WinOLS Mastery: Map Identification & Editing: Step 1: Bench Read ECU
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Step 1: Bench Read ECU
09.17
| 00:00 | - The first step of our six step process is of course to read the raw binary file out of the ECU and we're going to complete this in two ways. |
| 00:08 | Despite the fact that with the Bosch MED9.1 ECU fitted to our MK5 Golf, we can perform an OBD2 read which significantly simplifies the process, we will still start by removing the ECU and performing a full bench read. |
| 00:24 | With a MK5 Golf, the ECU is located in the scuttle panel underneath the windscreen and this is a little bit tricky to remove but with a little bit of care, should be able to be extracted without too much difficulty. |
| 00:40 | If you are ever in doubt as to where the ECU is located on your vehicle, a quick Google should reasonably quickly highlight exactly where to start looking but the scuttle panel under the windshield does seem to be a favourite for a number of the European manufacturers. |
| 00:57 | Once we've go the ECU out an on the bench here, we can get started with our bench read. |
| 01:03 | Of course we are using our bFlash interface for this, I've already got the bFlash software up and running. |
| 01:10 | So we can start by selecting our vehicle and in this case of course we're going to scroll all the way down until we get to Volkswagen, we can click on the next arrow and we can choose our ECU or controller. |
| 01:22 | Obviously here Bosch MED9.1 The MED9.1 is actually also printed on the sticker on the ECU, this is another common question we get, how do I know what type of controller is fitted to my vehicle. |
| 01:38 | Well in this case, as noted, it is printed on the ECU itself so that's obviously a pretty good guide. |
| 01:44 | However if in worst case, you can't find any information, again a quick Google should pretty quickly highlight what particular controller is fitted to your vehicle. |
| 01:55 | We can click next again and now we can choose our read and write method and of course here we want to be selecting our bench protocol, we'll click on the little radio button there and we can click the tick to confirm. |
| 02:08 | The next aspect here is connecting to our ECU header plug and as we already know, if we click the little help icon in the to right hand corner here, what that's going to do is open up a browser window that's going to give us all the relevant information. |
| 02:24 | Most importantly here we actually have a diagram showing exactly where to connect the different jumpers from our bFlash unit. |
| 02:32 | So it goes without saying here a lot of care needs to be taken to ensure that we do have this connection correct. |
| 02:40 | So always a case of double checking your work, count up the empty pin locations, double check that and make sure you've got everything in the right location. |
| 02:49 | As I also noted in the body of the course, in the module on reading and writing to the ECU on the bench method, we do need to be mindful here because S1 and S2, at a glance the colours look very similar. |
| 03:03 | S1 is in fact blue and S2 is purple so if you don't get that right, you're not going to have much success reading from the ECU and of course if we get all of these connections completely wrong, then it's quite possible we could actually damage the ECU as well so again a lot of care is required here. |
| 03:23 | There is also some notes that are included below here, so always a good idea to read those. |
| 03:30 | Key among these is that we want to make sure that our bFlash unit is not connected to power until we've got all of our jumper wires connected up. |
| 03:39 | Of course on that note, before we can go and connect to our bFlash unit, we want to make sure that we have selected our connector with our jumper wires as opposed to the OBD2 connector which we'll be using shortly. |
| 03:54 | So with everything connected and our bFlash unit connected to the laptop, we can close down our browser here and what we're obviously going to do now is complete a read and we can do that by clicking the little read icon in our toolbar. |
| 04:10 | We need to give the file a name and we're going to use the registration number plate of the vehicle which is KNC680. |
| 04:19 | I also like to give some information about the vehicle itself so we'll call it VW MK5 Golf GTI. |
| 04:26 | And we'll call this file stock and we can also call it bench just so we know exactly what we're dealing with. |
| 04:35 | We'll click save and the read will continue. |
| 04:38 | And this can take a little bit of time so we'll come back to this when it's finished. |
| 04:49 | Alright so our bench read is now complete, we've got our file saved so this is going to act as our safety backstop in case things do go wrong somewhere during the tuning process and we need to revert to our bench saved file. |
| 05:04 | However in order to facilitate tuning this via the OBD2 port, I'll actually go a little step further and we'll also take a read from the OBD2 port. |
| 05:15 | Obviously that involves us installing this ECU back into the vehicle. |
| 05:18 | We then need to simply change out our jumper on our bFlash unit. |
| 05:24 | We can use our OBD2 connector instead. |
| 05:27 | We want to then connect this to the OBD2 port in the vehicle. |
| 05:32 | Now a couple of precautions here which we've already covered off inside of the body of the course, one of the most common reasons for a ECU or controller becoming bricked or unresponsive is if the battery voltage in the vehicle drops too low or alternatively if our laptop goes flat. |
| 05:51 | So it's always a really important point to just check the battery voltage on both. |
| 05:57 | I always make sure as a matter of course that my laptop is actually connected to mains power during a read or a write when I'm relflashing. |
| 06:04 | If the battery voltage of your vehicle battery is maybe a little bit questionable, it can also be a good idea to connect a high current battery charger during the reading and writing process just to be doubly sure. |
| 06:18 | From here, the process is relatively straightforward. |
| 06:21 | All we need to do here is connect the OBD2 connector to our OBD2 port, we're always going to find that somewhere on the lower dash below the steering wheel so pretty easy to find that. |
| 06:34 | We can connect everything up then connecting our bFlash unit to its power supply, the USB connector to our laptop and then we can simply go through he read process. |
| 06:45 | In this case what we want to do from our vehicle menu in bFlash is go through the same process, want to select Volkswagen, then again we're obviously going to be selecting the MED9.1 ECU just as we've done for our bench read. |
| 07:02 | On the next screen, we're of course now going to be selecting the OBD2 protocol for our read and write, we can click the little tick box to close that window down. |
| 07:14 | Again we'll click on the read icon in our toolbar and we want to give the file a name suitable that we can note it later on. |
| 07:25 | Whether we want to just add stock to this and only add the bench addition to our bench read or alternatively we can always add OBD2 to our OBD2 reads such to make it super clear which file we're looking at. |
| 07:40 | There will also be a distinction between these files in terms of their file size. |
| 07:45 | The full bench read will be larger than the OBD2 read. |
| 07:51 | Once we've given the file a suitable name and clicked OK, the read will complete. |
| 07:56 | In this case, the read is a virtual read and you can note this because of the speed of that read, it's only literally a few seconds to read so essentially what the bFlash unit is doing here is just extracting the software version out of the ECU, basically the information it needs to then download a stock base file from the server and that's what we're going to be presented with. |
| 08:22 | So this is quite important to note here, particularly if we are dealing with a tuned vehicle because when we do this, we ware going to lose any tune data from that calibration so you will literally be starting from scratch. |
| 08:37 | In most instances this actually is a good thing because it's going to avoid us potentially baking in errors that another tuner has created that maybe on face value were not initially aware of so while it does sound like it's going to be a little bit more work starting from scratch, this really does ensure that we are forced to do the job properly, not make assumptions that someone else has previous done a good job. |
| 09:01 | So at this stage we've got our bench read complete, we've saved that file, we've got an OBD2 read complete which is the file that we're going to be importing into WinOLS, we're ready to move on with the next step of our process. |
