eightsmokinbarrels Wrote:Bruton Wrote:Also the invention of CANbus has slowed the home DIY'ers down with newer cars so even the simplest things like changing headlights has made things harder and more expensive.
Has it bollocks! 1 in 3 Mercs in the Middle East that used to come through our place were modified, if anything the electronic age has made a lot of areas easier to modify...
i think i partially agree with andy here. just as an example, a friend recently wanted to change his alternator for a much bigger unit. he had sat at home a 250amp alternator with an intelligent off-board regulator. he simply could not use either as the engine management on his audi would not allow it. currently he is stuck with the standard charging circuit, with is only capable of charging lead acid batteries & does no where near the current he really requires.
eightsmokinbarrels Wrote:Has it bollocks! 1 in 3 Mercs in the Middle East that used to come through our place were modified, if anything the electronic age has made a lot of areas easier to modify
Anyone that has actually worked on mercs would know that even the most simple of faults will bring on the Engine warning light ABS light ESP light etc, even the battery being disconnected will put a supply voltage fault in 80% of ecu's on the vehicle so modding them is very difficult especially when you dont have equipment like Star or the like to keep removing the fault that is stored, so your DIY'er wont want to pay someone like me £40 to clear the faults or take it to Merc and spend £100+ to clear the faults or chuck £6500 on dignostic equipment.
Altering ECU map characteristics is the easy part I change them daily and have been known to use a nintendo DS to download the dump to the vehicle but there is very little scope on newer vehicles to alter anything.
Headlights have ECU's controling them nowadays so altering a Xenon system for eg is gonna throw body computers into shutdown.
The new genereation of BMW's have computers controlling the amplifiers for the stereo which in turn is controled by a body computer so if you go altereing the spec on amps etc the body computer shuts down and in my experience a lot of the time also shuts the light control module down.
New Peugeots no longer have a switched 15 feed as it is all CANbus controled so adding a none stock stereo is going to put a drain on the battery unless you have a way of tapping into the CAN system to get the unit to power down.
Older vehicles are of course easily modified but getting hold of a good chassis that hasnt seen the test of council sodium being chucked allover the place.
Youve either got to be very clever with microprocessor and digital electronics these days or have money to pay someone to do things on new vehicles.
Bruton Wrote:Anyone that has actually worked on mercs would know that even the most simple of faults will bring on the Engine warning light
If not done properly yeah, there's ways round it. Oh, I'm a factory trained Merc maintenance, systems and diagnostic technician and ran the workshop for the only dealer in Bahrain..........I know all about "actually working on them". You'll not win a willy waving contest on that subject, ta.
I reckon as far as tuning goes I've done all manner of bits and bobs and I'd much rather fit a stand-alone ecu and visit a rolling road than pull the engine and start swapping pistons and working out cam profiles.
The new Nissan GT-R is a perfect example, Nissan supposedly made it inpenetrable to the after market with various different bits of electronic trickery...low and behold within a few months Mines, Top Secret and Amuse have all found ways around it and have engine and chassis tuning packages available. Once the car's been out a while these software mods will be no doubt cheaper than buying a Garret or HKS turbo for an older Skyline to attain the same output. Same price, same outcome, just a different method.
Yeah so changing to aftermarket stereos and headlights is hard, who wants to ponce around with those anyway? Body mods, brakes, suspension, engine tuning are no different on a car whether it's new or old really. To lower something like a new W221 S-Class takes 10 minutes to install a Brabus chip to the AIRmatic unit; an older car takes heating up rusty bolts, jacking the car up and swapping springs....which method would you rather go with? Yeah you disconnect the battery, but all you'll get is a stored undervoltage fault...there'll be no lights on in that respect, and if the ESP light does come on it's a doddle to extinguish. More's the point though, as already covered, people with money to spend on new cars wouldn't think twice about nipping in somewhere to have something installed or an ecu reset anyway.
To suggest modern cars are causing a decline in modding is lunacy, there's still a million cars out there that can be modified in a million different ways. Yeah some things are hard to do on modern cars, others are easy.....exactly the same as modding an older model. Whoever said it was a piece of piss to mod a car???
No D! Its not dying. You're just getting old and growing out of it. lol
Like i said to dave yesterday, the scene has mad e a big change this last year or so, but the shows havent kept up with that change..
If there was a dwyb and a track or drag strip at every show then they'd always be rammed, always!
D you have to attend the shows to see if its dying
Alanman Wrote:No D! Its not dying. You're just getting old and growing out of it. lol
you need to teach me how you do it then
nez Wrote:D you have to attend the shows to see if its dying
agreed and once my shop has sold ill be available more
yeah man always missing the D