How can I unlock a PCM

[Delco]

Unlocking the chip mechanically is easy , do it the same way we used to tune all chips.

Desolder it from the board , put it in a eprom programmer , reprogram the chip.

The thing most people forget is every tune is locked from the factory , in the old days us tuners had to work out how to unlock the calibrations , nowdays thatns to EFILIVE all the hard work is done for us .

So in effect your PCM isnt "LOCKED" to a proffesional tuner , just harder to access.

My how we have got lazy and expect everything to be handed to us on a silver plater these days , I suppose it is the way of society demanding this and that - I see it in my son lately and cant say I like the attitude of todays youth.

I think we better buy Ross and Paul a few beers for that

[dirt_track_racer_81]

another reason why i can agree with locking a pcm is if you tune a customers vehicle and the owner of the vehicle also has efi live or hp and thinks they can tune better than me and and ends up doing some damage to the motor and coming back to me saying im a bad tuner and his motor blew up because of my bad tune..

[ls1vt209]

Nothing like digging up an old thread.

But I think that locking tunes is a pain in the butt and it is bull that people are just trying to protect their work from being used by someone other than them.

The problem I have recently come across is a mate bought a car from interstate (Some 1500km away). The car has a slight problem at idle and stalls at unwanted and sometimes dangerous times. I have logged the car and the problem appears to be tune related. Now the company that tuned the car has locked the PCM. So therefore he has to either do a 3000km return trip/remove the PCM and send it back to them to most likely have a stock tune put in it and returned to him unlocked or get another PCM and start all over again, either way this is going to see his car off the road, a great inconvenience to him.

What a dead set pain in the a... I have no problem if I could get into the tune of fixing the few parameters that need to be changed, problem solved in about 10 minutes but because it is locked I can't.

Another problem I see is that if the shop that tuned it closed down etc how do you get unlocked other than sending it to someone like Delco. What if the current owner was the third owner since the car had been tuned and locked, same problem as above.

Anyway the real problem is the tune/car could have been fixed in less than half an hour had the tune not be locked, now it is going to cost the owner more money and time to get the problem resolved.

End rant.

[4wheelin]

I just had to do the same thing, a customer had cold running and part throttle woes on a cammed LS1 VT Clubsport and I had to fit our changeover ECU do a full tune and now I have to get his unlocked to put back on the shelf.
There is the question of intellectual property ownership, in Australia my understanding is the employer owns it, just as if a software developer develops a piece of software while in the employ of a software company, the company owns the software and the employee who may have written the material would be breaking the law if they were to reproduce it for another employer.

Joel

[macca_779]

The thing I find with locking is that its just an inconvenience to the new tuner. As far as protecting intellectual property goes locking doesn't stop that at all. The core data that a tuner holds close, ie a spark table can be logged and built into a MAP anyway.

[ls1vt209]

The thing I find with locking is that its just an inconvenience to the new tuner. As far as protecting intellectual property goes locking doesn't stop that at all. The core data that a tuner holds close, ie a spark table can be logged and built into a MAP anyway.

Totally agree macca, only takes a decent log to get an idea of spark tables etc with a decent map.

As I said this could have been a simple 10 minute fix instead of being a severe inconvenience for the owner.

The whole idea of intellectual property is total and utter BS. It is the same thing as your image out in public. You don't own your image and therefore can legally be photographed (Children aside) and there is nothing that can be done about it (Unless a court has ruled otherwise). Same as a tune IMO, once you leave the shop that did the tune it is your property (The owner of the PCM) plain and simple.

I would like to test the whole intellectual ownership in a Court however have neither the time or patience atm.

[drdarthinvader]

newbee here: i can see in the future cival law suits to determin the intellectual property rights ......

[4wheelin]

Whether you copy, modify, or change software written by another author without express permission you are risking breaching copywrite law, you can log spark and AFR tables but that dosen't make it leagle.

JOel

[RacerChris]

Whether you copy, modify, or change software written by another author without express permission you are risking breaching copywrite law, you can log spark and AFR tables but that dosen't make it leagle.

JOel

Im not sure how it is in other states or countries but in Missouri USA, the guy who wrote the tune would have little IF ANY, legal limb to stand on trying to go after someone who modifies his/her tune based on the fact that he/she (the tuner) did the same malicious act to GM and the original programmers. To pursue the law you have to be operating within the laws limits.
I can see both sides of this story (and it is a good one), I do feel that someone who invents a way of doing something, epecialy when your talking about tuning, should have the right to protect what they did. On the other hand I completely agree that the tuner has no right to lock the customer out of his/her own PCM. I dont believe in all of these examples because they apply little if any at all. A house is not a PCM!
Another side to this is that in most jusrisdictions we are all breaking the law by tunning. We are knowingly and willfuly breaking the protection codes of GM to look at their software and modify it. YES IT IS AGAINST THE LAW!!! Its even further against the law for the profesional tuner who is making money off of it. (Talk about copyright infrigement)
The only reason you dont hear stories of GM taking people to court is because its bad business. They understand that the vehicle owners are buying there equipment because they want to go fast. They also know that the majority of these people want to go faster and will do so by modding which will eventually require tunning. GM also understands that when people do this they make there car faster which in turn sells itself... How many times have you heard of someone seeing a car take-off from a light and then say something like... "Wow! I gotta buy me a Camaro, Vette GTO, ect." If any manufacturer started pursuing these people a few things would happen. First... The car lobby's would jump there ass and give them a ton of bad publicity, 2nd.... Loyal lovers of that brand would begine to backlash against them and probably boycot them entirely, 3rd.... There vehicles would start seriously loosing when it came to aftermarket speed and add-ons, last.... Sales would slump due to boycoting, and why would a performance enthousiast want to buy something that looses to everything that has a $50.00 bolt-on???
Also... Another reason you dont see manufactures going after tuners is because the manufactures didnt write the codes to keep joe shmoe out, they wrote them to keep out the other manufactures long enough for there product to gain dominance in the market for that particular yearor model change.

Want to see a legal battle???? Break GM's code and then go to another manufacturer and sell it to them. YOU WILL BE SUED! AND YOU WILL LOOSE!!!

Wow.... Sorry for the long post but theres my 2 cents!

[The Alchemist]

As a follow professional tuner Macca I totally agree with your statement.

1: its a real pain in the arse for the new second owner who lives in another town from the "locker" if you need work done by a local tuner. We have a real problem with a couple of tuners in Auckland who do this all the time WITHOUT THE PERSONS EXPRESS PERMISSION. Thats fine they just automatically loose their customers when they find out
2: a decent log made and a few dyno runs for timing or road drives for fuel trims reveals all anyway....or sometimes reveals very little in the way of work done if you know what I mean ...
A classic is just grab the entire timing curve, add 2 degs and reflash or then theres the "grab the entire timing curve from about 3000rpm across and about 0.56g/s down type in 24 degs and flat line the timing" ?????? WTF !!!! Sometimes the intellectual property, if you can call it that, isn't worth having even if it was free!!!!

Mike

The thing I find with locking is that its just an inconvenience to the new tuner. As far as protecting intellectual property goes locking doesn't stop that at all. The core data that a tuner holds close, ie a spark table can be logged and built into a MAP anyway.