Atlantic
Motorsports in Washington Post
"Grease
Monkeys Become Tech Junkies"
Taylor Chamberlin works at a specialty garage in Gaithersburg
and recently coaxed so much power out of his own Ford
truck that it couldn't run on a rainy street for spinning
its wheels. But he's not a mechanic and he seldom
gets his hands dirty.
"I'm a computer nerd," Chamberlin said.
Guys who would have been banging under the hood with
oily wrenches a generation ago are now more likely
to work their magic with lines of software and a serial
cable. The goal is the same -- to wring as much speed
as possible out of an automobile -- but the computerization
of cars has permanently changed what it means to work
on your car.
Components that were once purely mechanical -- brakes,
steering, suspension -- are now either electronic
or controlled by computers. It's still possible to
spend a Sunday afternoon tinkering on your Lexus in
the driveway, if by tinkering you mean changing the
oil. Otherwise, most home mechanics are restricted
to cosmetic changes, such as installing a new sound
system or putting light-up dragon heads on the wiper
fluid nozzles. Almost anything that makes a car perform
better is going to involve electronics.
"It has come a long way since the days of using
a handful of wrenches and a screwdriver. It's amazing
to see what these computer chips can do," said
Peter MacGillivray of the Specialty Equipment Market
Association, a trade group for companies that make
auto accessories.
Car culture, in a sense, has become less democratic,
harder for the average person to participate in with
just some tools and spare time.
"I think it's going to hurt the hobby eventually,"
said Jon Bill, archivist for the Auburn Cord Duesenberg
Museum in Auburn, Ind., and author of several books
on vintage cars. Bill can handle anything on his '53
Ford, but when his late-model Jaguar wouldn't start
one morning, he popped the hood and realized he had
no idea what to do with the various cables and computer
boxes staring back at him.
"I was, 'Gah, I'm helpless!' There was nothing
to do other than call a dealer," he said.
Laptops are standard around Atlantic Motorsports,
where Chamberlin works when he's not studying at George
Mason University. Today's automobiles are packed with
about a thousand times as much computing power as
was in the Apollo moon landers, according to the Alliance
of Automobile Manufacturers. Computer chips run more
than 86 percent of the systems in an average vehicle,
according to the alliance. Modifying them can ruin
a car as quickly as juice it up, but if you know how,
you can reprogram controls such as timing and air/fuel
ratio to milk more power out of an engine.
The technology may annoy purists, but it hits the
sweet spot for a generation of teenagers who learned
about cars from video games such as Grand Turismo
or Need for Speed. Marry the lust for hotter computer
graphics to the classic urge for faster wheels and
the result is a new type of hot rod culture.
It's not called hot rodding anymore, though; it's
"tuning." Magazines such as Super Street
and Import Tuner are crammed with ads for computer
chips and central processors alongside wheel rims
and turbochargers. One company even advertises a way
of converting a Nintendo Game Boy into a car diagnostic
device. Many tuners focus on Asian imports such as
the Honda Civic, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution or Subaru
WRX -- which for relatively little investment can
produce as much speed with six- or even four-cylinder
engines as the hulking V-8 muscle cars of the "Dukes
of Hazzard" generation.
"The average commuter car is a much more refined
product than it was 10 years ago," said Albert
Ennulat, who runs the automotive technology program
at the Gudelsky Institute at Montgomery College. "A
lot of equipment is required to do appropriate jobs
today that the homeowner is not going to have in his
garage."
In the old days, he said, boosting performance might
mean simply bolting on a turbocharger to make the
engine more powerful. Today, that won't help the car
without also reprogramming computer code to accommodate
the new equipment. All those precision electronic
controls have also changed mechanical systems, he
said, making them so delicately machined that driveway
mechanics shouldn't fool with them.
Some advances have eliminated the need for tinkering.
Twenty years ago, a home mechanic might swap out a
standard suspension system in favor of something stiffer,
to improve handling around corners. Many modern cars
have electronically controlled suspensions that can
change at the flip of a switch.
