WinOLS Mastery: Map Identification & Editing: Traditional Reflashing Solutions
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Traditional Reflashing Solutions
05.07
| 00:00 | - Reflashing is not a new technique in the aftermarket tuning world, however the skillset required to tune a vehicle is very different to that required to reverse engineer a factory ECU and find the necessary maps to make tuning changes. |
| 00:14 | For this reason, there's a thriving industry of companies producing tuning solutions for factory cars to make life easy for tuners. |
| 00:21 | These solutions take the complexity out of the process and provide a complete combination of software and hardware with a simple and intuitive user interface for making tuning changes. |
| 00:33 | These packages will typically include logging software as well. |
| 00:36 | While there's a wide range of commercial reflashing software, some of the more common suppliers include HP Tuners, EFI Live, EcuTek and COBB. |
| 00:46 | One of the challenges with commercial reflashing software however is that you aren't likely to be able to use one software package for every car. |
| 00:55 | Most companies tend to focus on one brand or at the most a few key brands that they support. |
| 01:02 | This means that if you want the ability to tune a wide range of makes and models, you're almost certainly going to need several different reflashing packages which obviously can get expensive. |
| 01:12 | There's also a significant difference in the business models that commercial reflashing companies use to monetise their systems. |
| 01:20 | Some, like HP Tuners, offer free software but you need to purchase their bespoke OBD2 interface. |
| 01:26 | Beyond this, there's also a one time license fee that you'll pay to access a specific vehicle's ECU for the first time. |
| 01:34 | Once the ECU is unlocked, you can tune it as many times as you like. |
| 01:38 | For HP Tuners, the fee to license a single vehicle can run from about $100 USD for common and popular vehicles, all the way to $400 to $500 USD for more specialist cars. |
| 01:49 | While commercial tuning shops will build this cost into the price the end user pays, it can start to quickly mount up for busy shops tuning multiple cars per week. |
| 01:59 | On the other hand, companies like COBB and EFI Live, sell a hardware unit that becomes the interface for tuning each vehicle. |
| 02:07 | Once tuned, the interface is locked to the specific vehicle, meaning that you need to purchase one for each car that you want to tune. |
| 02:14 | The upfront cost fo this is usually more expensive than the license system but it does come with a few advantages. |
| 02:21 | Firstly, the interface can be used as a display of live parameters while the car is bring driven giving the owner access to a wider range of information. |
| 02:29 | Next, these interfaces can often store multiple tunes, allowing the end user to swap between pump gas and race gas tunes for example, without the need for a laptop or access to the tuning shop. |
| 02:42 | The other key advantage these interfaces can offer is the ability to datalog the vehicle. |
| 02:46 | This is a real advantage for remote tuning where the tuner can provide a calibration then the owner can flash this into the vehicle before performing some logging that the tuner can then review in order to confirm or refine the tune as required. |
| 03:01 | Traditionally there's been little support of the wider range of European vehicles by the mainstream reflashing manufacturers which has largely meant that those wanting to tune these vehicles had little to no option. |
| 03:12 | This is one reason that WinOLS has become such a popular option in this market. |
| 03:18 | Granted, the situation has begun to change over the last few years with HP Tuners in particular now offering expanding support for a range of European vehicles including Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Mercedes AMG however this is still relatively limited in the big scheme. |
| 03:36 | The other potential issue that you can find with some of these commercial packages is that the definitions may be relatively limited or incomplete. |
| 03:44 | This means we may not have access to all of the tables or parameters we need in order to properly tune a vehicle. |
| 03:51 | Often there's no way of adding additional parameters so we're at the mercy of the manufacturer to do so if we end up stuck. |
| 03:58 | In comparison to traditional reflashing solutions, WinOLS offers the ability to work with just about any vehicle or ECU and once you've purchased the necessary software and hardware, there is no ongoing cost. |
| 04:12 | Granted, that initial upfront cost can be high, particularly for some of the professional level hardware options used for reading and writing, however this can still be a very attractive option for tuning shops, in comparison to continually paying to tune every car. |
| 04:27 | In the next module, we'll dive into what WinOLS is and how it differs from the options we've just learned about. |
| 04:33 | Before we move on though, let's just quickly recap this module. |
| 04:36 | Remember that when it comes to reflashing, we can rely on a commercial software package that provides definitions for us. |
| 04:43 | The downside is that typically you won't find a single commercial package that will cover every make of car you may want to tune and you're going to have to pay ongoing costs. |
| 04:52 | On the other hand, WinOLS allows us to work with almost any ECU and has no ongoing costs, it does however require you to have the knowledge to find and define the maps yourself. |
