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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.
"Why aren't the automakers bashing these third-party code readers over the head with the DMCA while they still can?"
Because the DMCA protects copyrighted information that is protected by some sort of security system (although the system is often lame). These auto codes are not protected by any security, besides obscurity.
The Technonaut
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.
I know that many cars already come with OBD II compliant ports (http://www.obdii.com/) and there are interfaces out there to hook your laptop to the OBD port and check the engine management software. Indeed there are tools to remap the engine software that use the same OBD port (I've installed this on my BMW)
Given that this type of standardized interface exists, and that tools for "exploiting" it are readily available and fairly cheap, I don't see how it would be possible to keep this information (error codes and the like) secret.
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It was before the lemon laws. The problem was that the car would just quit, right in the middle of driving down the interstate or wherever. After a few minutes you could restart it. After the third trip to the dealership failed to find the problem, I "revoked my acceptance" of the product, just like it was a bad hair drier I took back to Walmart. The dealer sputtered and argued for a while, but I got my money back and took it down the road and bought a different brand. It didn't take me 12 tries.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
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.
The codes are available on the net if you know where to look. Often they are found on auto enthusiast websites. Websites like Focaljet.com
Not only that there is a great project for retrieving codes under linux. The project is called FreeDiag. It can be found at Sourceforge.net
Not only that, there are some great "open" cables you can build yourself. the BR interface is my fav. It happens to work very nicely with freediag.
Hope this helps people that are interested.
What could possibly go wrong?
How did they find their car when it was time to go home?
I have the amazing ability to remember a random sequence of letters and numbers.
Most vehicles have them stamped in metal plates on the front and/or rear bumpers.
This isn't as simple as you seem to think. There is one light, which lights up, and stays lit after any fault condition. The fault conditions can be for something as simple and trivial as a loose gas cap to something which will cause the engine to leap out and land in your lap. You have no way of knowing without going along to your local friendly dealer to have them tell you what the problem is (was) and to re-set the warning light. My Jeep Grand Cherokee had 27,000 miles on it when my warning light lit up. I took it along to the local Jeep shop, who connected the computer and diagnosed --- a loose gas cap. Now living in Oregon, you don't get to play with your own gas cap. In Oregon they really do believe those dire warnings that California churn out, that gasoline is a substance that can cause a multitude of serious health problems, and is a potential terrorist weapon, so you can't fill your own tank if you want to. Anyway, I really thought it was improbable, but took them at their word - they tightened the gas cap and reset the light. The next day, it came back on. Back to the Jeep merchant ... loose gas cap. So I reminded them that they said the same thing yesterday, and tightened the gas cap themselves, and it hadn't been touched since.
The "cleaned" the gas cap and re-set the light.
Two days later the light came on ...
"loose gas-cap" they said.... "Screw that" I said, "its something else - fix it under my bumper to bumper warranty."
They took the car in the next day, and called me late in the afternoon having done all the Jeep tests without any result. But they did mention that there were some tests that were only run by the on-board computer when the engine was cold, and hadn't run for several hours, and it was this one which was tripping the warning. They kept the car overnight.
Next day, it dutifully turned on the warning light for them.
With nothing left to check, they fitted a new gas-cap and sent me home (I am certain I saw them holding their fingers crossed behind their backs as I drove away...).
That fixed it. But it was interesting that there was no apparent way to test the system short of change a component, wait a day and try it. I just shudder to think how much this would have ended up costing me if it had happened out of warranty.