What's This Bit For?

[Stevie]

I stuck my head under the dashboard I found a nice plug without a socket to mate with. What's it for?

 

Ta

Stevie

[Mark H]

I'd guess it allows the garage to plug into your car to read the ECU, the Elan had one inhe glovebox and my Elise has one in the boot I believe. Not sure about the S2.

[Simon G]

Yep that's correct, lets the garage read your ecu and download all the OBD that the ecu saves. You could buy a reader and look at it yourself. I've got a print out from my last service, gives you some interesting stuff like 0-60, max speed, max revs etc etc.

[Scott_Mac]

LOL

 

Should be interesting

 

Following you the other night, i should imagine your max speed reading was fairly high

[Simon G]

LOL, don't know what you mean!

[Kris H]

Didn't Martin (rawr) have his warranty claim rejected for spirited driving based on the read out from this? Never mind the folks with scameras determined to get you, the car can grass you up on it's own.

[Bramble111s]

Obviously any high speeds would be from Track days,

although if the ECU records dates and times, one would then have to prove one was not on the highway?!?!?!?

 

This sounds like the system proposed (in theory only at this time)

of charging car owners per mile and distance, depending on areas, instead of fixed road tax! Which is like those auto pay boxes one has in a car to drive through toll roads, as in HK etc

[Scott_Mac]

Didn't Martin (rawr) have his warranty claim rejected for spirited driving based on the read out from this?  Never mind the folks with scameras determined to get you, the car can grass you up on it's own.

He did... his car claimed it had hit 130mph, 5.7 seconds to 60 and spent 80% of the time between 50 and 100% throttle

 

Fair play to him...

 

Simon - i'm sure you don't

[MattyB]

This topic of your ECU "monitoring" your actions and therefore being scrutinesed during warrantly claims was originally done by BMW and the M3 - mainly through their launch control system.

 

Use it too much, and you void your warranty. Use it on track, and that voids it too (an M3, ffs!)

 

I think you'd be suprised just how much it records about your driving.

[Scott_Mac]

Rawr was.. he was very impressed with his 0-60 figures

[Kris H]

Fair play though - knackered car maybe but street cred at least. Not sure that the street cred's worth £20k though.

 

Am wondering if the emerald has the same data capture or not.

[Scott_Mac]

I should imagine Emerald has even more... at least you can access it too though!

[Kris H]

Actually I guess if you've fitted an emerald your warranty's shot to hell anyway so who cares?

[MattyB]

VW's had a program called VAG-COM you could buy, install on your laptop and plug in to get ECU diagnostics, tweeks etc.

 

Is there something similar for the Elise? Or is that something you'd get with the Emerald?

[Scott_Mac]

VAG-COM

 

RUDE ALERT

 

Is that a tool for better oral sex?