I did a major maintenance on my 2013 E350 (M276) and discovered the familiar oil in the harness problem. There was significant oil in the ECU connector so I can only assume the oil has gone into the ECU itself. It should be noted that I never had any codes or problems except for some hard starts. The hard starts disappeared after I changed the coils, spark plugs, camshaft sensors, and replaced the timing chain tensioners (and one of them seemed in bad shape). Thankfully, the variable camshaft phasors seemed fine.

Given that changing the harness is not feasible (I'm not removing the engine), I am just going to live with it. So my plan is to just clone the ECU and carry a spare if it craps out as they are easy to change. I'm not thrilled about sending my ECU to someone to clone it so I want to just buy the tools to do it myself.

What is the lowest cost approach to cloning the ECU? This is the MED17.7.1 ECU. I have been looking at HexProg (~$600) but are there other alternatives?

Thanks

 

There are video out there on how to clone ECU.

Since your original unit is still working, the transfer can be non-invasive without harvesting chips off.

Let's see what solution works best.

 

See my post December 2023 if you want to crack the ECU open and check for oil inside it.

 

I for back up reason, because I want to keep my car to at least 20 years, I managed to get from Ebay USA a used ECM for my M276.820 3.0 Turbo. So I cloned it, using a workshop service
where they use the OBDStar in Jakarta-Indonesia. They are Autel dealer actually.

Full story here : https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...ml#post9227038
https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...ar-xentry.html


So I spent only under US$300, this is SO CHEAP !!!!

ME9.7 ECM does not last long in my country due to engine bay heat and bad traffic jam.
MED177.xx so far seems to be a bit more robust, but they are not as old as ME9.7 ECM.


If you want to keep your car long enough, having spare MED177.xx ready to use is good.

Happy shopping......

 

I have combed the videos on cloning the mercedes ECUs. They are not very detailed as they are clearly by people who do this for a living and are partially using to advertise their service - I guess they don't want to give away all the secrets. Not DIY people just trying to spread some knowledge. It's quite a good business to charge $200 to program an ECU once you have the setup. I would just pay it but I'm not willing to risk someone screwing up my perfectly good ECU at this time or it being lost in the mail...

Hexprog 2 can clearly do the job but it can't do much else. The Autel IM508S with Gbox3 "may" be able to clone the MED17.7.1 but I can't 100% confirm it. I would prefer to buy the Autel because it is a much more general purpose tool than Hexprog (even though it costs significantly more). Has anyone successfully cloned the MED17.7.1 with the Autel IM508S?

 

Since my ECU is working, I don't want to take it apart and risk damaging it. The only reason to take it it apart would be if it ceases to work so you can access the memory directly (boot mode).

 

Go to Dtech Engineering channel. He likes sharing information on ECU cloning and including failures + bricking ECU. Some are MB ECU.
https://www.youtube.com/@DTEAuto/search?query=cloning
https://www.youtube.com/@DTEAuto

OBSstar does not do any harm to our MED177.xx it reads only and no weird injection on motherboard
Lost in shippingis still a possibility.

 

Ok here's an update on this and my contribution to the DIY knowledge base.

I sprung for the HexProg 2 to attempt to clone my working ECU using 3 donor ECUs I picked up on the online marketplaces.

While I never did find any definitive step by step videos on exactly what to do (there are some videos out there but they definitely glossed over a few details), I was successfully able to setup the hexprog, copy and clone 3 ECUs in about 4 hours. I actually did a binary compare of the flash files on a separate computer just to verify that it made perfect copies (Hexprog does not have a facility to do this). I installed one of these in my car and it fired up and ran perfectly. By the way, I've never touched an ECU in my life.

Confusingly, while I was getting some online set up support from HexProg (Microtronik), which is real time and responsive by the way, they claimed that I could not do a perfect clone of the MED17.7.1 ECU without "adaptations" but I had seen 2 videos of people doing it and clearly worked for me so that was wrong. I know this ECU is used with a number of cars so maybe there is a version out there that has some additional encryption? For reference, my vehicle is a 2013 W212 E350 Base sedan (M276 gas engine, NA). It is the MED17.7.1 ECU

The hexprog2 cost about $700 including shipping and Tariffs in the US (it ships from Dubai) and it comes with a 48 hour unlimited license. You can purchase additional license time for $60/day which is perfect for a DIY casual user. [the full license is over $2k with a $1k annual license fee so not DIY friendly for that version]. Yes, it would have been cheaper to have someone clone it but 1) I didn't like the risks of shipping my ECU 2) I like messing around with my car and if cost was all I cared about, I would not have a mercedes in the first place.

Anyway, now that this is done, I will probably just end up selling the hexprog on Ebay as it is transferrable as I should have enough ECUs for this car to last awhile...

 

Very nice, thanks for sharing your experience!

 

Well done OP, just still remember to keep installing pigtails and replacing them as needed because even if you install a new ecu replacing the old ecu destroyed by oil, the harness is still full of oil and the new ecu might get destroyed as well so an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

 

+1: yes!
the future is setup in the present.

"$10k Oil in harness" keeps on delivering oil all around.