regular maintenance at dealer with a tune
 

Should I flash my car back to stock before going to the dealer for regular maintenance? I have an open flash tablet.

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Will you lose your left nut trying to flash it back to stock?
Will the dealer look at you in utter rage when they find out it's been tuned? Will they grab pitch forks and torches and toss your ass out?

Only you can make that call.

Yes and keep your fingers crossed they dont notice

:(

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If it were for just an oil and filter change, I wouldn't worry about it.


humfrz

oh shit...i am having my 22500 service next week...
My service is covered by toyota and its free of charge...
is my invidia allow ?

Yea I'm coming up on some service also but I'm gonna install my uel headers and tune tomorrow

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so i guess is ok?

I'll just flash it back to stock for the day

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Keep it as is.

What are they going to do, deny you an oil change?

I was wondering if they mess with the ECU to check anything, cause if they do that then my openflash tablet will not work anymore.

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regular maintenance at dealer with a tune
 

I have a 2015 FR-S with 13500 miles. UEL header, exhaust, OFT stage 2 tune. I have had all of my maintenance so far done at the dealership, and nobody has said anything about it, aside from how nice my car sounds.

Just tell them you are tuned and not to fuck with anything. They can't deny you service for it. From everything I've read, it really doesn't matter what mods you have unless they were related to a warranty claim. If they look at the ecu they will see "events" recorded and know that you tuned it anyways so it doesn't matter

Yep too late man warranty will be denied for good now.

Would constantly flashing and re-flashing eventually harm the car? Last car I had the service center did the flashing and re-flashing on and it was encouraged to "get the best out of your car" Also I never got grief about warranties. Come to think of it I never got grief about warranty in any of my cars when I put mods on them. I really don't even know if half of them noticed the mods hmph

I did get an illegal tint ticket once

I suppose it may fragment the memory? Probably not at a rate that could be detrimental. Race cars do it all the time for testing so I wouldn't worry. Worst case scenario you replace the ecu but I've never heard of this happening

Then I'll just defragment!
Works for windows!

I am with the just leave it crowd as far as maintenance goes. If going in for related warranty work I would probably reflash but not sure how much it would help even then. The cars are smarter than you think and really suck at keeping a secret.

Way too much misinformation and stupidity in the responses that could've been cleared up with a simple search, also why would you even get a tune without doing this research first?

This is from documentation the great tuning god @steve99 has found:
Guaranteed flash cycles 1000 , typical cycles before failure 10,000
Programming/erasing control program included as firmware of the ECU itself

Although if you go an flash the car on a low battery your flipping the coin on whether or not you'll brick the ecu, and I've heard peoples OBD2 socket pins go bad after repeatedly unnecessarily yanking the cable.
Also as a Electrical Engineer/Computer Engineering Major, 2 MB of Tables and other data probably isn't going to fragment especially the way it's stored on the ecu, on a solid state storage solution.

You're best bet is to flash to stock for dealer services, even though our roms aren't like ecuteks where it's easily visible because the rom locks the ecu, if they decide to say do a TSB which involves the ECU reflash there's no way the OFT will work again. Also I've gone into at least 3 dealer services so far, 1 with a TCM reflash without flashing back to stock with no issues. Techstream cannot detect the tune because it's basically an edited stock rom, you'd need to send the ecu away for anyone to find anything.

This is from @steve99 s post:

Depends on flash device.

Devices such as Open flash Tablet or Tactrix/Ecuflash do not encrypt or lock the tuned ROM. When you flash back a stock ROM with these devices it is 100% stock.

This means the dealer can connect to car with TechStream (dealer software) and interact with the ECU in the normal manner. even if they pulled your ROM its 100% stock.

Tuning Devices such as EcuTek and BRZEdit have the ability to lock and encrypt the ROM in the ECU and Dealers may not be able to connect/re-flash to interact with the car's ECU in some cases if these locked or encrypted (seed key changed) ROM's are left in the car. If you have the required cables and licenses you can flash a "stock" ROM back to your car but it contains license info which if they were really looking they could detect.

OBD code readers or clearing of OBD diagnostic/CEL codes should still work. The ROM encryption/locking generally only effects the ability to read or write/re-flash the tuned ROM.

Dealers use Techstream software to connect to ECU it can read the ROM calibration ID and various engine parameters but no one has found a "flash Counter" yet.

It possible if they sent your ECU away for analysis or they brought in some super guru in they could detect something but this is unlikely at a standard service.


Covered maintenance is NOT the same as warranty service it is allowed and you won't have anything to worry about. Unless your dealer is extremely mod unfriendly, I even got my dealer to align my win jets correctly for free......


It's up to you if you have UELs the Stage 2 tune might be the only way you'll pass. Just tell your service advisor to speak to you before doing any ecu or invasive work if it's necessary like a TSB, and say you'll come in an other time to do it. But honestly Openflash Tablet is so user friendly and only takes like 5-6 minutes to flash back to stock so why wouldn't you.

Last time i heard from @nelsmar he has done about 1500 flashes, i know several people who have done 300 or more.

OFT will still talk to your ecu if dealer reflashes a new rom to your car. But if you havenot flashed to stock before service then you wont be able to marry up to this new rom. However you will still be able to flash your tined rom over the new dealer flashed rom.

OFT looks at two things your original stock rom calid that its married to and will only flash rom with same calid as your stock one and the VIN number of your car.

The only time you will run into trouble is if the dealer replaces ecu say due to cam issues and the technician at the dealer either dont type the vin into the ecu correctly or they forget to enter the vin. Then oft will refuse to write as vin has changed

Their are no TSB to flash ecu after about late 2013 and any usa car with B01C\D calibration will not need a reflash by dealer at the present time.