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Author Topic: Talk some sense into me about starting from scratch on my S4  (Read 36720 times)
Jason
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Breaks everything!



Long story short, I have a well built stage 3 car that's just a toy (I have other transportation), with a tune that's notorious for being poor.  It doesn't matter what fuel I run (we have 100 unleaded and 110 leaded at the pumps here).  You may have seen me post about this before because this car is a ping machine.  CF's are always below 8, but the car likes to ping at high RPM tip in and mid-range in second gear.  The NefMoto tool can't read the tune due to the tuner disabling the RequestUpload function, and I'm contemplating just starting fresh today and waving goodbye to a 5 year bad tuning saga.  After all my read attempts these past few days, the car lost my lemmiwinks tweaks which I had made to correct most of the issues.  Not a huge deal, but I think I've passed the point of irritation with this tune.  

My intentions were to start fresh, but read the existing rom as a fallback in case I am not successful in this endeavor.  I ordered a galletto setup for this, but I am impatient as the weather is cool here this weekend (In the 90's... last week it was 118 during the days and my garage didn't fall below 100 until about 2am)

I have one other option and that's swapping the smd 29F800BB with another that has my old GIAC-X flash.  Obviously this is somewhat risky, but would allow me to keep the old tune, and then overwrite the flash I don't care about.

So, my question is - should I wait, or should I take the plunge?  I have spent quite a bit of time reading up on getting a baseline tune established, and it seems many here have had good success.

Thoughts?  Flames?
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ArgDub
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« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2010, 04:04:02 PM »

Considering that many tuners do it that way, I don't think it is that risky. It depends on the tools you have and your experience. But you will need a programmer if you want to read it after it is removed.

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Jason
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« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2010, 04:10:31 PM »

I do have experience swapping smd's but there is always the risk of lifting a pad or damaging a trace.  I have sneezed before and ruined things... lol.
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ArgDub
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« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2010, 06:51:07 PM »

That is why I said experiance rather than skill. Getting skilled involves screwing up things.. lol

Being it a stage 3, you aren't running stock injectors nor maf, right?
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Jason
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« Reply #4 on: July 24, 2010, 06:54:52 PM »

Correct... I've got an 85mm hitachi maf, and 440's.  Which is obviously going to make getting the maf and injectors scaled properly a pain.  I don't have a stock hitachi housing, and who knows where the stock injectors are... I can't even find my spare ECU's at this point so I am assuming they are in the same missing box.
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Jason
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« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2010, 12:35:01 PM »

Oh boy.  So, I took the ECU out this morning and when I removed the eeprom, I noticed two of the pads were missing from the board.  I guess I'm not surprised since this board had had a few eeproms on it over the years.  

I melted down the glob of Lowmelt and found them.  I scraped the solder mask away from their traces, laid the pad down, hit it with some flux, and was able to solder the pad to the traces.

At this point I decided this was the last time this eeprom would be swapped, and since the whole point of this operation was to keep my old tune as a backup, I elected to install the old eeprom so I not only have a backup, but so that I can help Tony test his alternate read methods.

I successfully soldered the old eeprom back on, and it works, despite being ugly.  I also ordered some ChipQuik as it melts at 138 degrees instead of 300, so it should be much gentler on any future work.

But that means I need to either buy another ECU or try to figure out where the heck my spares are.


Edit:  On the up side, last night I figured out how to fix the checksum on the 2001.5 Audi S4 - 8D0907551M - 0261207143 - 0002.bin that tony posted, so as soon as I have a good flashable ECU, I will be in business.
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Tony@NefMoto
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2001.5 Audi S4 Stage 3


« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2010, 11:46:27 PM »

I will see if I can put together a special release for you to test out the security bypass ECU reading. It will be a few days though.
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NOTORIOUS VR
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« Reply #7 on: July 27, 2010, 12:29:22 PM »

I'm sorry, but doesn't boot mode completely bypass whatever security options the "tuner" might have set?

Why not just read it out in boot mode?
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Jason
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Breaks everything!


« Reply #8 on: July 27, 2010, 12:42:55 PM »

I'm sorry, but doesn't boot mode completely bypass whatever security options the "tuner" might have set?

Why not just read it out in boot mode?

I need a cable... I ordered it but as you know most of that stuff takes about 300 days to show up from China :p
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Tony@NefMoto
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« Reply #9 on: July 27, 2010, 03:20:42 PM »

You can do it in boot mode of course. But removing the ECU from the car and pulling the boot pin low is a pain.
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Jason
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Breaks everything!


« Reply #10 on: July 27, 2010, 03:22:24 PM »

You can do it in boot mode of course. But removing the ECU from the car and pulling the boot pin low is a pain.

So I can use your software in boot mode?
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Tony@NefMoto
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« Reply #11 on: July 27, 2010, 03:24:05 PM »

Nope. Boot mode is a completely different protocol, and it requires opening up the ECU and applying a ground wire to the ECU circuit board.

I'm working on a test release for you Jason, to see if my back door reading method will work for you.
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Jason
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Breaks everything!


« Reply #12 on: July 27, 2010, 03:25:28 PM »

Nope. Boot mode is a completely different protocol, and it requires opening up the ECU and applying a ground wire to the ECU circuit board.

I'm working on a test release for you Jason, to see if my back door reading method will work for you.

Ok, that's what I thought... but I just wanted to make sure so I didn't have to leave work early to go try it since the ECU is just hanging there Cheesy
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Jason
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Breaks everything!


« Reply #13 on: August 04, 2010, 09:53:30 PM »

Tonight has been a good night.

I successfully read the current tune in boot mode.  I ended up soldering a little 3 pin Molex PC fan pin strip header to the ECU (with a little pigtail so I can extend it outside the housing if I want), and then made a little extension cord to plug into it with a switch so that I could boot mode from within the car.  Ghetto, but it works Cheesy

I then threw together a baseline tune to account for my big maf and injectors, fired up the NefMoto flasher, and flashed the new ROM in about 2 minutes.

I turned the key... and she started and drove around the block!  So that means my checksumming works right!

I then read the file back out of the ECU, and compared it to the original - it was identical.  Yay!

I then flashed the old tune back, and the car started up.  I then tried to read that old tune, and couldn't, so now I know I successfully accomplished my "failsafe" objective.

Now, the dirty work lies ahead.  I have to hook the N75 back up (I'm running an MBC) so I can start working on properly scaling the maf/injectors.

I will still run the MBC once I start boost tuning, simply because the driveability is much improved with the MBC - it spools sooner and the car just *feels* better.

All in all, thanks for all your hard work Tony! 
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Jason
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Breaks everything!


« Reply #14 on: August 14, 2010, 07:45:57 AM »

Minor update:

My wideband is kaput so I am in the market for a new wideband.  Digging around in my garage I found a NIB stock hitachi MAF, so I will be swapping that in, along with my stock injectors, and then hopefully picking up a new wideband setup this week, so I can get some good baseline logs so that I can properly scale the big maf and then get the big injectors setup.  This way I am not tuning them in relation to each other, so my load should be pretty accurate.  I will also be swapping the sensor element over, so the electronics will be the same and I won't be comparing a new vs old sensor in an stock vs big housing.

I think I am going to tune off the N75 for now, and then replace it with the MBC, simply because the MBC dramatically improves spooling.  Hopefully I will have some results next week.
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