tmarko

Looks promising, thought the front page would think so too...
https://www.clublexus.com/articles/l...-supercharger/

johnnyreb

What was the Reasoning for Lexus to do that anyway? Why would they care if an owner wanted to put a Tune on the car, guess i just don't understand what was the purpose & why they made the ECU like they did

BOBFSPORT

Going in next week for a tune......i will share the results when finished.

Carnevino

Mostly for warranty issues Johnny . I knew the ISF ECU had finally been cracked a few weeks ago, but I was told to keep it hush...guess the cat's out of the bag now. The SC has been running on the ISF for a few weeks now and I'm guessing they just about have it ready for the RCF. It'll be interesting to see if Lexus puts down the ban hammer on warranty work if you mess with it. I imagine they're scrambling right now

BPauto

I saw this!! It was super cool to see a front page article on this kit. Again, we want to share what's out in the world that some people may not normally be able to see. Whether it works for our US market or not currently, is not the main reason why we shared this info. It's for people to be inspired, motivated, and see how far we can all push the creative envelope.

It made us incredibly happy and surprised to see someone with a journalistic background pick this up and share it with the rest of the world. Journalists and writers have a way with words and they have a skill at making things sound really good haha, so we're all happy and excited to see an article written on the info on this new HKS SC system. Hopefully this kit will make it's way to our US shores and someone can further improve and evolve the system to make it work with our US spec cars.

We love the Club Lexus community and we are thankful to be a part of it. Thank you to the team behind the scenes at Club Lexus, the moderators, journalists, and anybody else that helps keep this message board going. We are eternally grateful for letting us be a part of this community!!


Oohh! Keep us updated!!

Hey @johnnyreb, @Carnevino is right. While our team was in Japan for Tokyo Auto Salon, we had a chance to speak with some of the Toyota executives while at the event so we were able to ask them a couple questions regarding the Lexus ECU.

Lexus did have concerns of people modifying their cars which could lead to a number of various issues for both the customer, as well as, Lexus. The Lexus executives didn't want the hassle of holding any kind of liability for customer's destroying their cars. This is true for just about any car maker; however, some brands are just more careful about these things than others.

Toyota categorizes Lexus as their PREMIUM brand for their company so they didn't want the image of having broken down Lexus's around the world due to people messing with the engine's ECU. I have to agree with this thought. So many shops claim they know how to tune cars to gain business, however, many shops just don't have the experience or knowledge to tune cars properly which can cause a number of catastrophic issues. Having a $50k, $70k, $100k+ Lexus broken down because a customer decided to get a bad tune on their car can cause a wave of insurance/warranty claims for Lexus and can be a nightmare for both parties.

I'm sure there's more to it than just that but this is one of the main reasons why Lexus decided to encrypt the ECU and make it difficult to change/modify their factory settings.

chaosrob

My tuning is limited to pre "throttle by wire" cars, but here would be my though on the tuning, and someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Toyota recently had the lawsuit issues with cars accelerating on their own. I would imagine that in a car with throttle by wire this could be manipulated, opening Toyota/Lexus to defend itself in countless new lawsuits if someone tampered with these features? I could see a lot of potential defense of people making claims if they intentionally/unintentionally modified something that could have an affect on safety programming?

Again, feel free to correct me if this is not possible or is a function of a computer other than the engine ecm
[
QUOTE=BPauto;9332619]I saw this!! It was super cool to see a front page article on this kit. Again, we want to share what's out in the world that some people may not normally be able to see. Whether it works for our US market or not currently, is not the main reason why we shared this info. It's for people to be inspired, motivated, and see how far we can all push the creative envelope.

It made us incredibly happy and surprised to see someone with a journalistic background pick this up and share it with the rest of the world. Journalists and writers have a way with words and they have a skill at making things sound really good haha, so we're all happy and excited to see an article written on the info on this new HKS SC system. Hopefully this kit will make it's way to our US shores and someone can further improve and evolve the system to make it work with our US spec cars.

We love the Club Lexus community and we are thankful to be a part of it. Thank you to the team behind the scenes at Club Lexus, the moderators, journalists, and anybody else that helps keep this message board going. We are eternally grateful for letting us be a part of this community!!



