Brew City Boost no longer to offer tuning.
- Thread starter Admin
- Start date
FiveLeeter918
New member
TopherSho said:
From what I've seen it's more just being more strictly enforced now that we have more California representation in Washington. Last update in November provided for more harsh penalties and restrictions. I've only heard of one investigation so far this year, but if you go to epa.gov you can find a a list of all the shops/manufacturers that were investigated and the changes/penalties they had to make.
Pypes just finished their settlement for manufacturing cat delete pipes and it was pretty hefty.
And it's not just the Diesel world being affected anymore. VMP was hit around the same time as Diesel Bros and while they were able to get a lesser penalty it was still pretty steep due to their lack of EGR provisions on their superchargers and also allowing cat deletes.
My personal recommendation, learn to live with the lights. IF your tuner does disable them for you, PLEASE don't advertise it as a service they offer. I haven't heard of the EPA doing random inspections, but all it takes is someone getting upset and dropping a "violation notification" on their website and it will come down hard. I have my thoughts and concerns with different tuners, but I still don't want to see anyone lose their livelihood over government overreach. But it's low handing fruit and easier to go after the automotive industry instead of holding their donors and lobbyists accountable.
FiveLeeter918
New member
TopherSho said:Admin said:
Did they get a EPA fine? ... hmmm if they were not messing with emissions I can't see why they'd shutdown ..
I spoke with Casey the day it was posted and he assured that it was purely a personal decision to pause operations until they fully ensured compliance with the Clean Air Act.
They did announce a few days later that they are still servicing existing customers, which was a huge point of unrest for the customers who were in the process of dialing in or had just purchased and hadn't received a file yet.
I know that the big Mustang company being investigated currently is still business as usual. My assumption is that the EPA only cares about violations, not your current business if you are in compliance, so it really shouldn't affect businesses unless they are still actively violating the CAA. Keep taking in revenue so that you can pay any fines, because as far as I know the EPA is going back to when the CAA first came out in 1970, there is no limit to how far back they can look in your files.
With blockchain and its implementations into the ECU world, in the next few years it will be impossible to modify the ECU in any regard while maintaining smog compliance. This also has major ramifications from a warranty perspective for all the same reasons.
The car tuning business is going to get very interesting in the coming years. I personally suspect that the majority of smaller tuners will shutter their shop as well as some of the larger ones.
We will see.
The car tuning business is going to get very interesting in the coming years. I personally suspect that the majority of smaller tuners will shutter their shop as well as some of the larger ones.
We will see.
I agree that ECU encryption will be a major hurdle going forward. Mercedes has been making PITA encryption for some time but tuning is still possible for them once they crack the ECU encoding. Infinity was the same way.
Looking at https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/handle/1974/24854/Alam_Md_Swawibe_Ul_201809_MSC.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y so far the transitory data is what they are looking to secure when vehicles pass each other on the street, or when they enter a repair bay. I would not worry about blockchain hashing a ECU, but more or less tamper protection schemes like employed by the XBOX/PS using hardware level non-moddable hardware keys and TPM's looking for code signing on boot. That is where things get illegal fast and DMCA violations and trademark lawsuits come in as in many cases modding consoles requires soldering resistors or traces to trigger debug or engineering modes or by pass a signal to boot.
For now that kind of ECU protection is 'expensive' enough to ward away using them on millions of cars with hair thin margins.
I think we have maybe (imo) 5 more years before FORD or CHEVY get serious about locking out ECU tuning with better encryption, and code signing protection, even possibly boot time hardware protection (BUT I think the last part is unlikely for some time). By then most all the fleet of ford/chevy will be some flavor of turbo so the incentive to lock us out will be there for sure.
Time will tell. But agree 100% were on the the downward slide. With the ''right to repair'' under withering fire this is the last decade of large scale 'mainstream' tuning off-the-lot cars with a 'vendor' and not on the downlow under the table.
Looking at https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/handle/1974/24854/Alam_Md_Swawibe_Ul_201809_MSC.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y so far the transitory data is what they are looking to secure when vehicles pass each other on the street, or when they enter a repair bay. I would not worry about blockchain hashing a ECU, but more or less tamper protection schemes like employed by the XBOX/PS using hardware level non-moddable hardware keys and TPM's looking for code signing on boot. That is where things get illegal fast and DMCA violations and trademark lawsuits come in as in many cases modding consoles requires soldering resistors or traces to trigger debug or engineering modes or by pass a signal to boot.
For now that kind of ECU protection is 'expensive' enough to ward away using them on millions of cars with hair thin margins.
I think we have maybe (imo) 5 more years before FORD or CHEVY get serious about locking out ECU tuning with better encryption, and code signing protection, even possibly boot time hardware protection (BUT I think the last part is unlikely for some time). By then most all the fleet of ford/chevy will be some flavor of turbo so the incentive to lock us out will be there for sure.
Time will tell. But agree 100% were on the the downward slide. With the ''right to repair'' under withering fire this is the last decade of large scale 'mainstream' tuning off-the-lot cars with a 'vendor' and not on the downlow under the table.
FiveLeeter918
New member
TopherSho said:
Even the 2021 models have become extremely difficult to crack. Eric @ HPTuners has been working on them for months and not making much headway and of last night.
TopherSho said:
So block chain in an of itself wont prevent the tuning at all.. but it will create a validated way that is secure to 100% identify vehicles that have had their original ECU data tampered with.
This would be a major issue for those that need warranty work or are required to have their OBD2 read for emission purposes. It would quickly identify any car that is not running the factory calibrations.
What the state/manufactures/federal agencies do with that information is up to them.
Encryption standards for breaking into an ECU are different than what I am talking about with blockchain. The idea with blockchain is that it makes it extremely difficult to get away with it..
IE: Even reverting back to stock wouldn't work, the virtual ledger in the ECU would show that it had been changed, setting off a flag.. the car would then fail emissions/inspection/etc and would be required to go back to the dealer to be updated with the correct factory code. And due to the properties of blockchain that series of information exchanges would always be available to be verified.
TPM's, hardware boot protection, etc. is all at the local level of the ECU and is EXPENSIVE to implement in large scale (think millions of cars).. With everything becoming connected, it would be cheap and satisfy future regulatory requirements to implement a blockchain system onto cars.
I could be 100% wrong, but they are already in the process of doing studies on how to implement it in the automotive industry for a ton of different reasons. This is just but one. Warranty validation is one of the biggest reasons for it. I could see our current political climate tacking on EPA reg's as well as an after thought (via executive order mind you).
https://btcmanager.com/automobile-renault-blockchain-vehicle-components/