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Thread: The reflash failure thread...

  1. #1
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    The reflash failure thread...

    Well today I have the joys of tuning a ba xr6 with a v2 vortec on it... So far I have been able to do 1 power run in 3 hours on the Dyno due to bloody flashing not working... What was a good paying job is likley to cost me money now as it is going to take 2 days at this rate!

    I've tried everything from jump packs on the battery to a special charger that holds at 14v

    before starting I flashed back to stock with the x3 box and it worked perfectly

    is any one else having these problems? What is HPT going to do about it? This is beyond a joke and I'm almost ready to throw it in the bin for ford tuning..

    Dale

  2. #2
    are you getting random write failures? or is it failing at the same place everytime?
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  3. #3
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    It's totally random, one time it will fail at 2% and next time it will fail at 98%.. it's just failed another 5 times.. Twice above 80%...

  4. #4
    it has to be some kind of noise being coupled into the PCM or CAN bus some how. The flash only requires 12V from the battery it shouldn't need anything higher. I can't really explain why other would work and ours not, both use the same flashing process. I am at a loss to think of any reason it could be happening sorry Dale

    Are you able to use a bench harness to identify if it's directly PCM related or something specific to this particular vehicle?
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris@HPTuners View Post
    it has to be some kind of noise being coupled into the PCM or CAN bus some how. The flash only requires 12V from the battery it shouldn't need anything higher. I can't really explain why other would work and ours not, both use the same flashing process. I am at a loss to think of any reason it could be happening sorry Dale

    Are you able to use a bench harness to identify if it's directly PCM related or something specific to this particular vehicle?
    It has been happening on more than one car... and i have even suffered it a couple of times both on a bench harness and in the car... can flash 3 or 4 times fine.. then may fail 1 or 2 times and all at varying stages of the flash... pretty painful when it takes so long to write and am unable to do a calibrations only write.
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  6. #6
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    I Had this battle while on the Dyno Today, 3 hrs to do 3 runs........

    Only thing that helps is a battery charger with a boost function for starting dead cars, feeds about 14.6v into the battery, only then it seems to work ok.
    Other times i can do 20 flashes in a row without any issues.

    Weird...

    Steve
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  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Doubledip View Post
    It has been happening on more than one car... and i have even suffered it a couple of times both on a bench harness and in the car... can flash 3 or 4 times fine.. then may fail 1 or 2 times and all at varying stages of the flash... pretty painful when it takes so long to write and am unable to do a calibrations only write.
    yeah the nature of the ford binary is that their basically isn't a seperation between calibration and operating system, it's all lumped together under a single calibration ID and checksum system.

    We're putting some more advanced debugging into 2.24, maybe that will help, but these random issues tend to be hard to troubleshoot.

    I don't know why a higher voltage would make a difference, the flash chip only needs 12V to erase anything too low (like 11V) will cause a problem, and i've seen higher voltages cause problems on Intel and AMD flash chips.

    The ford flashing routine is self contained (part of the PCM) so there's not much that can go wrong apart from communications issues or some weird hardware based issues.

    I'll see what i can do with Mario, but unless we can get our hands on a PCM that's consistently failing it's going to be tricky. I use a 2A regulated 12V supply here on my bench and have never had a flashing problem like this with any Ford ECM, Aussie or American

    There was a problem like this with early Holden utes that seem to couple a lot of noise onto the serial bus when they get hot after a couple of dyno pulls. I think it was a wiring loom problem that was subsequently changed in later models, that one had us scratching our head too!

    Chris...
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  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris@HPTuners View Post
    it has to be some kind of noise being coupled into the PCM or CAN bus some how. The flash only requires 12V from the battery it shouldn't need anything higher. I can't really explain why other would work and ours not, both use the same flashing process. I am at a loss to think of any reason it could be happening sorry Dale

    Are you able to use a bench harness to identify if it's directly PCM related or something specific to this particular vehicle?
    Mario told me to use a power supply, which with or with out it fails quite often, i dont think i have done a car that hasnt failed at least once, even our brand spankers FG fails every 5 or so flashes.

    but everytime i use a SCT it works perfectly fine.

    ive got this car till wednesday so ill see if i can grab doubledips bench harness and try again. i used his cable the other week to tune one of his customers cars and it failed a few times as well.

    jump on a plane and come to sydney tomorrow, you can have a car for a day if you want! this is by far the worst i have had,

    Dale

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    I'm by no mean an expert, just new to it, ford's in particular, I did a read on 3 ba/bf's & no error's & then did 1 on my car & then re flashed it!
    Granted it took I think 5 mins to read & then something ridiculous like 9+mins to re-flash!
    This is just on a compaq(hp) presario & on all the car's with no extra power supply or anything just standing battery!

    The first 1 read I think was an old beta, but the last 3 have been on the latest US beta only 2 to 3 weeks ago updated!

    I didn't do anything special so I don't really have any info to add, but I have noticed when I edit some turbocharger settings it automatically offset's some other parametre's that I always have to re-check before saving, sorry off topic!

  10. #10
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    reads are not a problem they never fail..
    try reflashing yours a few more times and see what happens,

    my laptop is a 6 month old compaq thing with 2gb ram with vista premium..

  11. #11
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    I think I may have just been lucky, I will try it a few more time's!

    I had trouble with mine on vista with the drivers so I rolled it back to XP professional & it's better again!

  12. #12
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    ive done probably 1000 holdens on this laptop and 30 odd fords, holdens work perfectly with a fail rate of probably 1 in 500 flashes, at the moment ford has a higher fail rate than actuall write rate..

  13. #13
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    I too have had this issue pita you need a battery charger connected to keep battery topped up as it drains from the amount of attempts. i tried usb cables power supplies chargers different laptops with xp vista and win7 made no difference then it will work out of the blue fine . It seems to be very hit and miss but become annoying when it take 2 days to do a 2hr tune
    Last edited by STATESMAN; 05-04-2010 at 08:25 AM.

  14. #14
    guys, i had no idea this was a more common problem. I will check this out over the next couple of weeks.

    Chris...
    I count sheep in hex...

  15. #15
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    anything i can do to help? ive got plenty of cars it has failed on and can pretty much get one any time..

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by VYSSLS1 View Post
    anything i can do to help? ive got plenty of cars it has failed on and can pretty much get one any time..
    i'll let you know, i spoke to Mario about organizing something next week.
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  17. #17
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    OK well an update on my behalf, it took me 3 flashes tonight to get 1 tune in, first time it just stopped 3/4 way through it & didn't even say failed, then it failed 5% in & then 3rd time it was ok.
    On another note for some reason when I neg max out over boost & pos max out underboost for open loop, it doesn't want to save everytime & when it does it often zero's out 1 of the figures by itself!

  18. #18
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    the saving issue is a beta problem.. just flash it into the car and then reread it..

    on e38's its pretty common..

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris@HPTuners View Post
    i'll let you know, i spoke to Mario about organizing something next week.
    ok no problems

    going to send you a email now regarding a few other things

    Dale

  20. #20
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    I've been having similar issues on my 04 BA mK11, Now the interface cannot read the PCM,

    i have tried laptop on the charger, Car on charge and laptop off car on, car off laptop on and both off and i cannot read the pcm and the car will not start.

    before it all went pearshaped i had a u1900 and u2105 codes in the reader.

    I hope somebody has a solution for this as i wont be happy if im up for a new pcm