Oohh! Keep us updated!!





Hey @johnnyreb, @Carnevino is right. While our team was in Japan for Tokyo Auto Salon, we had a chance to speak with some of the Toyota executives while at the event so we were able to ask them a couple questions regarding the Lexus ECU.

Lexus did have concerns of people modifying their cars which could lead to a number of various issues for both the customer, as well as, Lexus. The Lexus executives didn't want the hassle of holding any kind of liability for customer's destroying their cars. This is true for just about any car maker; however, some brands are just more careful about these things than others.

Toyota categorizes Lexus as their PREMIUM brand for their company so they didn't want the image of having broken down Lexus's around the world due to people messing with the engine's ECU. I have to agree with this thought. So many shops claim they know how to tune cars to gain business, however, many shops just don't have the experience or knowledge to tune cars properly which can cause a number of catastrophic issues. Having a $50k, $70k, $100k+ Lexus broken down because a customer decided to get a bad tune on their car can cause a wave of insurance/warranty claims for Lexus and can be a nightmare for both parties.

I'm sure there's more to it than just that but this is one of the main reasons why Lexus decided to encrypt the ECU and make it difficult to change/modify their factory settings.[/QUOTE]

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

If one elects to play with the ECU then they should accept full liability, not Lexus. There should be a document you sign when you purchase the car new.

BPauto

[/QUOTE]

Yes, in an ideal world, it would be nice if all Toyota/Lexus had to do was have the customer sign something and everything goes away but that's usually not the case. Some people will try to find ways to work around the system to benefit themselves. I like to think most people have the common sense and decency to take the blame if something goes wrong but there are those that will try to do what they can to not lose money, especially when it has to do with a car that costs almost $100k.

Yes, Toyota/Lexus could easily defend against themselves and in most cases they could probably diffuse situations either amicably outside of court or in court using defense attorney's; however, this all costs money. Money that most manufacturers most likely don't want to spend. That's my thought anyway.

JCtx

And that's the way it is. That Lexus answer was BS. They know if ECU is tampered with, it leaves an irreversible electronic violation that they can easily detect, contrary to some people's beliefs. But yes, only manufacturers can detect that, and most are asking dealers to download ECUs to them before authorizing any powertrain warranty claim. So absolutely no risk of any liability to manufacturer. Also contrary to what some believe, the so-called Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act does not apply to ECU tampering since it's illegal (federal law, since it's an emission component). And those few that had the nerve to sue manufacturers for that, found out the hard way no jury of mostly people who know nothing about engines would side with any owner when there's a federal law against tampering with ECUs, calatylic converters, or any other emissions component. But most owners I know who mess with their ECUs are smart enough to know they're on their own as far as powertrain manufacturer's warranty.

Having said the above, cars damaged due to messing with the engine, ECU, etc., can be bad for manufacturers's reputations. I can understand that. That's why all manufacturers try to make it hard to break into their ECUs... but some don't try hard enough. And it's probably going to get harder and harder, as more and more computers are interdependent on each other, with better encryption technology.

Fsport2UR

This shouldn't be the case. You have to look at it from their perspective. I am not sure if you ever dealt with programming, but many times when you make changes in one area it can have a negative effect in other areas that seem unrelated. But all these things could be tied together and work with one another.
A prime example would be the Toyota/Lexus Unintended Accelerator Lawsuits, which they paid out millions for and made several million recalls for. It was believed to be a bug. Lets say you do sign a paper that makes you fully responsible, Lexus is now no longer going to take blame for anything else electronically driven by the ECU. And with you making a reprogram, could introduce bugs elsewhere...but you would end up biting the bullet for it...and in the end you cannot prove it either way if it was your fault or a bug in Lexus's program. So to them, all of it is a liability...it is even more harder here in the US because everyone here loves to sue each other!

7No

iTrader: (1)

And yet some manufacturers tolerate (or even encourage?) tuning. For instance, the relationship Audi had with STaSIS for many years. The recent edition of the Audi Quattro Quarterly had a whole page ad by APR. If Audi wanted to really discourage tuning would an APR ad be accepted? It seems to depend more on your relationship with the local service manager than anything else.

