Outsmarting your car

Did you know it was possible to disable some of the annoying features of your all-too-modern car?

In a recent New York Times piece, I wrote about car owners who had, among other things, reprogrammed their Volkswagen remotes so they could lock the sunroof, canceled the irritating ice warming that comes on at 37 degrees in BMW 3-Series cars, dialed in new lock codes for Ford Tauruses, disconnected the hill holder on Subaru Foresters and eliminated the feature that locks all the doors on the Chrysler PT Cruiser.

The problem is that cars are really getting complicated. Take the high-line BMW 5-7 Series, which now comes with a fancy computerized gizmo called iDrive. The "Car Talk" brothers admit they were completely flummoxed by the thing, which controls most of the important features of the vehicle.

"Unfortunately, iDrive is a complete disaster," they wrote on their Web site. "It’s a lot of technology – and yet you gain nothing. We were continually frustrated by the iDrive. It took us 15 minutes just to change the radio station."

Problem is, iDrive controls 700 functions, and you can’t work around it.

Some of this stuff is like guerrilla war. For example, many drivers are annoyed by daytime running lights – and they’re taking matters into their own hands. There’s a whole page on how to disable this "DRL" feature on just about every car so equipped (see www.lightsout.org, the Web site of the Association of Drivers Against DRLs). Getting rid of these lights, which the association claims shorten bulb life and affect fuel economy, is often a simple matter of pulling a fuse. But it gets much more arcane.

The online instructions for disabling the automatic door locks on a 1994 Cadillac Concours, posted by some guy named "Double H," include the following: "Move the terminal in cavity C-13 of the RKE connector to cavity C-12 (note: this is CKT 275). You can see the terminal from the connecting side of the RKE Connector. Immediately adjacent to the terminal (again, on the plug-in side, not the wires side) is an access hole right next to the terminal. Insert an unbent paper clip (or similar) and you want to release the tang holding the terminal inside the RKE connector."

Wow! Do this and you’re entrusting your Cadillac’s health to someone you know only as "Double H." It probably works, though.

I was wondering if it was possible to reprogram seat heaters that, for no reason I can figure, shut off after 15 minutes. I searched the Internet and all I could find was a poor Land Rover owner complaining about this feature, begging for help disabling it and referencing my Times piece. Instructive.

I’m sure that you, the gentle reader, have something your car does that you’d like to turn off or disconnect. Those automatically adjusting seats, perhaps? That crazy global-positioning screen that flashes the same warning at you every time you start the car? How about the horn going off every time you lock the doors, or the lights staying on (in "auto" mode) after you’re already in the house? I’m constantly peering out the window to make sure I don’t have a dead battery in the morning.

Many, if not most, of these features can be disabled if you have a steady hand and a good Internet connection. But if you’re not careful, the car will end up on the receiving end of a tow hook.

My 1963 Dodge Dart convertible is refreshingly free of this kind of technology. You have to do everything yourself. And often that’s just the way I like it.