VW Transporter T5 2.5 110hp with Bosch EDC17CP20 ECU fitted, this was a mobile remapping job over in Bottesford NG13 which turned into a very long job indeed, it should have been a 15 min read, mod the file and write it back.
However, a very knackered battery was loosing capacity as soon as the ignition was turned on, the battery jump ‘prongs’ under the hood were corroded to high heaven, but even the new Halfords jump pack i have direct on the battery didn’t do the trick! It was amazing this thing could actually start at all!
So the first ID failed with a blank ID file and the system going into overload, i did try a second time after running the engine for a while and getting some charge into it, this did work and a VR file downloaded to the laptop, however the issues weren’t over from there!
Trying to write the file back ended in a fail every time, at this point i was starting to pull my hair out (although i have very little) so in the end i decided to remove the ECU from the car and do it in boot mode. This was going great and started to write the file back when the customer jokingly tapped the ECU and said it needed a little ‘tap’ to encourage it! This led to a positive wire falling off and the write failing, which also meant ‘dead ECU’ (no emoji’s here but you can guess the ones i would use). Three tries to get the file back and revive the ECU was not happening.
In the end i decided to bring the ECU back to the office with me as after three hours the laptop and everything else including me was starting to die a bit, cancelled the next job and back to the office with the ECU, once back it was a simple enough revival and after a fresh read i was satisfied that what needed to be done had indeed, been done! Next morning bright and early, back to the stricken VW T5 and ECU refitting was taking place, thankfully even with the bad battery the van fired up first turn of the key! Emoji time again! Stage 1 remap and Adblue solution applied and purring like a kitten…….Finally!
If you have actually read some of the post’s on this page then you might have seen we mention VR files a fair bit, After that you may still be scratching your head wondering what a VR file actually is!
Well let me explain! Over the last decade, remapping has changed a fair amount. Whereas we used to take loads of hardware out with us for different vehicles etc nowadays the Alientech Kess 3 pretty much takes care of everything. Originally with Alientech hardware we used to have a Kess for OBD work and a Ktag for bench work, for the bench work it mostly meant removal of the ECU from the vehicle and opening it up to get directly to the main processor.
This was because ECU manufacturers started to add protection to the ECU itself, this was mainly done for security of the vehicle, but also limited what remapping companies could do as well. Alientech then released Kess 3, a combination of the two items in one! As such other advances were also introduced! One of these being VR files, so the idea behind VR is that now we can just ID a vehicle and the file to tune that vehicle downloads straight from Alientech server, this basically ‘beats’ the protection fitted to the ECU. Remember the manufacturer also needs to update software on the ECU as well so this is a sort of ‘back door’ that we utilise to apply a remap to many of the vehicles we go out to. Oh course not every file is available and a lot of very resent vehicles we cannot access, but this changes daily with updates to the Alientech hardware.