New tuner starter tips

Hey guys im new to tuning and have not yet had the chance to get to do some hands on tuning but im planning on getting my copy of the starter pack tuning course this summer. I drive a 2011 A4 2.0 TFSI and also have a 1999 7.3 powerstroke and like to play in both of them.

- I was wondering if there would be any preferences on types of cable and interfaces I should get and where can I get it for reflashing the stock ecu. I understand that it always depends on the vehicle your tuning but where would I be able to find that information about each vehicle and is there universal ones?

- I read about when reflashing you have to hack the ecu and also deal with checksum values that would be a kind of test the ecu is running to make sure every thing is in good condition. How complicated is it to do that and again where can I find more information on hacking and making sure im not going to mess up my ecu.

Thank you and im open to any opinions and im not afraid to go read a book or long pages of information to get to learn more I too has this strange obsession, addiction or passion which ever one it is, for modifing cars.

Hi Mikel and welcome to HPA!

Your two choices of vehicle are ones I'm going to struggle to help you with much. Firstly we don't cover diesel tuning at all right now so we can't offer any support for the Powerstroke application. Diesel tuning in many ways is almost the complete opposite of petrol engine tuning and needs to be treated very carefully. There are amazing gains to be had with the right approach and carefully watching your EGT, however right now we have no courses that will guide you on this subject.

Being based in the southern hemisphere, european cars aren't as popular as perhaps Japanese imports or American vehicles. I've never had the opportunity or need to look into reflashing options for the late model Audi vehicles. I'm certain packages will exist but I can't suggest what you should be purchasing sorry. We're not far away from releasing a reflashing course which will be helpful to you, although we expect people to be using a commercial software package and hence we won't be looking at how to find maps in a ROM file from scratch.

Sorry I can't help more at this stage.

VAG are pretty good at protecting their software - don't know of any commercially available packages. I've been told a lot of the newer platforms ECUs have encription boards & they are bloody complicated. I do know of a fhandful of people who have decoded Motronic 2.3.2 / ME7 themselves and they are quite rightly very protective of their hardwork. There is a site called Nefmoto which is a collection of information mostly about ME7 VW/Audi ecus & there is a lot of knowledge there. All of it way over my head!

http://nefariousmotorsports.com/

Hope that helps get you started anyway

Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, self mapping OEM, but this can get your ECU reprogrammed:http://www.obd-tuning.com/business/hardware_products/optican-dual-2