Need Help, Urgent.

[Jhols1]

Long story short, bought a r32 gtr, soon after purchase it stopped and wouldn't start again due to electronic issue, can't access computer due to it having a password, rang the mechanic/tuner who was looking after the gtr, he won't give me the password, and will only unlock it if I give him $400-$500, he (Simon and Greg) from bayside/Southside dynos is in Brisbane and I am located over 100kms away.

Can anyone help me with either a way to get around the password or with legal action against this flamin mongrel???

Edited June 12, 2015 by Jhols1

[tridentt150v]

GL, HKS I'm guessing?

If they want $500, and you can't crack it then you might be better off with something else anyway?? Your call really.

[Nismo 3.2ish]

This tune stuff is a joke, your car now, so your ECU and tune and unless they had a contract stating they retain ownership of the tune and will charge $500 to unlock it, they should just do it.

I asked my bloke not to lock the ECU before the tune and he said he had no intention of locking it

If they do not unlock it, tell them you will go to Consumers Affairs or NCAT, do not bluff , do it !

Get sick of being treated like crap

Once the ECU has been accessed and changed the other tuner's warranty , if any would be Null and Void , so whats the problem , your tune is no good for another car and it's not a Formula 1 for christs sake

Edited June 14, 2015 by Nismo 3.2ish

[Jhols1]

Yeah I plan on re-tuning it in the very near future anyway.

Yes it is bullshit, and I have already sent off a complaint email to the department of fair trading and the motoring aubudsman.

He is just a thief trying to extort money out of people.

I highly recommend nobody using Southside dynos in Brisbane.

[Nismo 3.2ish]

Justin, you had better edit the last line or they will stop the thread and I think there should be more info about the treatment some shops put on us but without their name LOL.

Good on you for having a go at them, I for one never stop if I get shit on and have never lost up to date

[Stixbnr32]

Yeah that is BS. No way they should be charging $50 let alone $500 for the password into your computer.

Give them a rev up.

[Missileman]

Was looking for a tuner on the southside, I'll be sure to give these mongrels a swerve.

[Jhols1]

Just a quick heads up.

I just received a phone call from the department of fair trading, they wanted to clarify a couple details before they start their investigation into the matter.

So it's good news for me and bad news for Southside dynos

[Nismo 3.2ish]

Just a quick heads up.

I just received a phone call from the department of fair trading, they wanted to clarify a couple details before they start their investigation into the matter.

So it's good news for me and bad news for Southside dynos

It would be good to have this sorted and an answer for a lot of blokes in this situation.

I understand that once someone else plays with their tune the Warranty is Null and Void, but that does not mean they can hold you up and demand $500 or $1 to unlock it, the work was paid for and they do not have a Patent on these tunes.

[Hadouken]

There is no warranty on a tune.

Sure you may have some warranty on a freshly built motor.

Once you enter the modifying game it's fingers crossed and hope for the best.

As for the ops problem.

What mods do you have? Have you done anything to check?

Does it turn over?

Do you have spark?

Do you have fuel?

Have you popped a intercooler hose?

Are your spark plugs black and or wet?

Come on mate. I know your tuner may not be helping you which is a dog act. However, try and sort some of the basics before blowing your top.

If you have already done all of this then please continue.

[Nismo 3.2ish]

He is pissed because the bloke wants $500 to unlock the ECU so he can do whatever he wants to do with his car ?

I was saying if they lock your ECU and NOT give you the password when you move on to another shop, or in this case buy a car and the bloke wants to rob you to unlock the ECU, it would be good to know your rights.

I understood that if I get my ECU unlocked there would be no warranty on my motor build. I said that was OK with me, BUT if the ECU was not accessed by anyone else the original work Warranty stood. It would be hard to prove why your donk went POP and harder to get it fixed under any warranty.

I reckon you should be given the password with your work invoice with the shops stipulations listed, then sign it.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

At the end of the day tuner's see it as intellectual property and prefer not to share their tunes, similar can be said about euro cars. All the tune files are encrypted and tuning shops push encrypted tunes into their customer cars (if using the stock ECU).

But for a tuner to demand that kind of money, just bring it to another shop get them to reset the ECU, load up a similar tune and tweak it to suit your mods.

Or what ECU and mods do you have? just reset the farking thing and I can put together base map for you to get the car drivable and to the shops to buy a slab of beer.

[Jhols1]

Hadouken

The problem has been found, and I have ordered a replacement part already, after quite a lot of time trying to find the problem.

