RomRaider

Hi,

there have been reports in canada that Subaru of Canada were declining warranty after the inspection of the ECU when the engine fails. Customers received a letter stating that the ecu has been reflashed and that they can provides a date of the last reflash. It was for the model WRX 265.

Now I have a sh7058 on my bench and I do not see any RTC (or battery) and the SSM protocol is pretty basic and does not seem to include any date/time synchronisation from what I can see. Anyone have more info on the subject? They might be a counter hidden somewhere I guess...

thanx

Mart

1 find 8pin 93C46 flash chip just near the 7058 where immo lives
2 who knows what 68HC916R chip for throttle control has inside
3 there are a lot other CAN wired places - instrumental cluster, airbag controller, ABS, AT control, etc.

All DBW ECU encode a unique number for each individual ECU. When modded, this number is recalculated and changed. Since 4 years here in France, Subaru dealers do read this number and send it to SOF. I haven't seen any date encoded, but this number is enough to state that the ECU has been modified.
Anyway, if you reflash your ECU with its original extracted map, this number will reset to its original value just as if the ECU had never been reflashed.

Flashing back to the stock rom will not do it, should be what came with the ecu ?

Hi Guys,

I apologize for bringing this topic back from the 'almost dead.'

My 2011 STi 5AT is due for its annual oil service at the local dealership. I have been stressing about the possibility that the dealership might discover that my car's ecu has been 'modified' and subsequently they can suspend my warranty.

However after reading this post I wish to clarify my understanding of whats been posted here - If I reflash my car's ecu with its original rom using Ecuflash, the dealership will be unable to detect if I have modded the ecu previously?

Am I correct?

Regards.

Ya madvally, did you come to a conclusion on this?

I'm in the same boat; I want to tinker but want to retain some ass-cover from SOA if things go south.

I don't think this is very ethical.
If you flash the ECU and break your car, don't expect Subaru to pay for your mistake.

If they can read a flash date from the ECU regardless of the map loaded then they are protecting themselves from this very behaviour.

I don't think there is anything to investigate in an effort to try and defeat it. That would not look good on us the tuning community or RomRaider supporters.

I have no idea whether dealerships can tell if you've reflashed. To the best of my knowledge, reflashing back to the stock tune with EcuFlash will restore the ECU's CPU's ROM to the same state it was in before you flashed a tuned ROM, but I have no idea whether there are other chips in the ECU that keep track of how many times the ECU has been flashed. Sasha mentioned that there are other devices in there which could potentially track that sort of thing.

If they have an off-CPU reboot counter, for example, mine would read almost 200, which would probably be suspicious. ("Sir, do you have a habit of leaving your dome light on until the battery is dead?")

And I don't intend to investigate this stuff, because...



...I agree with this. If you're using EcuFlash, you are responsible for whatever happens to your motor after that. Subaru can only provide their warranty because of the big safety margin that they built into their tunes. When you turn up the power, you eat into that safety margin. If the motor blows up, that's your problem, not theirs.

And besides, reverse engineering takes a s***load of time, and I don't have nearly enough time to learn all the things I want to figure out about making more power, smoother, more reliably, etc.

I dont want to start a debate but one could argue that subaru sometimes release poor ecu calibration (such as 08+ hesitation issue and they are saying that is a normal behavior bla bla bla and wont do a thing about it). Is that very ethical from them as well? Your only solution is to flash an almost stock flash with slight modifications that will fix the issue.

Anyway, they should have sufficient protection and/or mecanism in the first place. A bit like having your place always unlocked... you can expect s*** to happen at some point in time...

Mart

I think this is a slightly different kind of problem. The OEM tune may introduce a drivability issue but it does also have to meet various emissions standards and such. I don't see a problem with analyzing an issue with a tune and bringing it to the attention of the manufacturer so they can address it, if at all possible and still be compliant in the market the car is sold in.

If you are willing to tinker then you need to justify to yourself whether you need a professional tune(and spend more) or are prepared to self tune and take the risks. If you are comfortable with the risk factor then self tuning is rewarding PLUS you would need to seriously be pushing the limits of the stock bottom end/turbo to have serious damage in most cases.

I have cams, turbo, valvesprings, TBE on my near new STi and would in no way push Subaru for a warranty claim... nor would I on my stock FozXT with just STi rear mufflers fitted. In most cases, the stock tune is the cause of warranty claims!

The number of people who make drivability changes without also adding power is very very small. If not zero, then close enough.

If you left your doors unlocked, and someone stole a bunch of your stuff, you'd lock your doors, right? That's another HUGE reason that the RomRaider community should not facilitate warranty fraud - we don't want Subaru to lock the door. It would be very easy for Subaru to start selling cars that EcuFlash cannot read or reflash. I mean, if they wanted to stop us, 2012 could be the last year that EcuFlash and RomRaider can tune.

It took some incredible work to get EcuFlash working in the first place, and the guy who did that work hasn't been very active in the tuning community lately. If Subaru locks the door, there's no reason to expect that someone would unlock it.

And if they lock it carefully, there's no reason to expect that anyone could unlock it. Can manufacturers are required to make it possible for independent shops to apply ROM updates. But if Subaru gets enough warranty claims from people who blew their motors with bad tunes, to they could start digitally signing their official updates, and the ECU could reject any ROM image that wasn't signed by Subaru. And then you need a standalone ECU if you want to run an aftermarket downpipe without blowing your motor.

There are some willing badly especially for NA cars.
Crazy AVCS and\or Ignition tables for some Subaru markets are seen often.

FHI does really nothing to rectify these.

to give my 2cents to this..

The diesel ECU alllready got a flashcounter in dump, witch will count-up, when stations-flasher wirtes an up-date.
There is also a request of a read-out checksumm of the ECU dump, if any ishes of the diesel engine appears..

So, Subaru do allready check the software, if (diesel-) engine break down and they are using more than just a flashcounter reading.
From other ECUs I know, that flashcounters are placed in the RAM-chip, where IMMO and DTCs are also locaed.
Because of this, I will be very glad, if there is a chance to read and wirte the EEPROM via OBD, but AFAIK noone got one for the Denso ECU so fare (only open ECU and read directly the chip with a clemp-connection will work so fare).




True and not-true..
Reading and wirting via OBD will be disabled quite easy, if Subaru / Denso wants to, yes..
But on the ohter hand, stations have to up-date the ECU as well, so they need a "saved" way to do it.
Bosch enables a passwort for this, witch makes it very difficult to re-write the ECU.

But at the end, Boot-strap-loader (SHBootMode) will do the jobs.

disadantages:
- you need a base dump to tune, bootloader will not read
- you need ot open the ECU

AT the end Bosch way are simple to unterstand:
OEM just needs to know if there is any kind of non relased software of the ECU and they are "out"
And opened ECU is enought to know this.

So tuning will be possible in the future of cause, but it will not be hidden so easy.
And this is enought for OEM in case of waranty ishues

BR

Back in 2007, about a year after having my car, I took it in to Subaru because my engine died on me and wanted them to replace it...they almost denied my claim because they said the ECU had been changed. At that point RomRaider and ECUFlash didn't even support my car and the only thing I had done was connect the green connectors and read the ECU image to post here for support. Whatever reading does also increases this counter it seems since they told me they saw that the ECU image wasn't the same as stock.