This is why when I sell my car one day (if I do), I will be providing all the Ecutek information to the buyer along with the most up to date tune file and the stock rom to pass inspection. I feel any good car owner and reputable seller would do the same, one enthusiast to another.

Honestly OP, if you have Ecutek on there and you know it for sure, I suggest what @moto-mike said. :)

Find yourself an Ecutek cable and you can use a laptop to do logging and flashing.

Agree totally.

However i think in these cases it was probably a Flash and Go tune and the original owner had no cable and no need for tune info. It would have cost the owner to get it flashed it back to stock. So they just trade\sell car as is . The Map 1 (assuming they have switchable map) is probably the fairly stockish map anyway. that it will default to on startup.

I've currently got ecutek license in my ecu, and I'm pretty sure my tuner flashed back a "stock" tune back in when he removed my supercharger. I now have an OFT and intend to flash a new tune, but assuming worse case scenario if the current ecutek tune is not actually a stock one, will the ecu get bricked?

No wont brick anything.


When you get tuned with ecutek, the ecutek licience gets embedded in the ecu rom in an unused area.


Each time you flash with ecutek the ecutek software checks for the presence of this licience info.


If your ecutek tuner flashed back a "stock" ecutek rom with ecutek, then


The ecu is now unlocked and can be written to with other tune systems such as oft tectrix etc


The ecu will still contain your embedded ecutek licience.


When you marry oft to the car the oft will read out your current rom and store it in oft this rom will contain your ecutek licience.


If you ever unmarry the oft you will write back this rom and your ecutek licience will be restored.


Might be an idea to save a copy of that rom , by downloading of oft so you can restore it if something goes wrong with oft.

could please those who posted this:

the dongle NOT associated to the license on the car

confirm that info?

- did you get this information from ecutek?

or

- did you in fact burn some tune with your dongle (standard, not master tuner license) on another car that was licensed with a different dongle?

or you're just posting/reposting some blah-blah since this is internet and anyone can post what they want and not held accountable for that. :)

if i were this guy i would hate to pay over $300 for cable/dongle to find out that i still can't flash the car and now also need to buy a new license.


even if you know how to transfer license it would be illegal unless you get an ecutek permission to do so.

Correct. The dongle is the software license key for the laptop/PC and is in no way related to that on the ECU.

An ECU license is attached to a dongle ID via remote update to allow the 1st flash, this is then embedded into the ECU on the 1st flash and that's it. This is what you do if you purchase a "license" from a Master tuner. That license is then becomes "used" and the dongle will show as having 0 licenses available. That means you can then only flash to an ECU with an existing license on it.

^^^ the above is all clear but it doesn't answer my question. neither does it explain why you're stating the below

as the dongle ID may very well be "embedded into the ECU on the 1st flash" thus linking the license installed on ECU and the dongle ID of the standard license that was used to do the first burn.


since you are so sure the info is correct - did you get that info that any dongle can be used to burn on any ECU from EcuTek or did you try it yourself (btw, your license is still standard, not master, right)?

A scarios here that I've seen:
1) Original tune flashed by a tuner, subsequent tunes flashed by user.(Tuner dongles are keyed too!).
2) Used my personal dongle to 1st flash another car for his tuner, subsequent updates not done by me.
3) Logged and written to someone else's car - unsure of original flash.

Also, on the flashing screen if you hit query ECU nothing on there confirms a corresponding ECU license, just that it has one and that flashing won't consume one.

Not got any info from ECUtek but nothing has ever pointed to the dongle being tied to the ECU. The only reason the dongles are keyed is for locked tunes and the ability to add software features and licenses remotely.

awesome, thanks