SuperChips ECU tune/reflash

[aVex]

[QUOTE=kaktusdigital;618680]If you reverted back to your original flash, can the VW service center see that your ecu has been messed with?
QUOTE]

I've been told by a Superchips representative based in NZ (via email) that Superchips ECU upgrade does not reset the ECU Flash Counter. He also claims that no other competitor is able to do so as well. However APR says it does...so I'm also not sure who is right.

[kaanage]

My Viezu flasher (rebadged Alientech w Viezu maps) didn't update the ECU counter (early ones did which caused a HUGE dispute a couple of years ago).

[Jmac]

Our Rep in NZ would be Peter. Some do reset the flash counter. Now you would have to be having a dealer dispute of warranty in the 1st place, that being a dispute of a warranty item being questioned due to a tune. Regular every day stuff they wouldnt check the flash counter, they will when you have customers arriving with obvious bling, tuner names with stickers, badges all over your car and an obvious sign you flog your machine. Everyday warranty items wouldnt be checked, speaking from MANY years dealer experience here if you are in for a legitimate fault i for one wouldnt be delving to check flash counters. i would however if i had a car with baulking gear shift , poor clutch cv joints and your hat turned round looking fully sik etc im sure you catch my drift. If you have a vehicle lucky enough with Canbus protocol allowing a Bluefin then if you arrive standard then try and prove your car runs tuned???? I service many vehicles that dont have the luck of being able to be done by Bluefin , but have ECU flash and ive NEVER had any of my customers been knocked back. Worst ive seen so far is the flash has been walked over with a factory software upgrade, what do you reckon happen here? it gets reflashed free of charge
To answer the encryption question i probably have read over 10 cars in the last fortnight with fear of encryption. Only 1 was. The best way to tell is , if you can access a dealer, is to have the ECU read then you will know if you are encrypted or not. Encryption can still be tuned but its there for the long haul
Happy to hear more.
Jmac

[kaktusdigital]

Our Rep in NZ would be Peter. Some do reset the flash counter. Now you would have to be having a dealer dispute of warranty in the 1st place, that being a dispute of a warranty item being questioned due to a tune. Regular every day stuff they wouldnt check the flash counter, they will when you have customers arriving with obvious bling, tuner names with stickers, badges all over your car and an obvious sign you flog your machine. Everyday warranty items wouldnt be checked, speaking from MANY years dealer experience here if you are in for a legitimate fault i for one wouldnt be delving to check flash counters. i would however if i had a car with baulking gear shift , poor clutch cv joints and your hat turned round looking fully sik etc im sure you catch my drift. If you have a vehicle lucky enough with Canbus protocol allowing a Bluefin then if you arrive standard then try and prove your car runs tuned???? I service many vehicles that dont have the luck of being able to be done by Bluefin , but have ECU flash and ive NEVER had any of my customers been knocked back. Worst ive seen so far is the flash has been walked over with a factory software upgrade, what do you reckon happen here? it gets reflashed free of charge
To answer the encryption question i probably have read over 10 cars in the last fortnight with fear of encryption. Only 1 was. The best way to tell is , if you can access a dealer, is to have the ECU read then you will know if you are encrypted or not. Encryption can still be tuned but its there for the long haul
Happy to hear more.
Jmac

Thank you all for your responses. I'm quite eager to get a tune done now. So many to choose from! As there are no bluefin suppliers here in Melbourne, do they get shipped from Sydney or all the way from the U.K?

[DNA Tuning]

Just out of interest, do the Superchips Bluefins come preloaded with the software for the car?

[h100vw]

They don't, they are 'empty'. You read the ECU and send it to the UK IIRC. They send you the tuned file and you save it to the Bluefin and load the ECU from there.

Once that's done it is effectively locked to the car. You could leave the tune loaded to the car and then transfer the capability to another vehicle, for a fee.

One Bluefin, one car at a time.

Gavin

[DNA Tuning]

They don't, they are 'empty'. You read the ECU and send it to the UK IIRC. They send you the tuned file and you save it to the Bluefin and load the ECU from there.

