Replace the whole car computer(ECU)?

[jellyfish1234]

My previous post mentioned a lot about matching the replaced part with ECU, but in some case, it’s the ECU the has problem and needs to be re-programmed or replaced.

Unlike replace O2 sensor or brake pad, it’s involving more precise and detailed work like repairing a PC or cell phone. So the fee can be very high from $1,000 and $3,000, even though just testing ECU, $150 and $300 is needed.

There are some service like online shop that if customer ships ECU to them , they will test it on simulator and find the problem and repair it. But it always some differences between testing on a car and a simulator.

Replacing ECU is an action contains physical and software-level operation.

There is a thing called long coding in ECU, used to set various options and configurations, some modules require a valid login before you can re-code them. The long coding must be written down before get the old ECU out of car. And when we program it to the new ECU, need to input the new series of numbers in hexadecimal. And that’s how we “copy” the old settings to the new ECU.

For example, replacing Audi ECU, use diagnostic tool(many tools can do this, I’m using Artimini) to get the long coding, and it will show 30 digit numbers that converted in hexadecimal, and input them in three set.

This is just a brief introduction of replacing ECU and some points for attention. Maybe I will write some article in depth in the future.