Ecutek flash & warranty

[regal]

Originally Posted by Kodename47

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.

[xjohnx]

Originally Posted by regal

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

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.

[DeliciousTuning]

Originally Posted by Rombinhood@OpenFlash

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.

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

[jamesm]

Originally Posted by FR-S Matt

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

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

[jamesm]

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.

[Foobar]

Originally Posted by jamesm

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.

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.


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[jamesm]

Originally Posted by Foobar

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.


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

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.

[stugray]

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.

[blackfireball5]

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.

[steve99]

Originally Posted by blackfireball5

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.

[steve99]

Originally Posted by stugray

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.

Exactly

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

[xDanger_208x]

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

[Toyota John]

Flash one of ECUTEK's stock files back to your ecu with ECUTEK.