Can a tuning shop lock your computer

[MKL_DS]

I dealt with a guy who bought a used Cadillac from a Carmax or similar dealer. It was still covered by the factory warranty.
Shortly after purchase, he ran into some issues, and Carmax took the car to a GM dealer to have the warranty work performed. Step one at the GM dealer? Check the CVNs. They did not match. Warranty void.
Carmax told him car was sold as is. He had to foot the bill for the repairs.

Don't assume anything

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[4V Mayhem]

I have very strong feelings about this subject. The only way a tuner should be locking their tunes is if somehow other tuners can extract those tunes and then build tunes based off that. Like reverse-engineering a tune. I could see someone who took time to learn how to tune want to protect their art by preventing others from accessing their files and learning that way.

The only other acceptable reason imo is if the ECU or tune actually has to be locked into the car for it to work properly. Perhaps Ford made the ECU this way so they can for sure know a tune has been written to the car.

There are no other reasons I can think of that is acceptable. It should not be an issue because you can always flash back to stock and then use a different tuner.

 

[Nuked]

This is something that has been discussed ever since tuning the modern ECU cars started. The most common argument is that the tune is the tuners Intellectual Property, and thus they feel the locking is justified. That is something that is definitely open for interpretation. The other is to hide exactly what they do. Way back in the early days I had an Evo. The opensource tuning came out where all you needed was a 40 dollar cable and a laptop. Software was completely free. What ended up happening was people reading the tunes they were paying good money for (500-600 15 years ago) only to find out they were dogshit. Caused a big stink. It did however bring about a nice group of enthusiasts that would work together to basically learn how to tune. Some of those folks went on to make careers out of it.

At the end of the day, tuning is one of those things were you can't actually see what your buying, you gotta take the sellers word on it.

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