E98 Tuning questions

[just501337@gmail.com]

Hey everyone, appreciate all of the great discussions on the forum. I recently paid for a tuning service using another software kit and was left rather.... disappointed (for a few reasons). The tune is great, but there are some small things that I want to change on my own. Talking to the tuner, he mentioned that if I flash later using EFILive, there is a possibility that the ECU gets bricked. IIRC he said the OS differences were the reason for this.

EDIT: Talked to the tuner again and he meant that if the dealership were to reflash my truck to stock (an example I gave him for wanting to be able to reflash on my own) its possible the OS version will change and he will have to 'redo' the tune on the newer OS. This actually makes more sense to me now and likely invalidates any concerns I have below... Would be nice to just have a sanity check though.

Long story short, I want to know whether he is BS'ing me so that I would _have_ to buy his service(s) in future when I want to reflash. My plan when I got my autocal was to have a few tunes with varying speedo ratios for different tire setups. I also wanted the ability to flash my stock tune back on the ECU when needed. I pulled up my stock tune (it was gathered using BitBox) and compared it to an autocal read of my truck after a tune was flashed using BitBox.

Using the 'Full binary compare' I see differences in OperatingSystem/EngineOperation/EngineDiagnostics/System. Might that be the 'issue' my tuner is talking about? How worried should I be? Attaching a rar file of the exports of both binary and non-binary compare difference output.

Really appreciate your time!

[vogner16]

im about two steps behind you but you may have just given me a breakthrough with this post. BitBox with a J2534 adapter (already own one) might be a way for me to download the bin file and make edits im trying to make. sorry i cant answer your question yet i need to spend about ~5 hours reading into it to fully understand. I think i have a similar problem though.

[vogner16]

I think i understand whats going on here.

your tuner uses OS 24000172 (i think?) and wrote his tune onto your stock OS. his tune is simply an edit on the stock OS tables as per your binary output file shows. I think he is worried you will go to dealer and they will flash an updated OS to the ECU (24000173 idk made it up) then you wont be able to do a full flash back to the old one with out corrupting the whole thing. because EFIlive doesnt actually flash the whole thing, just the parts that need to be flashed so its quicker.

Its all very murkey in gathering info on OS compatibility. seems nobody has a guide or general notes for changing OS's between years etc. the old links to guides i find are now dead links etc... very frustrating. admins dont reply to these messages because its basic knowledge to them and they get tired of answering the same questions and for some reason dont make a guide that would answer our questions.

For your specific scenario i think your good to flash to a new tune as long as they are the same OS or one of the OS options under the OperatingSystem/EngineOperation/EngineDiagnostics/System tab.