"I don't know about all that stuff. That's all
fresh and new to me," said Sam Chi, 59, who spent
years as an auto mechanic in the 1970s and '80s. He
drove a powerful Delta 88 back in those days, and
dreamed of owning a Datsun 280Z. Now his son Dan,
17, has a Lancer Evolution with modifications Sam
Chi can't begin to understand.
Dan's car was already a monster when he and his parents
bought it last November. But while the high school
junior insists he is a responsible driver who would
never take risks with his beloved car, he wanted more
power.
"I think making modifications is kind of like
an addiction," Dan Chi said. "When you feel
fast, you get used to it. You want that feeling of
being even faster, of, like, the G-forces pushing
you back in your seat and stuff."
Using his dad's old tools, Dan was able to install
a new air intake on his own. But to make the computer
and hardware changes that allowed his engine to jump
from nearly 300 horsepower to nearly 400, Dan sold
a collection of vintage Nike sneakers for cash and
paid a professional.
That's because fiddling with the electronic brain
is risky. Crash the electronic control unit, or ECU,
and it can easily cost more than $1,000 to replace.
Enter the wrong performance instructions and the whole
engine could burn up. Even properly readjusted engines
will have a shorter life span because they wind up
working harder. And modifying the computer system
is likely to void parts of the manufacturer's warranty.
Carmakers don't exactly encourage the phenomenon,
but some don't discourage it, either. Much of Mitsubishi
Motors Corp.'s U.S. reputation rests on the performance
possibilities of the Lancer Evolution, known as the
Evo. "It kind of works both ways. We want them
to be excited about the car, and we know they're going
to do some things. But by the same token they have
to be aware that modifications will do certain things
to part of their warranties," said Janis Little,
a Mitsubishi spokeswoman.
She denied a rumor, circulating a few weeks ago on
Internet chat groups, that Mitsubishi was trolling
online to identify and somehow punish Evo owners who
reprogram their cars. In fact, she said, the company
has given a handful of Evos to performance shops in
California so they can retune them, and it takes the
cars around to youth-oriented auto shows.
The trend has caused a shift in the industry for
auto performance accessories. While the total performance
equipment market has stayed around $5 billion a year,
more of that total is made up of computer-related
gear, said MacGillivray of the Specialty Equipment
Market Association.
New types of auto suppliers have emerged, such as
GIAC of Irvine, Calif., which describes itself as
a "software engineering company" that rewrites
computer programs for European performance cars. Its
slogan: "For people who need MORE."
Chris Coulter of Curry's Auto Service Inc. in Northern
Virginia uses GIAC routinely. On a recent weekday,
Coulter, 36, had to reprogram the computer on a client's
Volkswagen New Beetle.
First, Coulter plugged his laptop into a computer
port under the VW's dashboard and downloaded the car's
basic operating information. He e-mailed that to GIAC,
which automatically e-mailed back a new software suite
for the car, along with a "key" that allowed
Coulter to use the file only for that one paying customer.
Then Coulter loaded the new file into the VW, which
took less than 10 minutes.
Coulter, who has a college degree in economics and
management, is vice president for operations for Curry's;
such reprogramming -- called "flashing"
when it involves swapping software, or "chipping"
if it involves replacing a car's computer chip --
is the only service work he performs.
"I wanted to do it personally to make sure everything
worked," he said, given that the consequences
of making a mistake could cost the shop significant
money.
A few hitches marred the Beetle flashing -- the computer
mysteriously quit in the middle of the process, but
restarted without further trouble -- and when Coulter
was done he took the car for a test drive. For a total
cost of about $750, the customer was getting about
a 45 horsepower boost from the new software, as well
as a device to allow him to switch back and forth
between ordinary settings and the juiced-up program.
Coulter, a trained race driver, backed the car out
of the Dulles-area garage and pulled onto a nearly
deserted road in the rain. He didn't bother to turn
on the windshield wipers, and as soon as he punched
the accelerator, it was clear he didn't need to: Rain
droplets streamed off the glass as the little car
seemed to climb straight up, hitting 80 mph in a breathless
few seconds before slowing again.
Though he's done it countless times, Coulter smiled
and shook his head in disbelief. "And that,"
he said, "is a little 1.8-liter engine."
Flashed in a few minutes, and he didn't even get his
hands dirty.
