Honda Is Watching You!

[SuperShale]

In my recent talks with certain friends in Honda, I have learned some interesting info. If you were to ask your Service Department at your local dealership, they will confirm everything I say.

More advanced Honda ECU's, particularly the 06+ models have very advanced ECU's. The record everything that you do. There are flags for recording that Honda can review with their readers at every service department. These flags include how many times you've hit your rev-limiter, what position your throttle is at, what temperature your engine is before and after the radiator, and what your fuel/air ratio is. When your ECU records a certain "flag" issue, it will record live what your car was doing before, during, and after the time of the flag. Honda will then use these flags timelines to determine if any issue that you are claiming may be a result of abuse on the vehicle or "driving it outside of it's designs."

Some examples of warranty voiding issues:

Lets say you want to go drive your car hard. Maybe you own an LX/EX. These cars are designed for "fun economy." Their rev-limiters are simply for idiot proofing and not designed for you to shift at. Lets say after a night of beating on your car, racing, or whatever you do, you have an issue. Maybe your engine is ticking, or something funky is going on in the transmission. Maybe you simply get an engine light and your car isn't "running right." So you take it in. Now Honda opens up your ECU and finds that you have hit your rev limiter 20 times in 2 days. They then can open it further to find that you have been driving above the car's "intended design." They find you've been accelerating quickly, your engine temp before your radiator is above normal, and you've been basically beating the shit out of your car. Then the Honda rep is called in. He takes the data and determines whether or not they are going to honor your warranty. For the economy type vehicles, the EX/LX type Civics are not designed to be raced or driven hard. Driving in such manner can cause your warranty to be voided permenantly.

Another example would be if you wanted to run nitrous. Say you mis-jet your nitrous, or your engine simply gives out from the added power. Now you take your car into the dealership. They open your ECU to show that your car is accelerating hard, and the air/fuel ration is different than what the engine is designed for. They can break it down to the point that your 02 sensor sees a rich condition, where the wet kit will normally bombard your engine, or the dry kit will cause an instant lean. They can then determine by your engine temperature, your aggressive acceleration, and your tainted a/f ratio, that you have done something to modify the engine and therefore void your warranty permenantly.

I was told that Si's have a little more leeway, as they are vehicles marketed for "high performance." Therefore, hitting the rev-limiter is not harmful, and therefore usually overlooked. However, consitently "racing" your vehicle will void the warranty, so careful who you cut off on the highway, it might just be the guy who sold you your car.

To be candid, if you make an effort to revert your car back to stock before taking it in for service, Honda will usually just honor those things they aren't supposed to in an effort to keep your business and your loyalty. Make a number of trips to the service department, and they consistently pull the same abuse reading from your ECU, they might tell you to take a hike.


**edit**

[skittleslegend]

It's affectionately referred to as the "black box" system. However, Honda isn't supposed to use it solely for warranty purposes.

Doesn't mean they won't though....

[BLU BY U]

thats why you reset the ecu before warranty work.

[dude]

BS BS BS

[CivicWithNav]

no actually the ECU's do keep track of records

although not much.

I heard a mechanic hooking up a computer to a car that came in for overheat and he found out that computer was showing that it was overheating but the owner kept driving for about 30mminutes AFTER that causing the engine failure...aka no warranty

[skittleslegend]

Originally Posted by CivicWithNav

no actually the ECU's do keep track of records

although not much.

I heard a mechanic hooking up a computer to a car that came in for overheat and he found out that computer was showing that it was overheating but the owner kept driving for about 30mminutes AFTER that causing the engine failure...aka no warranty

Werd. They can check quite a bit of information. Isn't it like, the previous 25 miles or so? When I was looking at the used Habby they told me they'd check to see how many times the previous car had been redlined for me.

[imtim25]

dude that ceiling cat is creeping me out

[dude]

Sure ECU,s keep tracks. But how a voltage of 4.5V (instead of 2.5V) for the last 20 miles driven on record will prove that you overheated the car and it wasn't a faulty coolant temp. sensor, O2 sensor etc.???? A mechanic looks for faulty sensors not for guilty people. ECU's are made to control your car and to help mechanics find and fix a problem.

Service Manager (not even having an idea how to read the HDS): we hooked the computer and it shows that you been driving very hard...your waranty is VOID, give us your money!!!!!!

Uneducated you: Wow those computers are really smart, they know everything I do........Here, I will pay for the damage.

Educated you: Sir, I have no idea what are you talking about.... Can it be a faulty sensor or/and/maybe the ECU itself which caused the damage. Can you explain to me in detail what exactly did the computer show and what does it mean, since I don't understand............

[Zesti1]

As far as I know......it only records a finite bit of information and constantly rewrites itself. It doesnt keep a continuous log from day one of your car. What is recorded they use to diagnois a problem that may have come up while you were driving.

