Cold Rodding and the Death of Tuner Cars

"KylesPerGallon" (gentlemandriver) 04/22/2015 at 17:50 • Filed to: None

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Flash back to a time when the world stood at the brink of annihilation. Fingers hovered over the big red button which would trigger a nuclear holocaust. Each superpower was so entrenched in which idology was best that they sought to influence other countries and peoples to change their ways. We called it the Cold War because the USA and USSR never formaly engaged each other instead playing a proxy game of cat and mouse fighting over territories large and small for superiority. Is the same thing about to happen to the car world?

Cold Rodding

Cold Rodding (trademark pending) is what we, the enthusiasts, picture the future of automotive tuning. We look to the future of car customization with rose colored glasses envisising a new golden age of four wheeled freedom. Yet what I fear most is that we’ll envision a tomorrow which becomes as dismally dissapointing as the non-existant Back to the Future !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Automotive tuning has developed a cancer which may very well be terminal. Right now we see computers as the superpower bestowed upon our vehicles. Like a hero granted unbelievable powers by some kind of exposure to massive amounts of gamma rays, instead we very well could be counting down the days till the death of customization.

How can this be? Auto journalists everywhere have discussed the amazing potential ready to be unlocked by the most talented of “programmers” and “hackers”. I keep hearing the same idea over and over again, “some day a kid in his garage will be able to plug in a USB to his car and remap the suspension settings, air/fuel mixture, valve timing, etc...” Sounds amazing, right? There’s no reason this can’t happen, especially with the amount of vehicle settings now controlled by the ECU. Yet there’s a shadow lurking in the darkness. A war is being fought right now over our freedom.

The War to End All Wars

Every so often a headline pops up about automakers trying to protect against the modification of their vehicles. This is happening in a very pronounced way in the tech spheres. Apple tried to get an injuction against people ‘Jailbreaking’ their software. One side argues for protection of intellectual property and preserverence of proper functionality while the other proclaims their right to do whatever they want with the products they paid for.

I’m sure by now you can see the corrilation. It’s the fight for freedom and individuality over uniformity. Unfortunately for us on the side of customization the opposition has a weapon which could end all wars. Encryption.

!!! UNKNOWN HEADER TYPE (MULTI-LINE BREAK?) !!!

Anyone who has taken a few programming classes can, in a matter of hours, write a code which is uncrackable. Right now, a tuner like APR must employ a team of computer scientists just to read the code the automakers are hiding. It’s like opening a coffee shop with Wi-fi and telling customers you don’t know what the password is. Soon their technical knowhow will outweigh the importance of engineers. Why? Because the very technologies and modifications that we have developed for years are dependent on systems that are now controlled by computers. Sure you can throw a bigger turbo under the hood or bore out the cylinders but without adjusting the engine parameters to optimize these modifications you’ll quickly find all the hardware changes useless without modifying the software to match.

I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Fun

Take for example the BMW 335i, a car that’s been around for quite some time now. Fully unleashed the twin turbo engine could, in stock form with a tune, match it’s seemingly more capable M3 counterpart (E92). Yet it took a considerable amount of time for programmers within the tuning companies to crack the code to allow them to make modifications. This timetable to decrypt the ECU will only grow, stalling progress on the tuning front.

As amazing as the current crop of vehicles are, I am not bullish on the future of automotive tuning as vehicles grow more and more complex and more reliant on their electronics for adjustments. Will our fate be predetermined in an Orwellian fashion? Only time will tell how this battle will play out. Nobody is rushing out to grab a BMW i8 and working on extracting more power out of it, does it matter or am I wearing this tin foil hat for nothing?

Axial > KylesPerGallon 04/22/2015 at 18:32

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Yank EFI. Put in carb. Winner!

In all seriousness, I don’t know why they feel the need for such heavy encryption. It’s actually a very dirty game, trying to lock consumers out so they can sell you a better model. It’s silly; most people who want the better model will get the better model. Most people aren’t going to buy a low-end model just to “upclock” it to the specs of the better one because that comes with drawbacks...like voiding the warranty.

infinityedge > Axial 04/22/2015 at 22:51

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Nah, the future is:

Yank ECU, replace with custom setup powered by a single board computer running an open source adaptive algorithm:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/machine-learni…

What will suck is when auto makers switch to an encrypted bus for everything down to the license plate light bulb. Then you will have to gut anything electronic and replace with open versions.

BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires > KylesPerGallon 04/23/2015 at 06:30

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Junk the standard ECU and run standalone injection?

There’s even some that can operate variable valve technology as well :)

Tinfoil Hat in a thunderstorm, now with added diecast > KylesPerGallon 05/07/2015 at 23:35

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“does it matter or am I wearing this tin foil hat for nothing?”

Never doubt the hat, it will lose its powers of reflection.

Grindintosecond > KylesPerGallon 05/07/2015 at 23:37

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I don’t buy it.

They invented computers. The ability to make one do what you want took quite some time and took a few special people like the Wozniaks, Gateses, Dells but eventually the iPads and smart phones with apps that do it for you and apps that help you do what you want are prevalent today, created by common people that just opened up text books and didn’t have to reverse engineer anything. Same will happen with cars. right now, we understand ECU tuning and the like but it does take some specialist minded people to be able to do it right. Before you know it, kids in garages will be re-winding their electric motors with improved purity and different gauge copper and grinding commuter brushes to specific angles to extract more torque and higher RPM all while reprogramming the controls with what they learned in Jr.High computer logics class, and doing this on a thirty year old Prius they picked up for a few hundred bucks that’s out of warranty and Toyota has no say. Say hello to your new 10 second car, the Homebrew all electric Prius, built by a few High School Freshmen. Hot rodding will still be here.

