So a customer sent a load of bits from Afghanistan for us to clone a Siemens SID321 ECU, The original ECU seems to have died a death although looking at it i think this was probably more down to user error than anything else. The stricken vehicle being a 2020 Nissan Navara 2.3 pickup truck (not overly sure on which side) So even vehicles abroad are suffering with problems of Adblue and DPF even in countries it’s not registered in. So the only thing left to do was to organise another matching ECU and clone one to the other.
This involves reading the entire contents of the ECU and then transfering that across to the new ECU for it to be able to work with the engine immobiliser and various other security issues on a modern vehicle nowadays. Now the Siemens SID321 is a very difficult ECU to do this and it seems not many remapping tools can actually read the vital information needed to do a successful clone or immobiliser delete.
Well usually when we clone ECU’s we take a complete backup copy of the entire image on the ECU, depending on type of ECU this can be broke down into different sections
The main Processor is just like any computer, it’s job is to work out all the inputs and outputs of the vehicle engine, it takes readings from engine speed/load/throttle position etc then works out what to do with that information as to how much fuel etc and ignition timing to add to that engine and does it million times a second.
The Flash Rom nowadays is usually internal within the MPC but only a few years ago this could be an external Rom, this is where the ‘maps’ or ‘look up’ tables were held, you probably refer to it as ‘chip tuning’ where we used to physically remove the Rom from the board and read it with a desktop ROM reader, these were the very early days and now the maps are generally held on the MPC and as such can mainly be read through the OBD port.
The EEprom is where most of the vehicles ‘sensitive’ information is held, stereo codes, mileage, immobiliser information etc. Years ago we only had Eprom which was a non flashable chip, some had little windows in the top that UV light could erase the information on, Nowadays we have EEprom the 2nd ‘E’ standing for Electrical or Electrically Erased Rom, generally these cannot be read through the OBD port and needed to be read on the bench.
Once all the components have been read in bench mode then ECU cloning could be attempted but this is still very much dependant on the ECU fitted to the vehicle, this is why it is crucial to contact a local Remapping Company first before doing anything! Make sure your ECU can be cloned and that the information on it can be read and backed up!