Nizmo 3.2ish

Listen to this guy, he gets why I'm pissed off.

The previous owner did not ask for the computer to be password protected, nor did the tuner disclose to him that he put a password on it.

Motor has been built from ground up, also running a t04 turbo, about 600-650hp at all wheels.

I will be having a new tune installed by my tuner in the near future

[Hadouken]

The password part I totally agree with and which is ridiculous. That is not what I was expressing.

[Nismo 3.2ish]

At the end of the day tuner's see it as intellectual property and prefer not to share their tunes, similar can be said about euro cars. All the tune files are encrypted and tuning shops push encrypted tunes into their customer cars (if using the stock ECU).

But for a tuner to demand that kind of money, just bring it to another shop get them to reset the ECU, load up a similar tune and tweak it to suit your mods.

Or what ECU and mods do you have? just reset the farking thing and I can put together base map for you to get the car drivable and to the shops to buy a slab of beer.

So the next tuner can just reset the ECU and start from scratch , I cannot see any problem with that.

I thought the ECU was locked and you could not access it to do a new tune, if you can reset it I guess you could have more than one tune in there, but once you change your setup the old tune would be useless anyway ?

Read this. pasted it and it makes sense

Occasionally tuners ask me if we can lock the tunes in the ECU. I tell them "no", because what happens in 99% of cases is that the customer believes they are buying a programmable ECU, and so if the tuner installs and tunes the ECU and then locks it, I can just predict that I'll get a barrage of requests from people to unlock the ECU so they can "just adjust the thermofan settings" or whatever. If I tell them to go back to the tuner, then the tuner will want to charge them to do this, and it isn't really my vision of building products to help enthusiasts get the most out of their project cars.

Some tuners say that they want to do this because if some clown adjusts the tune because they think they can do better, and blows the engine up, then they can load the original map back in and take it back to the tuner and say that their tune is responsible for the engine blowing up. However this isn't a case for locking the tune, this is only a case for providing auditability (to see which, if any, settings had been changed and on which dates - so they can work out whether to honour the claim or not).

Other tuners say that they have spent thousands of man-hours generating this perfect tune and only charged the customer 2 hours of dyno time to tidy it up, and they don't want these thousands of man-hours getting into other tuners' hands - but in reality what are they going to see? Fuel and ignition maps that are going to be slightly different for every engine anyway (as we are in the field of modified cars, they are all different)? I think the most you could expect to learn would be a starting point of what kind of ignition timing this engine wants. Maybe some things like idle control settings because they DO take a long time to get perfect for a street car, but to be honest the tuners that ask about this generally do not seem to be the ones that will do this.

I have heard the argument made that you need to be able to lock the ECU on an emissions controlled vehicle (in Australia), but there's nothing in the ADRs that requires this, and we all know that you can retune a lot of factory cars and obviously they are compliant with the ADRs.

I don't know what the legal situation is with if the tuner MUST unlock the tune if the customer requests it, or if they would only need to do that if they didn't explain to the customer that they would lock the tune - my gut feeling is that the "reasonable man" argument would favour the customer - ie the reasonable customer would assume that if they were paying for a tune, this would not be locked.

So in principle as you can tell, I'm against it. The fact that Microtech and Haltech offer it doesn't really affect my opinion. However Motec, which I respect greatly, do offer this locking function, and unlike Haltech, you need to return the Motec ECU to Motec Europe, USA or Australia for them to unlock the ECU and revert it to factory settings. With Haltech any user can do that themselves. If Motec do it then they must have reasons, either that I haven't listed above, or they disagree with my counter arguments to them.

[Hadouken]

Back on topic then.

Op did you do anything to find what was wrong? Or are you going with the tune is shit and that's why the car won't start?

[Jhols1]

Yes, my mechanic, my tuner and myself spent hours looking and testing before we found the problem.

I never said that the tune was shit or that it was the reason for the problem.

What I was up in arms about is the fact that I own the car and the computer but cannot acces it (not even for diagnostics), and also having Southside dynos trying to extort money out of me for.

[Ben C34]

What was wrong with the car?

New tuner creates new tune from scratch. Which is always better than reworking someone else's work, people do things different and that can be of overlooked when modifying someone else's work.

What's the actual problem here?

[Ben C34]

And to put some perspective to the matter, you own alot of things but don't have access to all of the information relating to everything or ability to adjust all settings.

[75coupe]

I say get over it and reset ecu and get a new tune done... Whats the problem?

It is intellectual info really