The trials of NC tuning...

Sailor · Postby **Sailor** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 4:51 pm

A word of caution..

It seems that an Oz NC tuner with associations with one of the US tuners has managed to get a tune for an Australian supercharged NC.
The tune was then sent back to the US and installed on a car there.
Fortunately the tune was no good in the US and the vehicle owner contacted my tuner for help.
This is when the tune was recognised as being from an Oz car.
Fortunately it was not the lastest load based 3bar MAP tune in which my tuner has invested a lot of time and money in sorting.

I was asked by my tuner if anyone here had connected to my car and admitted that this had happened once.
Suspicion then fell upon me as the person who had connected to my car has affiliations with a US tuner, a competitor to my guy.

The incident has seriously compromised my relations with my tuner and it now appears that I and Australia will be denied access to
these amazing totally knock free tunes.

I'm pissed..he's pissed and we FI NC owners as a whole will lose out.

BEWARE !!!!

bruce · Postby **bruce** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 5:04 pm

Comes back to who owns the coding (he does). Whether he should have encrypted it or something.
I think you may have voided any warranty, etc by letting someone else plug in.

Sailor · Postby **Sailor** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 5:19 pm

Indeed...It may be regarded as theft of intellectual property.
Apparently there are ways of scanning the code in similar cases and identifying similarities...over a certain percentage and the codes will be regarded as the same.

AFA allowing another to connect to my car...well we don't know that it was MY car but suspicion runs high.
Indeed f it was mine then it was a matter of urgency in an attempt to fix a problem that made the car undriveable from a trackday

Regie · Postby **Regie** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:40 pm

very low act there.

This will have a major impact to the FI NC owners outside of the US.

Magpie · Postby **Magpie** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:26 pm

So Sailor was it you or not, simple question? Tell your tuner who connected to your car and let him do some investigation sorting this out may help others. However I have no idea the market size for supercharged NC's running that tune. If it was not a deliberate act then your tuner should be more understanding and possibly require people to sign an IP agreement to not allow any other person to connect to the ECU after he has does his thing.

Penalising the WHOLE of Australia is a drastic step, but it is his business and his right to protect his IP.

Did you pay anybody for the "it was a matter of urgency in an attempt to fix a problem that made the car undriveable from a trackday" statement? If so who was it, if not who was it?

Postby **NitroDann** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:08 pm

Can't everyone just get the tune from the other guy now?

Doesn't that solve the tune problem for the nc community?

Postby **Deckspeed Racing** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:00 pm

Sailor wrote:A word of caution..

It seems that an Oz NC tuner with associations with one of the US tuners has managed to get a tune for an Australian supercharged NC.
The tune was then sent back to the US and installed on a car there.
Fortunately the tune was no good in the US and the vehicle owner contacted my tuner for help.
This is when the tune was recognised as being from an Oz car.
Fortunately it was not the lastest load based 3bar MAP tune in which my tuner has invested a lot of time and money in sorting.

I was asked by my tuner if anyone here had connected to my car and admitted that this had happened once.
Suspicion then fell upon me as the person who had connected to my car has affiliations with a US tuner, a competitor to my guy.

The incident has seriously compromised my relations with my tuner and it now appears that I and Australia will be denied access to
these amazing totally knock free tunes.

I'm pissed..he's pissed and we FI NC owners as a whole will lose out.

BEWARE !!!!

I assume your talking about the track day at eastern creek when I plugged my laptop into your car to check the fault code that you where having with TPS ? If so some clarification is required.
1. On ecutek files you can't simply plug in and read someone else's tune files they are encrypted to each individual tuner, the only way it can be done is to perform a rom dump ,send it to ecutek in the UK and ask them to unlock it , I've never tried to do this but I believe they won,t unlock a file that you did not create.
2. I DID NOT PERFORM A ROM DUMP ON YOUR CAR I ONLY READ THE FAULT CODES YOU STOOD BEHIND ME AND WATCHED ME DO IT.
3. Prior to purchasing the ECUTECK software I dealt with tuners in the U.S, after lunching 2 race engines on there tunes I realised the U.S wasn't the place to get tunes from and brought the process in house, I've not lost an engine since and I'am getting good speed out of the cars, so I have zero interest in acquiring any U.S tune files.
4.Under ECUTEK agreements you are only allowed to sell tunes in your own market, because of volume and market size U.S tuners pay much less than we do for there licences, I have complained to ECUTEK about this , There response to this was to warn Jay and others about selling outside there market , this might explain more about why they are weary about dealing with you and are giving you misleading information, They risk losing there ECUTEK packages by dealing with you.
5.Your living in GAGA land if you believe someone on the other side of the world can tune your car without putting it on a dyno in real time, the best minds in the world can't find a missing air liner. What hope has a chiropractor got of tunning your car in his spare time via remote control from the other side of the world.
I have forwarded this post to ECUTEK to reinforce the problem we have with off-shore tuners , so thankyou for putting it up.

