ECU/PCM clone process & pricing

[rharr]

Step 1 done - I was able to pull the flash and eeprom from my donor ECU.

Next i will try to pull that info off my JT's ECU and then write the good info to the donor ECU. I'll save that for another day...

I did go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out where the pin diagram came from in the PDF instructions. I wanted to tied back the pin out to the pcmflasher program since it hosts pinout diagrams to be used with it's program.

Any who, the magic search info for the ECU is "Bosch EDC 17C69" (info is on the ECU sticker).
And the Pinout info is found on the PCMflash_71.pdf page 120 option 2. At least that is what aligns with the instruction PDF and the config that let me read the ECU.

Armed with that info you can now self educate and start doing some searching related to that ECU and what is out there for you to screw with.

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[pmpmstrb]

Step 1 done - I was able to pull the flash and eeprom from my donor ECU.

Next i will try to pull that info off my JT's ECU and then write the good info to the donor ECU. I'll save that for another day...

I did go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out where the pin diagram came from in the PDF instructions. I wanted to tied back the pin out to the pcmflasher program since it hosts pinout diagrams to be used with it's program.

Any who, the magic search info for the ECU is "Bosch EDC 17C69" (info is on the ECU sticker).
And the Pinout info is found on the PCMflash_71.pdf page 120 option 2. At least that is what aligns with the instruction PDF and the config that let me read the ECU.

Armed with that info you can now self educate and start doing some searching related to that ECU and what is out there for you to screw with.

or screw up

 

[bdelaporte]

So bad news. I found it and reached out to him. He said that he currently has too much going on to do anything with cloning anymore. Sorry

Same thing happened to me. He was helping me out and then got too busy to finalize the process.

 

[Chuck]

I’m trying to get my ECU cloned. I asked the local dealer I use, but they haven’t done one before and hesitant. I passed.
I don’t have a home computer or anything to do it myself.
Can anyone recommend someone or a dealer on the west side of DFW that can do this for me?
Thank you in advance!

 

[TheSolarWizard]

I’m trying to get my ECU cloned. I asked the local dealer I use, but they haven’t done one before and hesitant. I passed.
I don’t have a home computer or anything to do it myself.
Can anyone recommend someone or a dealer on the west side of DFW that can do this for me?
Thank you in advance!

I found the guy who did mine by calling a couple import tuner type shops. They referred me to a mobile guy who came to me and did it for about $150 and it took about 45 mins. Dealers around me wouldn’t do it either

 

[rharr]

Clone appears successful! Used the knock off aliexpress sm2 pro following some instructions posted on this site. I bought 2 of these devices if someone wants one. I will include some annotated notes to the original instructions that i found helpful to clear up some confusion.

 

[Gregj]

Thanks to help from @rharr I now have a “spare” ECU. Not too hard just triple check the connections and don’t bend the pins .

Gregj

 

[Dieseljeep]

Question has anyone copied their turned pcm to have a back up file in case their pcm failed? I was wondering if that is possible. This is my forever jeep and I have had some cpu failures on other cars. It would be be nice if you could reinstall the tuned pcm.

 

[ParatusExpeditions]

Most tuners will lock the PCM after tuning it so that you can’t do that. That’s how much they love you. I’m not saying it’s impossible to copy, but, pretty shitty thing to do nonetheless as it complicate things way over what most people would be Able to commit to.

 

[rharr]

Most tuners will lock the PCM after tuning it so that you can’t do that. That’s how much they love you. I’m not saying it’s impossible to copy, but, pretty shitty thing to do nonetheless as it complicate things way over what most people would be Able to commit to.

I have no basis for this but the locking may depend on the the hardware used to read/write the ECU, some hardware may ignore the lock.

I did notice when reading my oem ecu, sm2pro had an option to "unlock" the ECU. During the write process I think.

Only one way to know is to try.

