Hi all,

I bought my 2018 C63s (W205) back in March of 2023 the car had 41k miles on it, completely stock. Shortly after buying it I looked around at tunes and found Eurocharged to offer the cheapest ECU/TCU tunes. Right after purchasing the tune I was surprised when I heard back that they had the tune ready to go, I even asked them "How could you tune my car without first having my stock file?". Their response was they could "read my stock file from an online database" and then essentially they modify it from there.

I load the stage 1 tune (ECU/TCU) and I ran it for about a year. Then I purchased catless downpipes from Redstar, got those installed and had Eurgocharged send me over a stage 2 tune.

The whole time running their tune the car never shifted right. Under load the car would do this surging thing which was obvious in all modes. It was almost like it was missing or had a spark issue. I replaced the plugs, still no change. After a lot of back and forth with Eurocharged they said this was a normal thing these cars do.

I then took it to a well-known and highly-recommended MB shop, he deduced that there was something going on with my wet clutch. He said that he had a brand new $60k machine from MB that he could hook the car up to try and update the software and then relearn the wet clutch etc.

I flashed the car back to stock and took it to my MB guy. Turns out his machine wouldn't connect to my car. He even opened a case with MB and their response was that the software that was on the car shouldn't be what's on the car. Even though I flashed it back to stock it was still incorrect software (I learned later it belonged to another car). I talked to Eurocharged some more and they said they could do the software updates on their end and I could just flash a new file that would have the updates.

I bring the car home and I flash the ECU file, I drive it about 15 minutes into the next town over. I stop the car, run inside, come back out and the car is completely dead. When I turn the key it says "Inoperable". No crank, no anything (this is with the key in). When I try to connect my tuner to the OBD2 port it says error "check connection" basically it's not reading anything as if the cable weren't plugged in.

I call Eurocharged and they say maybe your ECU went, but you've flashed that same file 8 different times so it can't be the file... My question was then what was the update I was supposedly flashing?? He said oh that was in the TCU file (thanks for providing clear instructions) that you didn't flash. Either way the configuration it's in now you've ran 8x and never had an issue before (aside from the shift issue I've been complaining about).

I have it towed to my MB guy and he said the same thing, he checked all fuses going to the ECU and the ECU is now bricked. We think ok well let's order a new ECU (it's a 5 hour job each way to get the ECU out).

Weeks have gone by and I hear from my MB guy, he said he's found after talking to different shops all over the country that what he's heard is that Eurocharged loads in files that belong to other cars. Instead of taking your stock file and making modifications to it, they just load in files from similar cars. That's why his machine wouldn't touch it before. And the problem now is that even if we get a new ECU and "viriginize" it for my car it still wouldn't work because my TCU has software from another car on it. To get around the TCU problem we'd need to buy a new valvebody from MB but they apparently don't have any in stock right now. He said the last time he ordered a part that was out of stock it took MB 9 months to manufacture it in Germany and get it to him...

TL;DR - We can't replace the ECU won't "pair" to the car because the TCU has a software file for another car, and we can't flash the TCU back to stock without an ECU. Even when I tried flashing the car back to stock (according to what was in OBDLabs), it wasn't my real stock file that MB would work with. So it's this chicken before the egg deal.

My MB guy has been diligently calling other shops to get their opinion on how to get around this issue. He currently thinks he may have found someone that has the files we'd need to get around this. The last hope is placing the order for the valve body which is $1500 and just wait for MB to get one made, but it doesn't seem like that's going to be within the next few months.

Eurocharged did offer for me to send me them my broken ECU and they said if they can pull my software from it (assuming it's not bricked) they could flash that software to another used ECU they have. This doesn't seem like a real option to me now that I understand they're not working with my car's real files. It still would prevent any other shop from touching it.

At this point I'm at a loss, my cars been down for about a month with no path forward determined yet. I'm about to just go buy something else since it seems like it could be months before this is figured out.

Hoping anyone who reads this has some suggestions on how to get around the TCU tuning or knows how to find a new valve body from MB or something.

Cheers!

 

Haha that's way longer than I thought...

Real TL;DR - Tuned by Eurocharged, had some issues. While trying to fix those issues I flashed it to stock then flashed the tune back on. ECU bricked. Come to find out Eurocharged was loading software from other cars, vs tuning my stock file. Now I can't just replace the ECU because TCU has bad software. Ultimately going to have to buy a new ECU and new valvebody (it comes with the electronics for the TCU I guess). Unfortunately MB has that valvebody on backorder so unknown on ETA.

Once Eurocharged flashed it, my real "stock file" was gone forever. That means no flashing to stock to take it back to MB to get any help with it. Be warned.

 

Sorry to hear about the issues with Eurocharged. Was the Eurocharged you used base in Orlando Florida. If so they closed their doors back in December 2024. Out of business

 

Thanks for the response. I believe the EC I was dealing with was out of Austin, TX. It doesn’t surprise me, from looking around here it seems there’s a lot of people having issues with their tunes.

My MB guy told me he went ahead and ordered a valvebody anyways just to get the ball rolling. So hopefully MB can come up with one soon.

 

A lot of complaints about Eurocharged.. they bricked a dude's Ferrari ECU too.

Hope you get the car sorted man

 

Thanks man!

We put in an order for the valvebody last week so hoping for a quick turn around from MB.

The ECU was around $1400, the valve body around $1700. It's a 5 hour job to remove the ECU, then another 5 hours back in. No idea labor on valve body.

When it's all said and done, I still have catless downpipes so I'll need another tune if anyone has any recommendations.

Alternatively if I end up buying another car and needing to sell the C63 I would need to figure out how to either put my stock pipes back on or find CA smog compliant pipes.

 

Before dumping crazy money contact ptg tuning. They can program all the modules with there verstand software.

Saved me when I flashed wrong file on my car and bricked my ecu.

 

Sorry to hear all this, I can only comment on my experience but I have had a EC tune on every one of my AMG cars and never had an issue with any of them.