Ecutek flash & warranty
 

Ive been reading about flashing a stock car and how it improve the way it runs plus it adds few extra pones :thumbup:.

My qustion is.. would the dealership be able to tell if the ecu has been flashed? is our ecu has the abillty to count how many times it has been flashed and store it in its memory?

I read about Ecutek looking the ecu, wouldnt that leave a trace in the ecu itself?


Sorry for the noob questions, im sure this subject has been discussed before, tried searching but no luck.


Thanks.

Flash it back to stock. They'll never know.

When a user flashes his ecu back to stock using his Ecutek cable, does the license info on the ecu also get removed? From my experience with Ecutek back in the day (circa early 2000s), the license always stayed on the ecu, even when it was flashed back to "stock". This, unfortunately, prevented users from loading non-Ecutek tunes since this license info also "locked" the ecu from being read or written by anything other than Ecutek hw/sw. I'm guessing that that is no longer the case but would like to know for sure.

That was the case as of at least the MY04 STI cars with ecutek. Happened to me when I wanted to move from ecutek to AP protuner on my MY04 STI in 2006.

Good point, i know thats the case when it come to Evo's and STi's. the license stays in the ecu and it cant be removed. and what that dose, is encrypt the ecu code so it cant be read with any other software.

Did any of you guys flashed back to stock and took ur car for service / warranty job?

I'm pretty positive Ecutek left this feature for this reason because the car is so new and still under warranty. If anything, I would venture a guess the license is encrypted in the ECU hence why only Ecutek tunes work.

license stays with the ECU no matter what you do

iv flashed my car back and forth over 50 times already :D

good post been wondering myself the same question will flashing to stock they will notice or will leave a trace since maybe you will get the warranty for the director seal injection

But the real question is if you are able to run any other flash tune. In my experience, as long as this license in the ECU, the ECU cannot be read or written over. Which essentially means that you have to use Ecutek regardless of what other flash tuning options come out in the future. Years back this caused a bit problem for them in the Subaru market because this came a surprise to the customers who didn't realize that their ECUs was locked to Ecutek, even when it was flashed back to "stock". These users actually had to ship their ECUs back to Ecutek UK to get the license removed and ECU restored to 100% factory code.

Not sure that was the question at all but good thread jack :clap:

in my experience it is not locked.

when Toyota issued a TSB for a reflash, i flashed the car back to stock and toyota was still able to update/flash the ecu with their new software

i think my last post answers the OP's question :thumbsup:

I've asked the OPers questions a few times here and always told that there is no trace of EcuTek on the ECU. But when I emailed EcuTek they would not answer, just said that use of their software voids the factory warranty even if only used to update factory roms.

I've always been a learn from the past and experience of others type, and many Subaru enthusiasts said stay away from Ecutek because it locks your ECU. Ever notice there isn't much buzz about this car on Subaru forums, I've been told its cause experienced Subaru guys are waiting for an alternative tuning program.

There are some really top notch Subaru tuning experts in the USA and they aren't involved in this car yet. As much as I want to get at least headers and a tune I'm waiting till the Subaru gurus get in the game.

Not so much for warranty concern (I don't believe we have much of one based on csgmik'es experience) more because when the gurus figure out a solid torque dip free 200rwhp header tune I want to have whatever application they chose and not be stuck with something they can't work on.

FWIW, the BRZEdit guys are able to reflash ECUtek tuned ECU's as long as the ECUtek tuned ECU is flashed back to the stock rom before flashing with BRZedit.

Then that must mean its not EcuTek encrypted which is a good thing.

Im not really interested in using other software to tune, Ecutek is really cool software and has alot of cool features. if i can flash back to stock and the dealership cant trace how many times the ecu has been flashed, then its fine with me. i wanna keep the warranty for a year at least and enjoy the car as much as i can. before i do the turbo upgrade ;).

Please share your experience with the subject.

my car has a turbo. iv been do the dealer to do some work and no problems.

it really comes down to the dealer. if you find a mod friendly dealer then you're fine.

did you do any warranty repair and had a turbo in there?

Yup ecu flash tsb

thats a really friendly dealer you got there. lol however i dont think they will be that friendly if you show up for an engine related warranty repair. something like injectors and seals or HPFP.

As a matter of fact, i have a friend with a turbo as well and having cam issues. Dealer said, take out the turbo (because it is on the way of the cams) and we will work on the warranty.

If the turbo was not by thw cam they will work on it with the turbo on there.

You guys have an awesome dealer, i wish its like this around here. i might try my luck with Ecutek flash and see how it goes.

Confirmed now that if you have an ECuTek flash your warranty is history (even if you "flash back to stock" .) "flash back to stock" is a BS term coined by visconti and my emails to EcuTek confirmed they don't have such a feature with their software.

See: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...8182&postcount

Visconti can take blame for a lot of things, but I don't think the ECUTek "stock" reflash is solely his doing. Other ECUTek tuners provide the exact same reflash.

Further, it was never a secret that it was never a truly stock file - your license remains after all. It was merely an unlocked file with stock factory maps but still encoded with the ECUTek license marker.

