I program my ECM on a regular basis - guess that goes along with running a turbo stroker with a cam and th350 and pulling 146 mph in the quarter.

Anyway, I flashed the program the other day using WinFlash 2.11. It got all the way through the flash, but the cooling fan stayed on. I unplugged everything and tried to start it but it ran like @ss and the SES light flashed.

Sooo. . . I found a used ECM. This one was questionable because the previous owner's laptop died while flashing. I gave it a shot anyway. On this one, my PC "could not establish communications" with it. Musta' been dead to start with. . .

Then. . . I found a used ECM out of a known running car. I installed it and tried to flash it. This time, it had an "invalid response from ECM." I've had that a time or two before and it never hurt anything. I tried to flash it again and, once again, "could not establish communications" no matter how many times I tried.

What the hell is going on here?!?

I downloaded the TTS ALDL testing software and it checks out okay.

Mike

 

Maybe your cable is bad. I can repair the PCMs for you if you want. Send me a PM if you're interested.

 

Try reflashing your first one. If the car fired up the ecm mgiht be OK.

 

It actually started with either of first two ECM's and I didn't even try on the first. It started but ran really bad and wouldn't stay running. I was thinking there's some sort of limp-home chip that tries to run the engine if the flash memory is shot.

 

A dead PCM is a dead PCM. When my was killed, it wouldn't start at all.

 

Well that's interesting. Maybe my ECM's just have a bad flash caused by a bad connection during the process. Luckily, I live about 25 miles from Craig Moates (www.moates.net). I'm bringing all 3 to his house this afternoon and try to re-flash them all using his equipment.

 

I always read first to confirm a good connection. If the connection is broken while reading, it does not hurt the PCM. Then I don't even touch my car while programming. I too have fried 3 PCM's.

Ben

 

Well, at Craig's we were able to re-flash the 1st and 3rd ECM and they are fine. The 2nd one is shot.

Mike

 

I too have flashed my ECM many times.. never had a single problem.. today I just read the ecm.. "went fine" opened it in TunerPro with the EE.xds, enabled SD mode and resaved the bin.. then started winflash 2.11 and the program went all the way through and said it completed succesfully.. when I turn the ignition on the fans stay on all of the time and when it does crank it runs like hell and cant keep it running.. what gives? This is a moates USB cable on a new Dell laptop.. no crappy hardware here.. how did you revive those other PCMs?

 

I brought them to Craig and he simply re-flashed them using a USB cable in his latest LT1 shell (car with no engine).

 

very strange stuff going on here.. SES light flickering and fans always on but I found the fix and problem I usually always left the switch on the moates adapter in the middle for all operations.. I had to switch it one way and the ecm would initialize and communicate again.. I then flashed back to the my original and saved bin.. always hear people say it and I have to reiterate "MAKE A BACKUP COPY!" haha.. It seams that tunerpro's xdf or something corrupted the bin or maybe a problem with the checksum.. any ideas here??

 

I have had 2 PCMs with corrupted programs. The flash reaches 100% and the fans will stay on like you said... still not sure how it happened. Maybe I forgot to save the file before I uploaded it to the computer... thats all I can think of.

Ive also had a few problems with the older verson of Winflash from Tunercat but using the integrated version built into Tunercat has worked great.

 

don't use tunerproRT for LT1 editing.. that seems to be the cause of the problem I was having.. loaded up regular tunerpro and EE.xdf and programmed a new image with no problem.. and to revive those ecm's short the diag term before plugging in your cable.. that seems to make it "wake up" for new flashing

 

well I can now tell you what NOT to do while flashing your ecm.. I had my laptop charging with a cig power adapter and the connection was flaky.. well it didn't like that very much because half way through a program I got a com error.. now the ecm is really dead.. have to go borrow a friends trailer and pick my car up from the town over..damnit! how hard is it to socket the ecm?

 

I have a tech article regarding socketing the EEPROMs at http://www.trifectaperformance.com, under Technical Info. I can provide more details if you want. Feel free to PM me.