Good afternoon ladies and gents,

Firstly, I know that a lot of the information I'm about to ask for will be in this site somewhere, I absolutely PROMISE I have tried searching for it all but your forum is so big and there is so much on here about specific problems, and it seems everyone is working several levels above my knowledge so I really thought I better just ask.

I have a 2001 B5S4 FL which has (I believe) got a dead MAF. The stock MAF was a Bosch one and I bought a Hitachi one as I'd read that they're an upgrade, but without researching properly what was involved in the conversion.

I got as far as replacing the MAF and changing out the plug with the new wiring configuration and of course the car now won't run properly with it connected. Finally doing the research I should have done before I bought the thing tells me I need to re-flash the ECU with an M-Box code and that is what has brought me here.

Now, at this stage I could take the easy option, re-wire the car back to a Bosch MAF, plug one in and have done, but I am never one for the easy option and I'm pretty good at grasping new concepts so I'd like to give it a go, however as my subject title suggests I'm really starting from scratch with this level of working with my car.

So I'd like to ask, if you don't mind, a few things before I get started, so that I can make an informed decision as to whether this is a road I want to go down.

Firstly, the car already has a modified map on it, nothing special -  it's at about 320bhp, if I change to an M-box code will all the information which made that map what it is be lost - i.e will the car be reset to the stock 280bhp map until I go somewhere to get it re-mapped again?

I see from searching through the forum that you need a flash file to flash the ECU with, and the NefMoto program simply installs it - whereabouts would I obtain one of these M-box flash files?

In my searches I found this topic:

http://nefariousmotorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=305.15

And on the second page Tony@NefMoto says that to re-code to an M you just connect with VCDS and change the coding to M - does this mean I don't actually have to flash the ECU at all, I can just use VCDS to swap the code over?

I also found this topic:

http://nefariousmotorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=7540.0

And the OP is talking about changing strings of letters... and the responses are more strings of letters. I can't seem to find the missing link on this forum between being totally brand new to this whole thing (me) and conversing in strings of letters and knowing what they mean... do I just have to change out the things he is talking about and not actually change out the whole file?

I know this is an absolute n00b post, and I apologise if the information I'm looking for was actually staring me in the face... but a nudge in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

All the best and thanks in advance!

╦

Hi Nyet,

Thanks for replying so fast!

I appreciate the answers you've given, especially about the car returning to a standard map, that may make the difference between whether I go for this or not, at least in the short term (the car is a daily driver atm) although I also appreciate the link to the community project!

Just to clarify:


I was referring to this conversation:



I appreciate that MLOFS, MLHFM and KFKHFM make perfect sense to you, but to the untrained eye they literally just look like strings of letters with no context... which isn't me being condescending in any way, it's just a whole new skill-set to me on top of "basic" mechanics - something which I'm actually quite keen to get my head around as I've never been one to just throw money at people to fix my car when I have the opportunity to figure it out and fix it myself, it's all part of the fun!

Thanks again for taking the time to entertain my ultimately base-level questions.

╦

https://s4wiki.com/wiki/Abbreviations

A few more here:
https://s4wiki.com/wiki/Tuning#Abbreviations
https://s4wiki.com/wiki/Tuning#A_note_to_help_non-German_speakers

But the FR will get you all the information you need. Unfortunately, you'll have to polish up on your German.

Maps that start with KFK are corrections (e.g. KFKHFM)
Maps that start with ML are mass air maps (e.g. MLHFM, MLOFS)
Maps that start with KFM are generic calibration maps that provide constants (e.g. KFMIRL)

Eventually, you'll be faced with something like this:
http://files.s4wiki.com/defs/4Z7907551R.csv

It would behoove you to take a look.