 

[ParatusExpeditions]

I’d love for someone to try. My understanding is that the OEM security key was found via some attack on the original hardware. Then most tuning company leverage this for the bench flash were they’re now capable of providing the right key based on the seed, which wouldn’t be possible without knowing the shared secret which was the OEM secret key.
Now, when they give you back the ECU, they changed the secret key such as the tools one had and the clones of the OEM tools found on AliExpress and such can’t negotiate a proper session key, remember both sides need to agree on the key for it to work. So only them are able to talk to the ECU for privileged operations like flash and dump its memory.

only way to circumvent this is to attack it again the original way but even the tuning company don’t know how to do that they’re just buying the hardware and software from companies that actually did the security research and now sell the hardware (masters and slaves are just ways to make more business, and lock clients in).

sorry if this is dense I typed this quickly on the phone.

 

[Gladiator_92]

I was nervous about cloning the PCM myself, mostly due to the knock off harness and that worst case scenario is you have a bricked PCM and a dead gladiator... Regardless, I did it anyway. I am happy to report that I just got back from my test drive with the cloned PCM installed. Everything works 100% perfectly. No security light, no errors or codes, operates just like the original one was installed. Thank you @Justinswidebody for your PDF instructions, they were very helpful.

The only thing I did different was that I got my harness off of Temu for $40.45 shipped. It's the same one but I also had to buy a 12v wall outlet power adapter vs the car cigarette one it came with.

For anyone considering this, take your time, triple check everything and you'll be good to go.

 

[BlueScapegoat]

Also just completed this process tonight. Kind of fiddly, some of the colors weren't the same and the labels didn't match exactly but it was pretty straight forward.

I COULD NOT get it to read the ECM, though, until I saw @rharr 's note about doing the identification step first. Then it worked right away. Seems obvious, I'm fairly experienced with HPTuners and I always do a preliminary pull first but this whole Chinese setup made me a bit more hesitant to try anything outside the instructions explicitly. I just kept messing with the timing of plugging in the power lead and I wasn't getting anywhere.

Also windows defender didn't even flag anything as suspicious. All seems "above board."

Anyway, haven't driven it yet but it just fired right up in the garage with no codes or lights.

Thanks all. This isn't just going to help me, it's going to allow me to help some others locally.

 

[rharr]

Also just completed this process tonight. Kind of fiddly, some of the colors weren't the same and the labels didn't match exactly but it was pretty straight forward.

I COULD NOT get it to read the ECM, though, until I saw @rharr 's note about doing the identification step first. Then it worked right away. Seems obvious, I'm fairly experienced with HPTuners and I always do a preliminary pull first but this whole Chinese setup made me a bit more hesitant to try anything outside the instructions explicitly. I just kept messing with the timing of plugging in the power lead and I wasn't getting anywhere.

Also windows defender didn't even flag anything as suspicious. All seems "above board."

Anyway, haven't driven it yet but it just fired right up in the garage with no codes or lights.

Thanks all. This isn't just going to help me, it's going to allow me to help some others locally.

now pull the bin apart and find the EGR section.....

 

[\/\/0j0]

Also just completed this process tonight. Kind of fiddly, some of the colors weren't the same and the labels didn't match exactly but it was pretty straight forward.

I COULD NOT get it to read the ECM, though, until I saw @rharr 's note about doing the identification step first. Then it worked right away. Seems obvious, I'm fairly experienced with HPTuners and I always do a preliminary pull first but this whole Chinese setup made me a bit more hesitant to try anything outside the instructions explicitly. I just kept messing with the timing of plugging in the power lead and I wasn't getting anywhere.

Also windows defender didn't even flag anything as suspicious. All seems "above board."

Anyway, haven't driven it yet but it just fired right up in the garage with no codes or lights.

Thanks all. This isn't just going to help me, it's going to allow me to help some others locally.

Do you mind sharing the link for temu? I couldn't find anything on aliexpress. Searching on temu, I found some dongles that looked close but in the listing it seems they're for VAG applications.

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