Once that's done it is effectively locked to the car. You could leave the tune loaded to the car and then transfer the capability to another vehicle, for a fee.

One Bluefin, one car at a time.

Gavin

Thanks for the info! That's how we do it with the SRS-II handheld as well; I just wanted to clarify there wasn't some special feature built into the Bluefin that could avoid this step.

[Guy_H]

[QUOTE=aVex;618789]

If you reverted back to your original flash, can the VW service center see that your ecu has been messed with?
QUOTE]

I've been told by a Superchips representative based in NZ (via email) that Superchips ECU upgrade does not reset the ECU Flash Counter. He also claims that no other competitor is able to do so as well. However APR says it does...so I'm also not sure who is right.

I cannot speak for any other tuning company, but certainly the APR protocol is to read the flash counter present in the ECU firstly & write the same back in. That way, if your car has one factory update, it's written back as one. It has been this way since 2003.

Certainly the flash counter is on the standard diagnosis service bulletin (looking for modifications - along with several other things too).

[Jmac]

They don't, they are 'empty'. You read the ECU and send it to the UK IIRC. They send you the tuned file and you save it to the Bluefin and load the ECU from there.

Once that's done it is effectively locked to the car. You could leave the tune loaded to the car and then transfer the capability to another vehicle, for a fee.

One Bluefin, one car at a time.

Gavin

Thats all pretty much correct, there is different firmware for different cars though, so they are not completely empty as such. I cant sell an XR5 Focus customer a Bluefin unit that suits a Mk5 Golf for instance if that makes sense
Cheers
Jmac

[kaanage]

Jmac, does the Bluefin need setting up by you or the user before downloading the original ECU map?

The AlienTech (used as the SRS-II, V-Switch, etc) needs to have the car/engine/ECU selected before connecting to a car so that it can communicate properly with the ECU to do the initial download, so there's another point for the user to muck up.

[lilcrash]

Jmac. This thread is making want to get the superchips tune done but the bluefin site doesn't list my car, is it still possible to do it? Can you please pm me a price. Thank you

[Jmac]

Jmac, does the Bluefin need setting up by you or the user before downloading the original ECU map?

The AlienTech (used as the SRS-II, V-Switch, etc) needs to have the car/engine/ECU selected before connecting to a car so that it can communicate properly with the ECU to do the initial download, so there's another point for the user to muck up.

Hi, not really mate, as i mentioned it has the base firmware already so at the point when you hook it up to the car with a couple of prompts and aknowlegements from you the eeprom will then be read. Then you will then connect to your laptop and email the file to the Uk mainframe, it will send you your upgrade file back, then you essentially have an external hardrive now with 2 files on it, 1 original and one tune. Anytime you want to revert back to orig then there is no more emailing or laptop time reqd, all done on the controller
Cheers
Jmac

[Jmac]

Jmac. This thread is making want to get the superchips tune done but the bluefin site doesn't list my car, is it still possible to do it? Can you please pm me a price. Thank you

Unfortunately your Beetle doesnt run the protocol required to have a Bluefin. Yours sounds like a later one so might be able to be done via the OBD port with an ECU flash, older ones had to have the ECU removed and flashed direct
Cheers
Jmac

[lilcrash]

Yer I think someone mentioned it may have a mk4 computer ??? I'm an old skewl guy so haltech is where my knowledge stops.

[ctan]

I have had excellent service from Superchip UK.
I initially purchased a blufin handset Dec 2009 to install a stage 1 map to my then standard octavia 1.8tsi. The bluefin arrived from the UK within 5 days of ordering and the uploading of the map was pretty easy.

I would recommend however that anybody who remaps their car (with whoevers software) has it dyno checked. Reason being that after the stage 1 map was installed I was keen to see the results on a dyno. The dyno revealed that the mixture was running lean at boost up
and could have caused detonation. I emailed Superchip with the dyno result and was quickly given another map. The remap fixed the problem.

Sounds like a good thing to do. Can someone advise where I can do a dyno check in Sydney after I get a bluefin ECU upgrade?