Dropbox account and decent file and folder structure is more than 99% of what people need

I love how Tim just lays it out there. More people need to be this way, the world would be way cooler!!!

A couple of things come to my mind: 1: The tuner is the car’s “doctor.” If you go to your personal physician, that doctor doesn’t own the data derived from your examination or any procedure he/she performed, 2: I fail to understand the confusion over “ownership” of data derived from work performed on property you own. A car owner has the right to know how much that cylinder was bored over, the lift of a cam lobe, or anything else modified or updated by a contractor - and have the description of the work performed delivered to the client along with the bill of sale. Full description and disclosure of the work performed is essential for cost analysis and valuation. Denying a customer access to this data - in whatever method of storage it exists - is theft.

Great reminder on storing data on the cloud.

Hail to one the kings of The original PRO MODIFIED!!!

And this is exactly what I've done for a living for the last 15yrs in professional road racing. Tim is *spot on! (as usual) I actually build a laptop for each team.. with a cellular modem..

Excellent advise.

Not a racer, but i work in the data analysis world and i always wondered how much analysis or data visualization could help drag racers. Like I know typically tunes and data aren’t exactly public but it would be neat to get to play with some data sets.

Another tool is "encryption" and you have the key!

This is good straight forward advice for everyone involved in Motorsport.

Thanks Tim every racer should be able to tune there own car ok.Your data should be top secret do not want your competition getting there hands on it .

We use a Dell XPS 13 laptop with a 4tb external hardrive to backup all files.Started using thumb drives for what data we pulled per what track we're at,so we load it in and see how close it is and go for it.I learned the hardway with a cheap @$$ $600 Best Buy laptop that froze and crashed after 2 seasons.People need to learn how to tune their own cars.I dont understand we can build and restore hot rods and drive the hell outta these hot rods but yet a lot of guys cant tune their own car.Maybe I'm from a different era but I was always told not to depend on someone to get what u want done.Cut out the middle man! Real talk.

Great insight as always on a topic most people probably don't think too much about

You're computer + 2 backups minimum in different places. On ssd preferably so theres no magnetic loss chance. And don't just look at the filename at the end of the day make sure theres data in that file!

Nice to see video haven't seen one in a long time. U tube probably jacking you around because you tell it how it is keep them coming

The only tuner I let touch my cars is me. 🤣

Only thing to add is we as a car tuner/crew chief get screwed by owners/drivers too. Its a 2 way street

I've been in a career that is centered around intellectual property for about the last 20 years now. I get paid because I know how to do certain things. The certain things I do are owned by those that pay me and that's all stated right up front (to the point that I can't even talk about what a lot of what I do is). It's completely weird to me that this isn't the way it works in the tuner vs. car owner world. It also seems weird that the car owner wouldn't have their own tuning laptop and push their tuner to use it for exactly this reason. Car owner owns the hardware and intellectual property and the tuner gets paid for the intellect. That's how it works in other fields.

Good advice as usual .

Don't mince words Tim! Lol! I love this guy

Great advice as always. I would say "the data stays with the car." Otherwise what the heck are you paying for.

A RACER PRENUP!!!

10:41 yes!!! And be sure it’s not only in a dropbox or onedrive acct that someone else has the password to. Back it up yourself at a regular interval to a place only you have access to. That way, if shit goes really sideways, and he’s pissed off and goes in and deleted it all, you already already have it somewhere else and aren’t stuck needing to sue him for it.

425👍's up Tim M thanks again for taking us all along with you

Timely. My laptop just died, and I only found that out when I went to upload the weekend’s data to my backup storage.

Maybe you mention it don't have all your physical backup in the same place. Like for example if it's all in your trailer and your trailer disappears or Burns or whatever disaster happens you might lose your backup as well. So maybe do the cloud thing or keep a backup in the shop.

