You will have to solder the pins in place.
Just a heads up.

It's those spring loaded pins that need to be soldered to the little green board.
You just get several boards with the BDM stand and a bag of the spring pins.
It's up to you at assemble them.

Hi all,

Spare ECU arrived on Friday (this time around it really was an MED9.1 thank goodness). It also still had the connectors and an inch of wiring harness attached which is nice since I can reuse them a bit later.

Some pictures attached so you can see what I'm talking about (login to see the photos).







I began by removing the shear bolts that hold the clamps in place around the connectors. I drilled out the bolts, starting with a 2mm drill bit and working up (in hindsight, I may have been better off using a hacksaw to cut a slot in the bolt head and using a screwdriver since I had to use some gas pliers and eventually a screw extractor to get the stumps out). Clamps off and then the locking slides on the connectors can be moved and the connectors come off.










Good grief man, but how painful is it to open these things!!!

I took it slowly and carefully, but even so... I first heated the ECU in the oven at 60 degrees celsius for 10 minutes (I reckoned this was safe enough since the engine bay probably approaches this on a hot summers day). Then I used a broad spatula to lever up the sides. I weighed things up and chose to use a spatula instead of a screwdriver since I wanted to apply the pressure along the whole side, not just at a single point like a screwdriver. The spatula didn't leave any marks on the casing either which was neat and tidy.



As I levered up each side, I inserted a flat bit of metal in each corner to keep it up. A knife blade did it nicely for me. Then once I had all four corners raised, I could slip a knife into the gap and run it down gently, slitting the silicon. I didn't push the blade in very deep in case I nicked the PCB and components.





It was still tricky since the PCB inside was sticking to both the top and bottom cases (silicon). But a bit of patience and gentle pressure meant I eventually got the case off as you can see.













Question - when you re-assemble it, do you put a bit more thermal compound on? That's the white stuff you can see. Also, do you put any new silicon on? It could get pretty messy...

I'm truly glad this is a spare ECU since I would be pretty nervous to try this first time on my own ECU. Maybe you get better with practice, but the whole experience needed quite a lot of brute force.

BDM frame should arrive this week and and I'll go about setting it up when it does.

Yes, the method prj suggested works good, I would also recommend to do it that way.

Only difference is I use a dremel with a small cutting wheel.
Makes for a sharp groove and allows a tight fit with the flat-head blade, so no slipping and ruining of tools.

On the last MK6 GTI I did the bolts could be unscrewed right away, no heat needed.
Those bolts are stupid shit, totally useless.

Thanks for the info on mileage! I was asking about that in the med9.1 thread. I'm still curious if it keeps track of the mileage in the ecu though. I guess it does unless it reads the mileage from the cluster for freeze frame data (unlikely). If you can post your bdm read of your spare and the mileage in freeze frame maybe I can find the location of the mileage.

Thanks!

well i finally got my spare ecu and managed to bdm read the whole thing. i also flashed it with the eeprom ad flash from a full BDM read of a GOFL R ecu i found on the interwebs.  not a bad sunday night! now i have to take the plunge and actually pull my ecu!

side note for OP (or anyone) - have you been able to find any immo off info?  seems it's possible, but no one wants to divulge publcly.  would be really nice to just immo off the spare ECU and not have to open my original  (risking damage).

-Jordan

It is possible, but the first person to publicly divulge it will likely be drawn and quartered.

its not terribly difficult, however there is a certain level of lively hood involved, and med9 is still a profitable platform for many professional tuning firms.  These solutions are not freely available for some time likely.


Ill gladly give you the immo off solution for your golf R,  but you must tell me where you live