fuel leak (depending on car manufactuer). Out of perspective, it seems like a pretty serious problem. However, once all of the fuel lines have been pressure checked and show no leaks, the only problem could be with a loose gas cap. This can go 2 ways.. either she is taking it to the dumbest dealership service department or she is a complete twit herself.
Hmmm.
They are creating competition... If more service shops have these "codes" they are able to offer a better price than the dealership. This gives the consumer the choice of taking it there, having to pay less but also have less-experience machanics (for that particular model perhaps) work, or pay a slightly higher price and have the dealership do it. It creates a choice for the consumer rather than telling them they MUST go to the dealership to get it fixed.
Hmmm.
This does provide an opportunity to educate Congress by showing them that the needs of both professions with respect the DMCA (and other horrors) are basically very similar at heart.
This is a little bit off-topic, but one reason why young folks buy Kia's and Hyundais is because of the extra-long warranty period, 10 years, I think. A quote from the article helps me to realize that Kia's warranty is probably fraught with small-print and legalese that helps them to cover their butts with their decade-long warranty.
"Instead of explaining anything to me they just pull out a warranty sheet with a highlighted portion indicating that they don't cover Check Engine light problems."
They don't cover check engine light problems? I can see, on one hand, why they wouldn't do this (money-wise), but on the other, it's not very nice to offer someone what is evidentally perceived to be a blanket warranty for the whole car and then charge for small repairs. I think that Kia and other similar, low-cost automakers should be more forthcoming in their commercials about their warranties.
This is "insightful"? I see a lot of sophmoric profanity, but no insight. Or does sufficient profanity equate to insight these days? I wonder if the poster even bothered to read the rest of the article. In case he didn't...
Just because the check engine light indicated a loose gas cap one time, or even several times, that doesn't mean that the next time means the same thing. It might mean something serious. There is no way for Ms. Seymour to tell. Nor is there anyway for 3rd partly mechanics to tell. That was sort of the whole point of the article.
Simple, a badly maintained car can cause death. A badly maintained Xbox will cost you $99
It probably has more to do with the number of Congressmen who own a car versus the number who own an XBox.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
More likely, she'd be able to get the same service at a non-dealer shop for a lot less than $120. I had to have the diagnostic code checked in my 2000 Subaru Forester, and the privately owned shop charged me $60 (turned out to be the same thing - an "oxygen sensor" was what tripped the light, and what tripped the oxygen sensor was the leaky gas-cap).
In general, open up the playing field to more competition, and the price will go down. That $60 STILL seems ridiculous, considering the minuscule amount of work actually performed, but you're paying for the knowledge.
The manufacturers have been keeping that knowledge secret from everyone who hasn't passed all the initiation rites and paid all the associated fees to become a "dealer" - anybody going to draw the obvious parallel to Scientology? :-)
Hasn't technology evolved to a point where we don't need to extract and look up arcane codes to determine what is wrong with our hardware (computers or cars)? I understand that there was a time when storing the text for error codes used up precious RAM/ROM, but come on!
I mean, how hard would it be to fit a car with an LED/LCD readout that says "Your gas cap is loose or missing." It doesn't have to be a fancy voice like in luxury cars. Just a little readout on or under the dash that tells you exactly what is wrong (as far as the car's sensors can tell, anyway). Maybe a nice message that tells you, "Your transmission has exploded. Seek professional help."
Geez.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
yes, and you can also get hardware that plugs into your laptop to get certain codes yourself for less than $200, but only *some* codes are available to these machines. there are other codes that are kept secret so that certain diagnosis can not be made without the equipment which is reserved for authorized dealers only, and this is what the problem is.