How to recover a "bricked" ECU

[Bixxer Bob]

Well, it had to happen eventually, familiarity breeds contempt and all that...

I bricked my ECU yesterday.  Combination of Tuneboy, a new(er) laptop, Windows Seven and me not paying attention.  Or heeding the warning signs.  Hooked up Tuneboy and Tunedit to do some work prior to going to France using the latest version of the software and my relatively new laptop with Windows Seven on it. Ok, it's not that new, but I kept an old laptop in the garage with XP and an earlier version of Tuneboy on it that always worked well but the keyboard recently packed up so it's the first time I've used this one.  First sign of trouble was it would write (laptop on mains, battery on charger at 14.5v like I'm always preaching at everyone) but wouldn't read a map from the ECU. Odd I thought.  No matter, I started to write another map to the ECU and it stopped half way through and that was it.  Lights out.  Nothing going on. No amount of trying to recover it would work.  I tried disconnecting the battery for a while, everything I could think of.  Zilch.  I put my spare ECU on the bike which is always standing by with a clean standard 10173 map in it and everything was back to normal so I called it a day.

This morning, (funny how your brain subconsciously works on problems when you're asleep or not thinking about them) I remembered I hadn't loaded the Tuneboy cable driver because Windows Seven had automatically installed the generic USB device driver without asking.  I deleted the driver, installed the correct one from the Tuneboy website and hooked it up.  Still nothing.  The Tuneboy ECU recovery routine didn't help.

I then gave TuneECU a go.  Eventually, after some frigging around, I got a red light, then yellow and finally green.  I blew in a new map and it's fully recovered.  Tuneboy 0 - TuneECU 1.

Got to dash now so I'll write up the "how" later.

[John Stenhouse]

Having done that to an MP3 player I know the feeling, glad you sorted it. When are you off to France? Going myself on Sunday, Eurostar over then pick up a bike from Dave and do a bit of the Le Mans 24hr.

[Mustang]

 

[Bixxer Bob]

As I've always said,  I make the mistakes (and recover from them) so you don't have to..... 

Recovery procedure was:

First check good volts at the battery, charger on,  14.5v, laptop on mains.

Hook up OBD cable, boot up TuneECU.

In the drop down menu under "options", turn off autoconnect (because it just goes into a handshake loop).

Turn on ign.

Select the Map Edit tab or it won't default to Recovery Mode, it'll just sit there calling the ECU and the ECU ignoring it.

Select Connect to ECU from the dropdown menu under ECU.

Let it run.  It'll take a minute or three, but eventually it'll come back with "Cannot connect to ECU do you want to initiate recovery mode?"

Click "yes"

In another couple of minutes the connection light in the bottom corner will flash yellow then eventually green then the map loading bar across the bottom of the screen will start to progress left to right.

When its done you're back in business!

To be honest, there's no reason why any-one should have this problem.  The ECU is pretty robust and I've recovered from corrupt maps several times both on my bike and the bikes of others.  It occurred, I think, making the old-hand mistake of using the Tuneboy cable with the wrong driver. 

It's worth noting though that TuneECU requires their own driver for the OBD lead too.

[Sin_Tiger]

To be honest, there's no reason why any-one should have this problem.   

Good write up mate 

[Spud]

Thanks for the write up, not that I understood any of it 

I can't remember the last time my map was updated 

cheers Spud 

[PeteH]

Spud, If it running ok dont feck with it 

[Chris Canning]

Well I'm somewhere between the two whiles't I'm not as anal as Bixxer about my mapping sticking with the same old isn't the smartest thing to do either,just find yourself a good dealer(yea yea I know) and get a new one blown in.

[Sin_Tiger]

You might be lucky and BB has his box of tricks with him on the meet in July  :icon_wink:

[PeteH]

You might be lucky and BB has his box of tricks with him on the meet in July  :icon_wink:

Hmm, Saturday morning surgery...best book an appointment 

[Sin_Tiger]

Hmm, Saturday morning surgery...best book an appointment 

Sat morning we're riding, no    in the campsite after porridge thankyou.