BPauto

Ah good point. Yes, there are brands that are more tolerant to tuning than others.

Not all manufacturers are this strict regarding tuning and tunability. Take for example... Scion!! Scion is another wonderful Toyota brand. If you think about it, Scion is on one end of the spectrum while Lexus is on the polar opposite end. Toyota is right in the middle.

Keep in mind Scion is a U.S. manufactured brand. Scion is not widely known in Japan. Toyota USA and Toyota Japan are almost two completely separate entities. This is similar to how other brands are run as well. That's why Scion never really made its way to Japan.

Scion's whole mantra is to be the "tuner's" car. They design and develop their cars with the expectation that it will be modified by the end user. Have you ever seen the engine bay of a Scion FRS? It's HUGE!! "There's SO much room for activities".

If you look into the engine bay, it begs for a turbo kit to be added in there. When you install a turbo kit into an FRS, it looks like it fits right at home... almost like Scion designed the car for a turbo kit to specifically fit in there.

There was a whole marketing and PR campaign on how the TC was "meant to be tuned" from the factory.

Scion's are also filled with low cost parts and materials... why? Because production costs are low for Scion and they know eventually those parts are going to be replaced, modified, and upgraded eventually.

That's just one example.

Now on the flip side, lets take BMW. BMW is a premium luxury brand. There's very little about the M series cars that yell "cheap", however, many BMW's are and have been tuner friendly. The reason for this is because BMW has held a performance oriented business model for decades. BMW's have been used for racing almost since the inception of the BMW brand. If your brand is built upon performance, racing, and style, there's no way you're going to lock away the ability for the end user to modify and tune their car.

If you Google "Classic Lexus Race Cars"... see what comes up. Then Google "Classic BMW Race Cars". You'll see a HUGE difference.

This is because Lexus never really embraced the performance category until the introduction of "F" cars. Up until then Lexus was generally known as a premium category luxury car. This is why a lot of the stanced out VIP enthusiasts LOVED to use Lexus as their "go-to" platform... even today. I'm not saying this was true for every person, but as a market segment as a whole, it wasn't known for tuning but it was known for quality and status.

In general, different car manufacturers have different policies, terms, and threshold of liability. Some brands are dedicated to performance while others are slowly getting there. Lately Lexus has been gowing exponentially in the performance category. With a little more time, who knows... we might see a shift in thinking with the Lexus execs and find future cars to be more tuner friendly.... time will tell .

A lot of the above was just some of my opinion mixed in with facts. Others have their own opinions which is totally cool too but it's been something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

**Edit -- @7No is also right in that dealerships are segmented as well. Some dealerships are all about aftermarket parts and being able to upgrade the cars while others will automatically VOID your warranty if they see a sticker from a tuning shop on the windshield.... J/K. But some are definitely more strict than others. Individual dealerships have their own policies on how to handle issues and broken vehicles when the car is modified but in the end, all of the eventually goes up the ladder to the top dog execs.

Imprezario

Found owner's - SkyBlue - blog on Japanese Minkara: http://minkara.carview.co.jp/en/user...2/profile.aspx

So anyone interested can follow the build ) And some fresh pics:

Imprezario

Tons of owner's pics here: http://minkara.carview.co.jp/en/user...962/photo.aspx

DougHII

Two words: advertising dollars for Audi Quattro Quarterly. Isn't Audi Quattro Club affiliated with Audi Club of NA? I am not sure anything in there is a direct or indirect endorsement by the manufacturer. I would venture to say that Audi can and will, in some instances void warranties for damage caused by aftermarket tunes including APR. Does that mean it will happen every time for every tune? No. It all depends on dealer relationship with manufacturer (regional Audi warranty rep.), your relationship with the dealer, the type of the damage and the cause of the damage. Some claims will sail through, some may get goodwill and some people will likely just be SOL.

I have had many good will coverages and expensive items such as engines and transmission covered on certain other makes that were not necessarily covered for other owners of the same makes based simply on the dealer going to bat for me and brand loyalty over time.

All the more reason not to spend hours internet shopping in an effort to save $500 or $1,000 instead of purchasing for a local dealer and creating a relationship. You never know when that relationship might be needed.