[Jrfish007]

There is no hard rive in the ECU of your car, it has no way of storing mass amounts of info. WHta little info is stored is also stored in RAM memory, so restting your ECU, resets the memory, if you're worried about that. But without a hard drive, they are not going to be able to record much, maybe a few of these "flagged" things, but that's about it. Also, they can't just say, your warranty is gone for hitting the rev limiter 20 times in the last day, you could just say I suck at driving stick. The manufacture (Honda) would look pretty lame if they did say that your warranty was bad, people would quite buying their cars, and they die, Honda knows this. They aren't going to void it, and if they do, just go to a different dealer.

[Jrfish007]

Originally Posted by Zesti1

As far as I know......it only records a finite bit of information and constantly rewrites itself. It doesnt keep a continuous long from day one of your car. What is recorded they use to diagnois a problem that may have come up while you were driving.

Exactly, it was designed to see what happen right before a crash, and that's it.

[ohiocivicracer]

im not that smart when it come to engine work and everything in a car, but i am trying to learn.. now, my car has been running a bit odd lately... about a month to about 40 days ago, i had a Oil Leak... and when i check i had no oil in my car AT ALL... so i took it up to honda 20 minutes after i found out... first it was 4pm, and they said it was to late for them to take a look at it because they close at 6... then some bolt went bad and the oil was leaking from there and my whole care was covered with it on the bottom, EVER since (to my knowledge) my car when i turn on sometimes hesitates, or if im at a red light, it almost feels like its going to stall, i have had my car stall one time on me at a red light too, and i just dont think a 06 should be doing this..? i do reach the rev limiter sometimes when im driving, but nothing i dont think the car shouldnt be able to handle...

please let me know on thoughts? you think it would matter that i reach it if i take it in? i need some suggestions and info so when i go in there, i am not a dumb kid, i know what im talking about.

[Apex77]

Originally Posted by BLU BY U

thats why you reset the ecu before warranty work.

Originally Posted by Jrfish007

There is no hard rive in the ECU of your car, it has no way of storing mass amounts of info. WHta little info is stored is also stored in RAM memory, so restting your ECU, resets the memory, if you're worried about that. But without a hard drive, they are not going to be able to record much, maybe a few of these "flagged" things, but that's about it.

Not necessarily.
Data can be stored in Flash which is non-volatile (will store info when powered down).
And the 8th gen civic *may* have flash for persistent storage of info. I don't know and I doubt anyone here knows that for a fact unless they have the actual schematic. Even identifying a flash chip on the schematic may not mean that it is used to store the data mentioned in this post. It may just hold the actual ecu program (brains).
So all we can do is assume.

[Jrfish007]

Originally Posted by Apex77

Not necessarily.
Data can be stored in Flash which is non-volatile (will store info when powered down).
And the 8th gen civic *may* have flash for persistent storage of info. I don't know and I doubt anyone here knows that for a fact unless they have the actual schematic. Even identifying a flash chip on the schematic may not mean that it is used to store the data mentioned in this post. It may just hold the actual ecu program (brains).
So all we can do is assume.

tis true... good point

[Jensen]

Yes our ECU's definitely do use flash as brought up. Someone a while back on another board actually posted an ECU dump from their Si's ECU that they got from the HDS system.

I'm an IT guy. In terms of amount of storage space, the data it collected could easily be held in a reasonably sized flash space amount. There is a finite amount of driving time that can be recorded before it will start overwriting itself, BUT it could easily hold 20 minutes of driving time before and after each and every time you redline your car over the entire course of its life. Well, assuming you aren't constantly redling it. The data I saw just didn't amount to something that would take up huge amounts of space. It was mostly just date and 20-30 sensor readings.

[BLU BY U]

i feel bad for my computer.... i redline like a mo-fo. have fun storing all that crap.

[ohiocivicracer]

Originally Posted by BLU BY U

i feel bad for my computer.... i redline like a mo-fo. have fun storing all that crap.

lol... any thoughts on my problem above?

[Apex77]

Originally Posted by ohiocivicracer

lol... any thoughts on my problem above?

I would take in to get checked. Don't rely on opinions from the web. Even though many may be correct.

[DuH-ReL]

Time for us to stop hitting that rev-limiter?

[Apex77]

Originally Posted by BLU BY U

i feel bad for my computer.... i redline like a mo-fo. have fun storing all that crap.

Okay... I had to be a nerd here and I did some calculations.
I made some assumptions.

Biggest flash device from a major vendor is 8GB.
Assume it takes 12bytes to store an entry = 8bytes (which might even be overkill) for the date (4 digits for the year 0000 to 9999) and 4 bytes for the data from the sensor.

That flash chip can hold 715,827,882 entries.
There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year.

SO .... this chip can hold an entry for every second in the year.

Now, assume it collects data from 20 sensors each second, the chip will hold
35,791,394 entries. Still enough to hold an entry for 20 sensors for every second in the year.

Most likely, no data collection will be taken when the car is off. This includes 8hrs of sleep everyday (this excludes you vampires out there that never sleep) and other times of the day when you are not driving.

So assume 6hrs driving a day. That = 7,884,000 seconds a year. At that rate you can store 5 yrs + of entries.

And maybe they download all the info off the chip when you take it in for service (and back it up) and wipe the memory. This can lead to virtually unlimited storage.

So if this is the case, you can redline all day and it will be stored