Hi all.... This is an interesting thread for many reasons
The home brew sector of the remapping games just hasn’t really happened to any great deal in the UK. Most of the older ECUs such as the ME7 ME9 EDC15 and EDC16 are quite hard to kill. I’m always amazed at how it does happen and there are one or two little tricks and bits of info that make the whole thing a lot safer. These can be simple things like if you have a ME9 lockup while programming sometime this can be solved by putting the ECU in the freezer for 10mins. This isn’t one of those you can sort the code of your radio out by freezing it but is more due to some BDM programmers over heating the processor. Also knowing how to take things apart the right way and with the even older ECUs the old soldering iron is a must.
Tools and flash equipment is another area that is interesting. Most people in the home brew part of the market will be using cloned equipment. These tools are copies of genuine tools that normally cost many times that of the clones and non of the money is ever seen by the people who create these tools. On the flip side of this I have been telling some of them that they really need to do versions for the home brew market at a price that would stop people from bothering with the clones.
Just as a word of warning many of the MPPS clones have problems with the registry adding bad data.. while this isn’t a problem a lot of the time you can guarantee the one time you don’t need it to go wrong… you guested it …. It will. The other thing you will notice is that with many of them you will find that it will work only with CAN or K-line but not both. You also will need the un-modified original file in the case of ME7 for the tool to checksum the file correctly.
Talking about files, you can’t just talk any version of S3 file and stick it on another S3… You need to have the same software version. This isn’t the hardware number on the case either. In the case of the older cars for example the ME7 most of the time you could get away with this but even ME7.1.1 would cause a few problems for example RS6 has at least 4 versions all on the same hardware number. This problem just gets worse with the later ECUs.
As far as the legal side of who owns the software on your cars is concerned goes, it has always been the view of the tuning industry that the copy on your car is yours to do to as you feel free as long as..
1) You don't try and sell it as something you have written (I'm talking about the original binary)
2) You should be modifying the copy from the car you are tuning (this is good practise as well) there are one or two exception for example Revo who compile their own software.
3) Anything you do invalidates any warranty or guarantees of the ECU and associated part ie. The engine gearbox etc.
If the manufactures were that worried about the mapping industry and the IP side they would have sorted it a long time ago and No the TP version in the latest ECUs don’t count.
The biggest problem has always been the people who modify their car to death and then when it goes wrong wants the manufacture to pick up the bill. If you want to play with your car you have to accept the risks.
I’m moving this thread to the tuning section of the site…. I think there are a few thing that need to be thought about and feel free to PM me.