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Too lazy to read more posts but I have had the ECU written over by the dealer after flashing back to stock. No issues.

I did lose the ecutek license but Visconti fixed that for me upon showing him the paperwork.

You should become a farmer with your love of spreading s**t. :clap:

While this is true, the same can be said about any of the ECU flash tuning platforms. You can flash back to a "like stock" file/config but it will never be truly like your original ROM. Anyone with half a brain would realise that. If anyone is honestly worried about ECU flashing and warranty, then just don't do it in the 1st place. Easy....

Much easier, I guess, to bad mouth products, the car, other people.....

Wrong. A good tuning solution doesn't write "tuner file" on the header of the "stock rom." Not all flashes are detectable, there are hundreds of people without issue on certain solutions. Guess you just don't have much experience in the area.

Clearly not as much as you do :clap: But to find out that the header says "tuner file" you need more than the average dealership tools. Once you get into forensic investigation I'd put money on the fact that most flashing software/equipment would leave some form of trail, however insignificant.

ECUtek "stock flash" was never a fully stock map. It is, however, good enough for the dealership to read and write to the ECU. For most dealers that will be good enough to do what they need to without it being an issue which is what you need. If you've been silly to tune your car to death, no amount of flashing "back to stock" on any solution is going to help as it will be clear how the engine died.

I'm not saying that ECUtek is perfect, it's not...... but somehow I seem to get the feeling you love to scaremonger. You're not helping.... FACT.

No a lot of people were lied to about ECUtek. Its not scaremongering, its simply answering a question (OP.)

All it takes is one more revision to Techstream with an Ecutek identifier and your warranty is gone, no forensics, been done many times by many OEM's. Do a little homework and try to help people.

The answer to OP's original question ("Can the dealer tell if I have flashed my car with ecutek?") would be NO. The dealers do not have those tools, knowledge or training to identify an ECUtek flashed ECU at this time.

You're talking in could be, might be and maybes over there. That hasn't happened yet and there are no indications that it will happen. So, yeah, scaremongering.

When the BRZ/FRS ECU is reflashed it is NOT locked as you have shown us with OpenFlash Tablet. In fact you can pull the map right off and review it, with no problem. The ONLY systems that are truly locked with EcuTeK are the 02-05 Subaru WRX.

When the BRZ/FRS ECU is reflashed back to stock. It is as stock as it is going to be with the EcuTeK License built into the ECU ROM. You can even reflash it with other systems and this goes for all makes and models EcuTeK offers their tuning system for.

So when the dealer reflashes the ECU all they are doing is writing over the current map in the ECU and of course this wipes the EcuTeK License within the ECU. Currently there is no way for the dealer to determine if the ECU has been reflashed if you have a stock EcuTeK map on the ECU.

Cheers,
William Knose

tell gt-r owners that... see how hard they laugh.

to expand on this... anyone who says that you can't tell whether a file is stock or not simply doesn't understand computer science. if you have two chunks of information and you need to tell if one == the other, this is always possible. it would be incredibly easy for anyone with the motivation to pull your rom, grab a block of data they suspect you may have changed (a fuel table or something), hash it, diff it, and see if the two are the same. it's really not rocket science, and anyone who suggests that ecutek or any other flashing mechanism somehow protects users from this is just wrong.

if you can get data, and you have some other data you need to diff it against, this can be done, bar none. implementing a tool to allow dealers to do this would be trivial. so yes, if they want to know, they can. whether or not they'll go through the trouble is another question, but it absolutely can be done.

Nobody said you can't tell the forensic difference. People are saying that dealers don't have the tools to perform such a comparison.

Subaru/Toyota can tell, and everyone has agreed on that. Dealers with techstream cannot.


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They can't as far as we know, today. The point is just that for them to implement such a thing would be trivial, and if they suspect they're losing money paying out warranty claims they shouldn't be, they'll have every reason to do so. So, long term, your not really 'safe' unless the stock rom you flash back on is exactly, bit for bit, the stock rom that came on the car. With ecutek and possibly brzedit, this is never the case.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I imagine that the ECUtek license data is stored in a portion of the ECU memory that is not normally accessed by techstream.
If you were to dump ALL of non-volatile memory and compare it to a stock dump of ALL memory, you would clearly be able to see the difference and identify the region used by the ecutek license.

Can someone direct me to the "Stock ECUTek Reflash" file? I have a CEL that requires a dealership reflash. My dealership is very mod friendly and is willing to flash my ECU under warranty if their scanners can gain access to the ECU (currently, they cannot due to ECUTek being locked). Any help would be appreciated.

Please PM me, this is urgent.

If you have a look here at the end of the post are completly stock ROM, only posed up latest ones.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62332

I think ECUTEK will write these stock roms but you may loose your licence or it may re-embed the licence in the ROM.

however I believe you should be able to access Ecuteck "stock" roms if you have the licence

However if you write the stock roms there with Tactrix its byte for byte stock no difference at all.

Exactly

any freeware hex editor comparator such as FRED attached will do it

Sorry to revive an old thread, but how do I flash back to stock with EcuTek ???