Dude back in my day data was gathered with shoe polish and a Camcorder with a notebook to write down the tunes for different tracks was easy back before computers, easy to tune a carb

If you own a car that uses an engine management system that is use to tune your car with and log data from then regardless of who is tuning that car you the car owner should have a PC (laptop, desktop, etc) that is dedicated to that car as well as 2 other methods of data storage to back up data (a thumb-drive, or external hard-drive, and a online data storage solution such as iCloud, DropBox, OneDrive, etc, from every dyno pull, pass down the track, and tune file. You should keep your car(s) dedicated PC free of programs, games etc that are not necessary, as well as making sure to keep the OS as well as keeping the firewall, anti-virus, and malware and other apps/programs that you need to tune and view the data you have gotten from your car. Lastly avoid the temptation of using that pc to surf the net while at the track between rounds and to avoid using public wifi networks because to put it somewhat crudely using a public wifi network especially if you are not extremely computer savvy is like hooking up with a total stranger of your personal sexual preference and not using a condom it’s not if you are going to be infected with a virus/malware or the clap but when. Additionally if you are using a tuner make sure to have that person use your cars PC with a user profile that does not have administrator privileges (A side note it is a good practice not to use a user profile with administrator privileges even for yourself unless you need to. It also should go without saying that you should have copies of every app or program on that PC and you should back up that PC as well as a separately backing up your cars data. Lastly use a orderly file method/structure to store all of your car’s data and of course keep your backup data up to date.

I agree so much its ridiculous on the car owner having sole custody of the data. If you hire a guy to tune your car and they are so insecure about you or anyone else seeing what the do they are either A: Afraid someone is going to see their work or B: Afraid someone is better than them. If you are good at what you do it will speak for itself and the guys wanting a job done correctly will come to you.

Well I had a situation where I was locked out of my own ecu by a tuner. There were no issues between us at all. Just one went back to make changes and saw well well,no can do. Had to hard reset the whole damn ecu. That to me is bullsh1t. So I agree with the sentiments in this video. Even tho I am now a tuner myself. I would never do that to one of my clients.

Well bullshit! Haha. Love how Tim lays it out.

👍👍👍👍

Don't forget to print on-paper backups on durable high-quality paper, placed in waterproof protective sleeves, and stored in a fireproof locker.

Take your data files..try to load it and view it on another system. Take it from someone in IT, if you can’t use it , you don’t really have backed up data. You may have a great process, a system set up, but the data needs to be clean and accessible

Well BULLSHIT!!! I was waiting on Tim to say “Don’t got downloading a bunch of fuckin porn to you race car laptop and crash it” 😂

Truth,,

What it comes to is the lesser tuners use the racer as going to school and doesn't want to show you the final exam. On to the next class we go! Sorta like a doctor, they refer as a practice.

Ideally I'd like to make for CAN data dump over Mobile, like what CSS offers for industrial fleet management, then store the data in an S3 type dump (minio) works just the same. For anyone who would be looking for this configuration without using too many bigbix solutions like Amazon web services, etc, I've built both the server end of this and the IoT end for vehicle uplinking.

Tune and data are two completely different things. The tune, once the car is working right normally customers think it was so easy why should they have to keep the tuner around. Customers can be assholes too! If you want to have the tune and all the revisions, it is either going to cost you more or you could learn and do it yourself (with all the costs involved like screwing engines why not). Data, if we are referring data as the datalogs from the runs of the car, that should be no problem to share with the customer.

It'd be nice if the racepak laptop software did some of this automatically.

Racing data attorneys on the way contracts go with the car it's real to many $$$ involved next thing electronic hacks stealing your info

Always fuckin real 💀💀💀💀💀

So true I lost 3 Motórs to a hothead and he wouldn’t show me nothing learnt how to do it myself have no problem now he was full of shit cheers thanks

Moral of the story: Don’t be a WLFT

Stop buying consumer grade crap from the big box stores. Purchase enterprise grade laptops new (or HEAVILY discounted online from lease returns) that are far sturdier, have standardized parts and have support for magnitudes longer than consumer grade stuff. Don't buy a laptop without a SSD and an Intel i5+ processor, those two items will ensure your laptop will last. The second piece of the puzzle is to setup a OneDrive/DropBox automatic backup of your tuner data as mentioned in the video. Your data isn't safe unless it is in 3 separate places with at least one offsite, anyone who has lost data can attest how important that is.