Of course if anyone’s allowed to operate a non-autopilot car by then.

KylesPerGallon > Grindintosecond 05/07/2015 at 23:50

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I agree that if things continue on their current course this is certainly what the future holds. But there’s nothing preventing automakers from installing more powerful encryption. Software is software, it doesn’t matter if its programmed to run the ECU of a car or a Roomba if the code is encrypted then the only way to modify things is to break the code. There’s consumer level encryption now that government supercomputers can’t crack. It’s just the very nature of computing.

Jake Stumph Racing > KylesPerGallon 05/12/2015 at 19:11

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Terrible analogy at the end, the running joke in the BMW tuning community is that the N54 engine was SO EASY to break into and mess with.

pmendoza502 > Grindintosecond 05/12/2015 at 19:30

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I would like to hope that some of these computer engineers coding ECUs are also car guys that are willing to help “leak” info on how to break their own code. otherwise, tuning will be extinct soon...

cristhian702 > BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires 05/12/2015 at 20:11

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The problem with that is the can-bus systems they have. These new systems have the e.c.m.s’ and modules communicating with each other at all times. Change one thing and you affect most others. When I was a tech at Porsche, Jag and Aston first thing we did was set up the battery tender. Right after that you hook up the laptop and wait for the car to “update”. Then you would hope to open up the hood/scan codes? Nope... Flow charts! You go through EVERY system and make sure they are all on the same correct page. Now as a tech/gear head there is nothing we can do unless they make this software public :( as far as tuning? Might as well rip every soft system and install a stand alone and hope you can patch the other systems together.

Vee > KylesPerGallon 05/12/2015 at 23:12

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Well, that’s the thing. The biggest standard size encryption available to most automakers is a 256-point version. The reason why it takes so freakin’ long is because it’s not just one 256-byte encryption code. It’s hundreds. Maybe thousands for certain parts. They do this partially to protect themselves from reverse-engineering by their competitors, but they also do this because they’re scared shitless somebody will mess with the existing settings and then sue the manufacturer’s genitalia off because they’re a moronic asshole who doesn’t understand how a EULA works. As a coding enthusiast, I do this stuff as a hobby. Nothing too big, mostly just stuff to serve my needs like bypassing stuff on old computers to keep them up to speed or writing stuff for emulators to make arcade machines for friends. But even I know that the encryption codes employed by say BMW or Lexus are like a freakin’ bunker, ‘cause I can’t even figure out how to screw with the internal systems to turn off the goddamned beeping when their Fusion starts up like they asked me. It’s annoying to me too, dude, but I don’t know what to do... Anyways, everyone’s taking the Apple stance on this, which is “NO! Not for you! You no get to see! Stew done when ready, you eat!”

PNO TECH > Grindintosecond 05/13/2015 at 00:28

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The difference is that the makers of the smartphone will sell more of them if cool apps run easily. Automakers do not have any good way to make more money by allowing their code to be accessible.

I imagine they also fear liability with cars increasingly using signal input rather than mechanical.

BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires > cristhian702 05/13/2015 at 04:11

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Bugger, that is difficult :S

I think I’ll stick to mucking about with my ‘74 Spitfire 6 :)

secretagentstv > KylesPerGallon 05/13/2015 at 09:16

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manufacturers can do whatever they want to try to keep us out but they can’t. The BMW is a poor example of a tuner car. It won’t sell like a wrx or evo or sti or frz. Spend 30,000 on a used evo put 2000 in mods and make 400 HP. The BMW is twin turbo so it has it get two larger turbos or a very expensive manifold to hold a single turbo. Besides evo are better IMO.

KylesPerGallon > Jake Stumph Racing 05/13/2015 at 17:11

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I would pose that question to Steve Dinan and his team of programmers. If it was that easy to break into the most successful BMW tuner in the states wouldn’t have hired so many people to do a job thats so easy.

Jake Stumph Racing > KylesPerGallon 05/13/2015 at 17:22

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Not sure if serious...Dinan has long since lost their footing in the world of the modern BMW. Name-brand recognition is strong, product offerings show otherwise. Other tuners can offer superior products for less money, and they have clearly capitalized on it.

KylesPerGallon > Jake Stumph Racing 05/14/2015 at 14:24

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Yes but do they also offer full factory warranty matching on their stuff? I'll agree that they're not the end all be all tuner for BMW but they certainly still know what they're doing. Of course there's names out there who can put down big numbers on the dyno but reliable usable power is something different

Jake Stumph Racing > KylesPerGallon 05/14/2015 at 15:01

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I’ll stop this argument now. In this specific instance, you simply do not know what you’re talking about. It was a passing comment, originally made in jest. Let’s drop it. ;)

boxjohn > BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires 05/14/2015 at 21:47

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Ultimately, this is probably the solution. The less integrated the car, the more tuneable. It seems like about 10-15 years ago is when they started really integrating the engine control systems into the car in a way that you can’t readily mix and match stuff.

KylesPerGallon > Jake Stumph Racing 05/15/2015 at 17:18

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I genuinely did not pick it up. Can we still be friends?

Jake Stumph Racing > KylesPerGallon 05/15/2015 at 17:27

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But of course, bad blood is generally not something that sits well with me.