Thread: I think i've bricked my ecu. Help!

Originally Posted by mattyg

Hi all, yesterday I tried to upload a td5inside stage 2 map to my 2004 D2 with my nanocom Evo.
I followed all the recommended precautions- had batteries on the charger the night before ( they are newish a well), used the recommended sd card, formatted the sd card with the nanocom, only had that map on the sd card, had separate power supply for the nanocom, took the car for a drive beforehand, all ac, lights and accessories off.

I got an error pretty much straight up after the key on off on sequence. Now i cannot communicate with the ECU and when I turn the ignition to 'on' i get the M and S lights flashing an no fuel pump noise.

The error is:
Erase error frame 1 bad rx 2
B8, F7, 13, 03, 7F, 31, 78, FF, 33, 34, 41, 84, 74, 62, 00, 17, 12, 20, 03, 00, 4E, 4E, 57, 50, 12, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 41, 90, 00, 58, 00, 40, 00, 00, 00, 00, FF, FF, FF, FF, FF, FF, 4E, 4E, 4E, 50, 00, 30, 01, 01, 0D, 0A, 40, 5F, 5F, 41, 53, 31, 30, 2E,

Can someone please confirm if it is cactus?

Why did it happen? Will it happen again?

How can I fix it or where can I obtain a replacement without breaking the bank?

Thanks guys, I'm a bit bummed about it- I was hoping to get up to the high country for new year.

Sounds like it's cactus. The inability to communicate is a sure sign that the firmware is corrupted.

Why did it happen? It seems to be an issue related to reading from the SDCard. Will it happen again? If you install the Nanocom firmware update that was released on the 19/12/2012 then it's fairly unlikely (unless you are using a BAS encrypted map and then all bets are off). The update changes the map upload process by loading the map into memory before the write stage. This eliminates the SDCard as a variable in the write process. I was testing this prior to release and found once the map loaded and verified successfully (which was a bit hit and miss) the write stage was 100% successful. I know one member still had issues with the BAS protected maps. I was uploading Td5Inside maps without any dramas.

I'm able to revive bricked ECU's but wouldn't be able to do so in time for the New Year at this stage.

cheers
Paul

Sorry to hear of your situation I suspect you may have bricked the ECU some questions

I presume you have the unable to complete action response when you try to rewrite the map?

Did you update the Nanocom to the recently released version 1.12?
This version will help to prevent this from happening.

When you were writing the map did the Nanocom freeze in the last 10% of the write?

Were you writing a .tun file or a .map file? if the file is locked to your VIN you must now get the ECU repaired with your VIN number its not just a case of using a second hand ECU ( at least if you want to use your .tun file)

It looks like you took all the precautions and I sympathize with you
While this wont help you now next time you attempt to rewrite a map disconnect the red plug on the ECU

Its not all bad I have done this 4 times now and have learned a lot lol
The cost of repair is not that high the last ones I got done were less than $200
Just don't forget about the getting your VIN put back in the repaired ECU or this will end in frustration if you have VIN locked tuning files

When you formatted your SD card did you do it using your computer while the Nanocom was plugged in or did you format it by using an SD card reader or slot in the laptop?

Originally Posted by djam1

Sorry to hear of your situation I suspect you may have bricked the ECU some questions

I presume you have the unable to complete action response when you try to rewrite the map?

Did you update the Nanocom to the recently released version 1.12?
This version will help to prevent this from happening.

When you were writing the map did the Nanocom freeze in the last 10% of the write?

Were you writing a .tun file or a .map file? if the file is locked to your VIN you must now get the ECU repaired with your VIN number its not just a case of using a second hand ECU ( at least if you want to use your .tun file)

It looks like you took all the precautions and I sympathize with you
While this wont help you now next time you attempt to rewrite a map disconnect the red plug on the ECU

Its not all bad I have done this 4 times now and have learned a lot lol
The cost of repair is not that high the last ones I got done were less than $200
Just don't forget about the getting your VIN put back in the repaired ECU or this will end in frustration if you have VIN locked tuning files

When you formatted your SD card did you do it using your computer while the Nanocom was plugged in or did you format it by using an SD card reader or slot in the laptop?

Td5Inside maps are not VIN locked.

Djam

Formatted the sd card in the nanocom through a laptop.

Didn't have latest firmware, thought it was still in beta.

The error occurred as soon as I did the turn on off on sequence right at the start. It didn't start loading anything. I forget what it actually said on the screen.

I am quite surprised at how finicky the nanocom Evo is. Sometimes before this it would just not want to communicate with the ECU but I thought it would be ok for the remap taking all their precautions.

Ah well. Live and learn. I'll try again with the new firmware after its fixed.

What does unplugging the red ECU plug do???

I had a look at the ECU firmware this morning and have worked out how the VIN is stored I'll have to reprogram my ECU with the correct VIN at some point.


The red plug connects to the injectors, glow plugs etc which are all powered by the ECU. There seems to be evidence that powering is not as big an issue as has been suggested in the past, so I'm not sure it's 100% necessary.

Originally Posted by mattyg

Djam

Formatted the sd card in the nanocom through a laptop.

Didn't have latest firmware, thought it was still in beta.

The error occurred as soon as I did the turn on off on sequence right at the start. It didn't start loading anything. I forget what it actually said on the screen.

I am quite surprised at how finicky the nanocom Evo is. Sometimes before this it would just not want to communicate with the ECU but I thought it would be ok for the remap taking all their precautions.

Also test the resistance between pins 4 and 5 of the ODBC socket and the battery earth terminal it shouldn't be more than 9 ohms

Ah well. Live and learn. I'll try again with the new firmware after its fixed.

What does unplugging the red ECU plug do???

Unusual that the corruption occurred at that early point every time that happened to me I could recover it by trying again.
I wouldn't blame the Nanocom exclusively for any instability the TD5 Ecus are pretty flaky at times.
Unplugging of the red plug stops the glow plugs and fuel pump and other electrics from running during the write process
I presume the SD card was formatted as FAT not FAT32 I found issues when I did testing with FAT32 (BBS say FAT)

Originally Posted by OffTrack

I had a look at the ECU firmware this morning and have worked out how the VIN is stored I'll have to reprogram my ECU with the correct VIN at some point.


The red plug connects to the injectors, glow plugs etc which are all powered by the ECU. There seems to be evidence that powering is not as big an issue as has been suggested in the past, so I'm not sure it's 100% necessary.

Paul you did well to find the VIN that quickly the guy who was doing mine took ages to do it on mine as its stored in a number of places allegedly??

Originally Posted by djam1

Paul you did well to find the VIN that quickly the guy who was doing mine took ages to do it on mine as its stored in a number of places allegedly??

Not unless there is a checksum for it somewhere else!

I'd found the SALLTGMXXXA portion of it before but couldn't work out the serial number. It clicked this morning that it isn't converted in any way.

The firmware is byte swapped so I've been running a utility to swap the bytes so it's readable. The unswapped text reads: ASLLGT8M44.AX.& so to make sense of it you need to swap the characters in each pair to get SALLTGM84A4..X.&. The trick is the serial number isn't a hex representation of an ascii character. The unswapped hex bytes that make up the .AX. are 86 41 58 17. The 41 is the ascii character A, so when you swap the bytes to 41 86 17 58 what you end up with is A 86 17 58. The ECU I'm running which I revived using this firmware file reports a VIN of SALLTGM844A861758. I'm fairly sure the & is just a record delimiter.

I checked the layout of the memory and found there are three blocks that aren't written by the map upload. Two of those have no content in the firmware file, the third contains the VIN and some additional information.

cheers
Paul