Customer drove 2 hours and dumped his JB4. Per request we added some pops and bangs.

 

 

 

Nice, would you need catless downpipes for burble tune?

 

Nice! But where i can get these exhaust tips?!?!?

 

 

What are the gains? Whats your website?

 

 

Bro?!?!

 

We can tune the 19 and the Tune is undetectable.


!9

 

 

Well there goes any credibility you thought you might have had....

 

 

 

MB and Audi are good at detecting ECU tunes if something prompts them to go looking.

Most the tuners out there to my knowledge are physically breaching the ECU in order to flash it. This is obvious to any tech who looks even if no deep diagnostic is run.
I think it's safe to say that all the major automakers can detect any ECU flash if they look.

 

I'll be the first to admit I haven't (and won't) done full scrape of the claims of every tuner out there, but I don't know any off the top of my head that even try to play the "undetectable" game. There are examples across every manufacturer of either dealer level techs or corporate level techs finding out about tuning given proper cause or even a scent of the possibility.

Alas, best of luck on the tuning...

 

 

Sounds good! Honestly best sounding turbo charged v6...

 

Hello,

I'm Matt, I'm the tuner over here at HD and would like to clear this up for you.

There is currently no way to flash the MB MED17 ECU's through the OBD2 port, so they are opened to flash them and in some cases tuners will even drill the ECU's (we don't as that is a visible sign that there has been tampering). The benefit of not flashing OBD2 is there is no log or ECU flash count triggered, this is why bench flashing is the preferred method, it is how the ECU's are programmed initially, they can receive subsequent updates via OBD2 but they are built to only have one way communication through the OBD2 port. In other words, they can receive information, but not read it out, hence the term "undetectable." If your tuner is competent there is no visible difference between an ECU that has been tuned or not, I have seen a lot of mangled ones out there but the opening of ECU's is more art than science, and not all artists are equal. If you think MB service techs are told to open ECU's and hook up boot pins to read out ECU's you are grossly over estimating their abilities and free time. There are no dealer level tools to detect a tune at an MB dealer period. Anyone with a xentry can tell you the same. If there is a large warranty job to be done like replacing a transmission, they will reflash the ECU to the latest software version but at no point do they pull out the ECU for any of that. The tunes are also reversible for peace of mind and because there is no flash counter, there is no forensic evidence left behind that a tune has ever been done.

Audi and MB could not be more different as far as detecting ECU tunes, I'm not sure where you're getting your information from but I've been tuning for ten years and Audi has always been more strict about modding than MB on a corporate level. BMW is more on par with Audi in recent years actually. Audi has been using similar bosch control units as MB (they're using more simos) but that's where the similarities end. Audi uses tamper proof bolts on their ECU's so they can detect if they're bench flashed, and some cars will have an ECU tamper code if it has been flashed even OBD2. That being said there is still ways to make a tune undetectable, like buying new tamper proof bolts after the tune, deleting the tamper fault from the fault code table in your tune, etc. Your blanket statement about tune detection is a common misconception which is why I'm chiming in instead of Josh. Mercedes has none of these measures in place (tamper proof bolts, shadow codes for ECU tampering), we tune for a Mercedes dealership where they sell brand new cars off the showroom floor with our tunes in them, warrantied. A few times over the years they've asked me to check if a car has a tune in it for them, this is not a used car dealership mind you, this is a franchised dealer on the East coast. A tuned car will communicate to the MB factory software the same way a stock car will.

I've been tuning all Euro makes and models since 2008, each make and model has its own challenges, but I believe how you do anything is how you do everything, and I wouldn't program anything in a customers car that I wouldn't program in my own, and I wouldn't assure them that they can get service without being flagged if I wasn't 100% confident. If you go into the dealer with an aftermarket downpipe, they can see that and void your warranty obviously, but there is no such risk with tuning an MB at this point. Unless you tell your SA that you have a tune, they'll have no clue. I bought the first C63S that hit fletcher jones in May of 2015, tried to crack the ECU to be first to market and as I was reverse engineering the processor to find the boot pin, the ECU shorted. I put the ECU back in the car, took it to the dealer and they ordered a new one and said that it was a common issue on the first delivered cars. At no point did they even ask if there was a tune and I wouldn't have risked it if I didn't already have first hand knowledge of what the dealers capabilities are for detecting tunes.

There are makes that I would say are unsafe to tune, Audi/VW, BMW among the most strict and Ferrari, Mclaren, Lamborghini and MB which we tune the most, are completely undetectable. My 570S has been to the dealer a dozen times since June of last year and I've never had to put the stock file in for peace of mind, same with my Alfa 4C. Theyr'e all MED17 based bosch ECU's and they dont have tamper codes or other detection methods.

Hope that clears up your concern.


-Matt

 

So there are absolutely no logs in the ECU that would indicate a tune? Are things like boost pressure not logged?

 

Good question! All modern ecu's use what we call "torque limits" rather than a map that just shows requested psi by rpm. There are boost pressure limits and maximum allowed Boost pressure limits in the ecu as well, but making power is a delicate balance of modifying all of these torque/boost limits.

To simplify things, imagine the ecu has an internal dyno graph where it plots its power in Newton meters by RPM, it's a maximum power limit that the car can target. At 5k RPM its set at 750nm. If you change your exhaust or intake or even your turbos, you still cannot exceed this power limit or the car will open the wastegates, close the throttle, pull timing and dump fuel. This is why without a tune you don't see huge gains changing hardware. Now let's say you have upgraded turbos and a stock tune, the car will hit that 750nm limit at a lower boost pressure and cut boost and go into component protection. Now imagine you have a stock car but at 10kft elevation, the turbos have to work a lot harder to get the same power it makes at sea level and the car has the ability to change a number of variables to hit these target torque numbers. So the car is looking for a calculated torque figure, and the variables it controls like boost, timing, throttle, etc are continually changing to achieve this. As such, there is no basis to say this car runs x psi as from car to car with even the slightest variations in production will run different settings. When you get a check engine light the car will log the conditions at which the fault occurs and that is the only log that the dealer sees, they then find solutions to the fault based on the codes not the conditions that the code presented itself necessarily.

Matt

 

Damn, you're selling me on this tune. Might consider it when its time to tune, I'm roughly 50-60 miles away from Newport. Would a very mild burble tune be possible? I wouldn't want my Cats to get ruined

 

Of course, we can make it mild or aggressive it's up to you, there's no threat to your cats as there's multiple ways to get pops. If you want flames that's a different story

 

I was going to drive up from North County SD and get tuned by OE but after seeing this, HD sounds like the way to go. Do you guys dyno tune to specific vehicles?

FYI - coming from a guy in the sports products industry, responses like this aka connecting with consumers "face to face" is huge. Big thanks for some awesome information.

Side note - any special offers for group members?

 

Thank you for the kind words I appreciate that.

We dyno tune all the time it just depends what the customer wants, we use autowave in HB which is a mainline dyno for awd cars and md automotive in westminster for 2wd cars which is a dynojet.

We do discount from our retail prices for forum members, give us a shout and we can figure out a game plan based on the goals you have for your car