Daniel

Guy_Coles · Postby **Guy_Coles** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:25 am

In light of this thread, I think that it's important to clarify a few points from an Information Security perspective, given that a tune is effectively "Data"

While I don't have an ECU TECH programming suite to play with, there is one critical thing that Daniel has raised here and that is Encryption. If the Tunes were unencrypted then yes they could easily be copied. If the tunes were unencrypted, I would be reluctant to use them because the programmers are pretty amateur by not protecting the IP of their agents.

Assuming that the tunes are encrypted, there is no possible way that they could be unencrypted and distributed with any ease. True, encryption can be cracked but even basic 1024 bit encryption takes over a hundred years to brute force and I doubt that anyone in the tuning industry would have the advanced computing power to reduce this.

Another thing to consider is that from my experience, most software like this is usually dongle dríven, in that it needs a piece of unique hardware to make the software work. This dongle has a unique fingerprint of key that identifies the licensed user of that software. If your tune has been cracked (unbelievably unlikely if encrypted) and then distributed, then the unique ID of the distributor would be embedded in that tune. Normally the data is maintained in a database at the software author.

Rob, I'd be contacting ECU Tech and asking them to validate the tuner's claim that your tune has been stolen, I'll bet you that ECU Tech can't validate the tuner's claims.

Sailor · Postby **Sailor** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:04 pm

I have asked my tuner to look at and answer the questions raised.

He is after all the one drawing conclusions from his suspicions.

As far as the use of overseas tuners goes.
When the supercharger kits for the NC were first introduced the old Sniper system just didn't cut it and engines were lost overseas.

The Ecutek system was adopted and tunes were better but hardly good. These were sourced from the US and installed by local tuners.
They were never right with engines running badly and apparently on the cusp of destruction.
Even Deckspeed lost normally aspirated race engines. Can you imagine how the FI engines were faring with some cars not dríven for fear of damage.
My kit sat in the garage for nearly TWO years while I waited for a solution.

The owners of these local cars were not happy with the response from local tuners who were led I'm sure by the OS tuners
These owners went looking elsewhere and found OS tuners who managed very quickly to sort the problems and indeed even get Supercharged NCs through emissions testing
leading to full engineering compliance.
Once these contacts were forged they are difficult to give up.

We now have OS tuners delving further into the NC ECU breaking new ground in tuning methods, delivering features not considered possible with an OEM ECU.
RaceRom with launch control, rev matching on downshift, multiple tune maps and valet mode, soft cut rev limiting and now the introduction of a flex fuel option.
Yes, local tuners can provide some of these features but because they aren't at the cutting edge, they lag behind.
We spend a lot of money on our cars and cutting edge is where we get the benefits. I for one have been waiting years for Flex fueling.

Postby **NitroDann** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:15 pm

I cant believe anyone would advocate locking tunes. Its just a step behind for the entire scene. Its so catty.

Dann

Magpie · Postby **Magpie** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:35 pm

Locking tunes prevents IP loss as well as protects a revenue stream. R&D is a gamble hence protection through IP/copyright/patent laws is needed.

The IP to the head in my car belongs to MX5 Plus, hence I would not allow the car to be worked on by anybody else, this protects both parties. The same as I would not let anybody plug into my ECU without first asking MX5 Plus.

Postby **NitroDann** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:37 pm

I just don't agree, basically. Its a step backwards for the advancement of tuning for all of us.

Dann

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 3:41 pm

I used to think the same as you Dann. And in the case of say a standalone ecu where the the setup and tune is done from scratch then I believe the IP is the car owners. As they paid for the full work, most of the r and d is in the ecu which is paid for.

Flash tunes seem to have a lot of energy invested in working the factory ecu out and the tune applied is mainly an adaption of pre done work. In this case I can see why ip is needing to be protected.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

zossy1 · Postby **zossy1** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 3:45 pm

NitroDann wrote:I just don't agree, basically. Its a step backwards for the advancement of tuning for all of us.

Dann

Sounds like the automotive equivalent to the Linux vs. Microsoft view.

Or perhaps the Marx vs. Thatcher view.

Magpie · Postby **Magpie** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 4:26 pm

Why do F1 cars protect the IP of their cars? Why was Australia II's keel kept secret.

An aftermarket car tune is specific to that vehicle and there is no guarantee that it will work in a similar car. Would you as a tuner want somebody copying your knowledge and experience and not paying for it.

I guess mega squirt is the Linux equivalent of computer operating system. Mega squirt is a DIY community and hence it would be expected for sharing to happen. However I doubt somebody like GT Auto would appreciate somebody giving away one of their tunes.