car hacks

457 Articles

Ford Ka Becomes Diwheel Monster

October 24, 2018 by 27 Comments

If you’ve been to the right events, you’ve seen them before – the cars with an external cage that let the car complete a somersault in the forward direction under heavy braking. They’re impressive, but it’s possible to take things even further. Enter [mastermilo82] and the RollKa.

The RollKa follows on from the RollGolf, which was a straightforward roll car build. Built around a Ford Ka, it eschews the external cage for a more radical design. The Ka has been shortened, and designed to fit within two enormous steel rims which wrap around each side of the car. Additional idler wheels have been welded to the Ka’s roof to enable it to effectively roll within the outer steel rims.

It’s a rather eccentric design, known as a diwheel. We’ve seen impressive electric versions before, but at least at this stage, this project appears to lack any advanced control systems and gets by on sheer luck and welding prowess. The build is still at an early stage, with episode three starting some early movement tests under power. It’s a testament to what can be achieved with a spacious garage and some imagination, and we can’t wait to see what happens next! Video after the break.

[Thanks to Baldpower for the tip!]

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Researcher uses antenna to clone Tesla key fob

Tesla Opens With Precomputed Key Fob Attack

September 13, 2018 by 43 Comments

This clever precomputation attack was developed by a group of researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium. Unlike previous key fob attacks that we’ve covered in the past which have been essentially relay attacks, this hack precomputes a ton of data, looks for a collision in the dataset, and opens the door. Here’s how it works.

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Toil In Style With Salvaged Porsche Office Chairs

August 22, 2018 by 22 Comments

It seems as if everyone has finally decided to stop pretending that standing in front of a desk for 8+ hours was something anyone actually wanted to do, and once again embrace the classic adjustable office chair. But whether you’re writing code in a cubicle or are one of those people who apparently makes a living by having people watch them play video games, one thing is certain: your chair needs to be cool enough to make up for the years shaved off your life by sitting in it all day.

Case in point, these chairs that were made out of seats salvaged from a Porsche 996 by [Colby Newman]. You might never be able to afford the car they came out of on your salary, but at least you can pretend you’re power shifting into fifth while doing your TPS reports.

The first step, and arguably the most important one, was getting the seats from a Porsche. [Colby] wisely cautions the reader that they should avoid seats with air bags, as the last thing you want is your chair to explode while you’re streaming Fortnite. This is especially true if you are looking to salvage the seats yourself from the junkyard, as special care needs to be taken on how you remove them from the vehicle.

Assuming you got the seat without blowing yourself up, the next step is to mate it to the adjustable base. This part is going to depend on the make and model of vehicle you got the seats out of, but in this case it was fairly easy to use some flat steel bars to adapt the tubular frame of the Porsche’s seat to the base from the donor office chair. [Colby] put everything together with nuts and bolts, but this could potentially be an excuse to drag out the welder.

We’ve previously seen the driver seat salvaged from a wrecked car for use in a simulator, and a standard office chair upgraded with force feedback. We wonder who will be the first to combine all these ideas into one ultimate office racing chair…

Jump Start Your Car With A Drill Battery

August 16, 2018 by 99 Comments

Sometimes, you move to a new city, and things just aren’t going your way. You’re out of cash, out of energy, and thanks to your own foolishness, your car’s battery is dead. You need to jump-start the car, but you’re feeling remarkably antisocial, and you don’t know anyone else in town you can call. What do you do?

It’s not a problem, because you’re a hacker and you have a cordless drill in the back seat of your car. The average drill of today tends to run on a nice 18 volt lithium battery pack. These packs are capable of delivering large amounts of current and can take a lot of abuse. This is where they come in handy.

Typically, when jump starting a car, another working vehicle is pulled into place, and the battery connected in parallel with the dead battery of the disabled vehicle. Ideally, the working vehicle is then started to enable its alternator to provide charge to the whole system to avoid draining its own battery. At this point, the disabled vehicle can be started and its alternator can begin to recharge its own battery. After disconnecting everything, you’re good to go.

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Replacement Audi Plastics Thanks To 3D Printing

August 15, 2018 by 39 Comments

Old cars can be fun, and as long as you drive something that was once moderately popular, mechanical parts can be easy enough to come by. Things like filters, spark plugs, idle air solenoids – they’re generally available for decades after a car is out of production as long as you know where to look. However, plastics can be much harder to come by. 20 to 30 years into a car’s lifetime, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a radio surround or vent trim in as-new condition – they’ve all long ago succumbed to the sun and air like the cracked and discoloured piece in your own car. What is a hacker to do? Bust out the 3D printer, of course!

[Stephen Kraus] has developed a series of parts for his Audi, ready to print on the average home 3D printer. There’s the triple gauge mount which fits in the radio slot for that classic tuner look, to the printed wheel caps which are sure to come in handy after you’ve lost the originals. There are even useful parts for capping off the distributor if you’re switching to a more modern ignition setup. [Stephen] also reports that his replacement shifter bushing printed in PLA has lasted over a year in normal use.

This is an excellent example of what 3D printers do best – obscure, bespoke one-off parts with complex geometries are no trouble at all, and can be easily made at home. We’ve seen this done to great effect before, too – for example with this speedometer correction gear in an old truck.

Car Hacking At DEF CON 26

August 11, 2018 by 9 Comments

A great place to get your feet wet with the data-network-wonderland that is modern-day automobiles is the Car Hacking Village at DEF CON. I stopped by on Saturday afternoon to see what it was all about and the place was packed. From Ducati motorcycles to junkyard instrument clusters, and from mobility scooters to autonomous RC test tracks, this feels like one of the most interactive villages in the whole con.

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Updating A 1999 Saab With An Arduino

August 11, 2018 by 47 Comments

Unless your car is fresh off the lot, you’ve probably had the experience of riding in a newer car and seeing some feature or function that triggered a little pang of jealousy. It probably wasn’t enough for you to run out and sign yourself up for a new car loan (which is what the manufacturer was hoping for), but it was definitely something you wished your older model vehicle had. But why get jealous when you can get even?

[Saabman] wished his 1999 Saab 9-5 had the feature where a quick tap of the turn signal lever would trigger three blinks of the indicator. Realizing this was an electronic issue, he came up with a way to retrofit this function into his Saab by adding an Arduino Pro Micro to the vehicle’s DICE module.

The DICE (which stands for Dashboard Integrated Central Electronics) module controls many of the accessories in the vehicle, such as the lighting and wipers. In the case of the blinkers, it reads the state of the signal lever switches and turns the blinkers on and off as necessary. After poking around the DICE board, [Saabman] found that the 74HC151 multiplexer chip he was after: the state of the blinker switches could be read from pins 1 and 2, and he’d even be able to pull 5 V for the Arduino off of pin 16.

After prototyping the circuit on a breadboard, [Saabman] attached the Pro Micro to the top of the 74HC151 with some double sided tape and got to work on refining the software side of the project. The Arduino reads the state of the turn signal switches, and if they flick on momentarily it changes the pin from an input to an output and brings it high for three seconds. This makes the DICE module believe the driver is holding the turn lever, and will keep the blinkers going. A very elegant and unobtrusive way of solving the problem.

Hackers aren’t complete strangers to the garage; from printing hard to find parts to grafting in their favorite features from other car manufacturers, this slick Saab modification is in good company.

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