Plan on paying the dealership a lot more - no tuners anytime soon

[offcamber]

I've been seeing some posts on FB from friends who work for Jeep dealerships and talked to another friend on the phone who is a Chrysler/Jeep powertrain mechanic. Don't expect to buy a programmer to change your own tire size or anything else anytime soon. 2018 Jeeps have the new Security Gateway Module that encrypts everything coming and going through the OBDII port. Jeep is banking on this as for a dealer to make a change such as tire size, transfer case ratio, etc, they have to pay FCA for the changes. It's apparently billed by FCA to the dealer when they make changes. No idea of the amount, but FCA sees this as a revenue opportunity so you probably won't get any freebies or any deep discounts on the service. The tool that dealers use to make changes through the SGM has to connect to FCA's servers to make the changes. Don't expect a Procal or Supertuner Traildash for the JL anytime soon.

This is all the result of the wifi hacking that was done a while back that has forced car manufacturers to secure them behind their own firewalls.

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[johnnyp26]

Yup it will be a short term problem but from what I've heard a solution is expected at some point this year. The dealers are apparently charging $125 for the reprogram from what a dealership employee told me.

 

[Karl_in_Chicago]

I've been seeing some posts on FB from friends who work for Jeep dealerships and talked to another friend on the phone who is a Chrysler/Jeep powertrain mechanic. Don't expect to buy a programmer to change your own tire size or anything else anytime soon. 2018 Jeeps have the new Security Gateway Module that encrypts everything coming and going through the OBDII port. Jeep is banking on this as for a dealer to make a change such as tire size, transfer case ratio, etc, they have to pay FCA for the changes. It's apparently billed by FCA to the dealer when they make changes. No idea of the amount, but FCA sees this as a revenue opportunity so you probably won't get any freebies or any deep discounts on the service. The tool that dealers use to make changes through the SGM has to connect to FCA's servers to make the changes. Don't expect a Procal or Supertuner Traildash for the JL anytime soon.

This is all the result of the wifi hacking that was done a while back that has forced car manufacturers to secure them behind their own firewalls.

Makes one wonder what all that crap was at the reveal about changing tires and having the vehicle automatically adjust (or something similar to that effect). Now I was never convinced that it would be magic (hey, Joe put on new tires, let me adjust the speedo for him! said no car ever) but that maybe they'd have a simple interface that allowed the owner to punch in a tire size change.

 

[offcamber]

Yup it will be a short term problem but from what I've heard a solution is expected at some point this year. The dealers are apparently charging $125 for the reprogram from what a dealership employee told me.

It's going to be very hard to work around this for the aftermarket. The requirement for a server side authentication on changes (there is apparently a network port near the OBDII port)will make it really hard if not impossible for something like a plug-in tuner to work. Even the little OBDII scanners may find it difficult to work, and they definitely will no longer be able to clear codes.

 

[mdelzer]

The Tesla Model 3 can do this. I think when it senses new TPMS sensors it uses that to trigger an option on the UI for the driver to select between 18" and 19" wheels, which are the 2 factory size options. It then forces a recalibration period for the Auto-Pilot.

 

[offcamber]

I have no doubt Jeep COULD do that, but why would they if they could make money charging for those changes? A HUGE number of Jeeps run larger than stock tires, heck most probably do. FCA's strategy this year seems to be to capture much more of the aftermarket revenue and this is an easy way to secure it for them.

 

[word302]

Jump to conclusions much?

 

[Cwu21]

If that were the case I bet somebody some where will eventually sue the hell out of FCA
“You mean to tell me I purchase a 50k vehicle and I don’t own The rights to tune my own Jeep? You can speak to my lawyer”

I bet would go down something like that.

From what people are saying 100-125 cost, doesn’t seem like a huge revenue stream for them to want to take on the head ache of dealing with pissed of Owners that aren’t able to get their own cars tuned the way they want.

 

[johnnyp26]

Seems like a reasonable charge to do this.

For 10-15 minutes of work? To me that is absurd, if I had any relationship with my dealer I'd fight that for sure. If it was an hour job I'd be fine with it, but according to a tech I know it's 15 minutes tops.

 

[on--belay]

Well, I guess I sell the FlashPaq now. I really will only switch between my 32" snows and my 33.5" summer tires, so both close enough to stock that I can just use an iPhone speedo app to check how far I am off and accommodate for that until something comes out in the long run. I'm not going to pay the dealer twice a year to make such a small change.

 

[offcamber]

I guess I'm looking more at what they do for you rather than how long it takes. The equipment needed I'm sure doesn't come cheap.

No, you CAN do it yourself.You just have to purchase the tool from them and pay the thousands of $$$ per month subscription service to use it...

 

[Karl_in_Chicago]

The Tesla Model 3 can do this. I think when it senses new TPMS sensors it uses that to trigger an option on the UI for the driver to select between 18" and 19" wheels, which are the 2 factory size options. It then forces a recalibration period for the Auto-Pilot.

I guess for those people that change tires AND TPMS together. For the many people that are just mounting new tires onto existing rims and existing TPMS this wouldn't do much for them

 

[Karl_in_Chicago]

I have no doubt Jeep COULD do that, but why would they if they could make money charging for those changes? A HUGE number of Jeeps run larger than stock tires, heck most probably do. FCA's strategy this year seems to be to capture much more of the aftermarket revenue and this is an easy way to secure it for them.

This presumes that Jeep gets a taste of what the dealers charge customers for such reprogramming. That doesn't ring true for me.

 

[Troybilt]

1st off no one said that jeep will automatically adjust to different tier sizes.

2nd how long do you really think it would take for someone to be able to hack the system and make a tuner do what ever they wish it to do? It's just a computer right? Wont take long at all.

 

[mdelzer]

Totally hackable. Worst case, take out the ECU and send it to a company to "unlock" it.

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