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Man, so long without logging in… 😀
Well, I was talking with some friends of mine that run a Car-Alarm shop. They sell alarms, HIDs, Keys (and I want to focus on this) and all that kind of stuff.
As they sell keys for modern vehicles they need to program the key and/or the car computer, and they use really cheap and easy to find sort-of ROM-programming alligator clips. Now, the interesting thing about it is that it opens up a whole new world for people to fine-tune their cars almost at no cost. But, they told me a liitle secret too: this kind of programmign can be done on modern vehicles to force them to “lie” about their mileage. Yes, instead of telling you that they have, let’s say, 100000 miles, they will show AND report whatever value you want, even zero miles. As far as my knoledge goes, that’s technically not illegal to do, (of course, it’s wrong, and it will be illegal from another perspective, like fraud)
That conversation got me thinking: is there any other kind of underground repair that some malicious guy can exploit to do someting illegal? Discussion is open for you guys…
I left attached a picture of the alligator clip thing…Yeah! I forget… I intended this post as a suggestion for a ETCG1 video.
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Interesting topic. I’m going to move it to another section as to continue that discussion you mention.
Some states in the US have emission inspection where the state plugs into the dash to see if their are any codes on the car’s computer. Any codes fail the car.
People exploring the ECU programming have discovered that much of it is generic since cars are sold all over the world and various regions have different requirements. So, there’s a place in the computer programming where, by changing a value, you determine whether a test is run or not.
Take a vehicle that is heavily modified with much of the emission equipment gone. Go into the computer and turn off the tests. At the state inspection station the computer lies and says everything is fine. This, of course, isn’t going to get you past a sniffer test.
I’m not a advocate of doing this. My car has all the emission equipment installed and working. But since the topic came up…………….
BTW, I hope the shop doing this work is being careful in checking the ownership of vehicles.
About a year ago, they changed the emission testing law in my state. Previously, the car was tested via the OBDII port at a DMV facility, which was actually operated by a private company. The law closed the DMV facilites and moved testing to the private sector (dealerships, independent shops, franchise chains) that choose to offer the service. I think the shop only receives $2 to perform the OBDII test.
It did not take long for new reports of people, a presumably small percentage, who decided to “color outside of the lines”. One shop was fraudently passing failed vehicles by using a good car for the test, but got caught because the shop owner did not realize what data was being collected during the test.
I hope they do…
But, as far as I know they are serious people, and they only perform mileage changes when a shop replaces pretty much everything in the car.
Interesting stuff with the ECU programming though… It would be useful in this region of the world (in Honduras most people’s first car is used, and imported from the US, generally from crashes, or something like that) and for some weird reason they cut off the catalytic converter and weld a tube. That’s enough to set a code, so it would be at least useful to avoid having that light always on.About the shop faking tests, well, that’s awful. If I were in charge, I would close the damn place.
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