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This is a very old, very long running battle. Henry Ford said he would give the cars away if he could get all the repair and parts money later. Mr. Ford obvious

This is a very old, very long running battle. Henry Ford said he would give the cars away if he could get all the repair and parts money later. Mr. Ford obviously understood the Gillette business plan. The OBD2 connector in your car is one result of this battle from 1996. Every brand of car before that had a different plug, nothing was standardized before that. OBD2 fixed that, caused other minor issues like plug was the same, but some wires were different. I use to sell automotive repair information and equipment. 15 years ago I was selling 5 years of info for $10,000 . It was 200 ish per month on financing. Yes, they financed future software releases, five years ahead of time........ think about that for a sec. Now its all online, you pay a monthly fee to access. https://www.shopkeypro.com/ https://www.shopkeypro.com/ now only $169 and it DOES NOT include everything, only what the manufacturers will share. The current offerings by the way are no better than 15 years ago. The drawings look like a child did them with crayon. The software is crap, but there is basically no competition, so who cares? My friends that own auto shops tell me that they are not renewing, many of them say they get better info from Youtube, and it has video that the repair manuals don't. If anyone wants to disrupt auto repair information, there are 300,000 businesses out there that need it. Snap-on/Mitchell sucks, and the product is severely dated. Last time I looked at their shop management software it was running a MS Access database. Plain text data, you could hijack their customer records into a SaaS and include repair info from Youtube. Shops pay $169-hundreds more per month now for a crappy product. PM me if you want to discuss further. I hope the MA repair info law goes nationwide. We have only been waiting 100 years.

jacquesm 11y ago
> I hope the MA repair info law goes nationwide. Worldwide.
- minipci1321 11y ago
  And also that similar initiatives force manufacturers of other equipment to openly document servicing interfaces.
- gregpilling 11y ago
  Yes, worldwide. I agree.
- oppositelock 11y ago
  We need more than the MA law. We need to have the law change to permit completely replacing engine control systems while maintaining a street legal car. There are open ECU's available which you can retrofit into any car, but they're illegal for street use because of the way emissions laws are structured. The US law is very proscriptive - you musth have the factory ECU with the factory tune with the factory catalyst, etc. Instead, we need results based laws for this stuff, something like a limit on engine emissions on a particular duty cycle, and leave it to the aftermarket companies to figure that out. Right now, most engine mods you do are not technically legal, especially in CA and the handful of other states which have adopted its emissions laws, so you try to hide what you've done and not get caught, even though you have perfectly clean emissions. Unfortunately, lots of people turn their cars into gross polluters because they like the loudness of straight pipes or want the extra few HP from an open exhaust, and in an attempt to stop these, the laws are making it more difficult for the rest of us.

jacquesm 11y ago

> I hope the MA repair info law goes nationwide. Worldwide.

minipci1321 11y ago
And also that similar initiatives force manufacturers of other equipment to openly document servicing interfaces.
gregpilling 11y ago
Yes, worldwide. I agree.
oppositelock 11y ago
We need more than the MA law. We need to have the law change to permit completely replacing engine control systems while maintaining a street legal car. There are open ECU's available which you can retrofit into any car, but they're illegal for street use because of the way emissions laws are structured. The US law is very proscriptive - you musth have the factory ECU with the factory tune with the factory catalyst, etc. Instead, we need results based laws for this stuff, something like a limit on engine emissions on a particular duty cycle, and leave it to the aftermarket companies to figure that out. Right now, most engine mods you do are not technically legal, especially in CA and the handful of other states which have adopted its emissions laws, so you try to hide what you've done and not get caught, even though you have perfectly clean emissions. Unfortunately, lots of people turn their cars into gross polluters because they like the loudness of straight pipes or want the extra few HP from an open exhaust, and in an attempt to stop these, the laws are making it more difficult for the rest of us.