MyE28.com DEV

About a year & half ago, out of the blue my car wouldnt start or do much of anything besides just turn over. Long story short, I re-flashed the ecu to the lastest firmware & put my tune back in. Fired right up to a perfect idle. Now fast forward to this past winter. Car wouldnt start at all again. Fuel pressure was good, spark good, all MS settings seemed to check out. I updated to the most recent firmware again & reloaded my tune. NO luck. I pulled the plugs & they smelled of raw fuel so I left them out for a few hours. After putting them back in I again looked through all my MS settings in tuner studio thinking something had to have changed to cause this out of the blue. After all its usually the simplest things that elude us. Then I noticed that the reading on my wbo2 was pegged at 22 but TS was stuck at like 15.3 or something. Hmm, that's odd... I keyed the car off/on a couple times to verify I wasn't hallucinating. Sure enough they didnt match. It sucks that TS doesn't show what wbo2 it's setup to read, unless I'm missing it. Anyhow I went into the settings & selected LC1 and promptly flashed it to the ecu. Turn key & it started! Very rough idle for a bit till it warmed up but all is now back to normal.

Over the winter, my crappy Optima yellow top went dead several times. I think this also happened last time as well. Unlikely, but any chance this would have any affect on MS losing it's tune or settings? Is there something else I should be concerned with or looking at? TIA!

I've never had a problem like that. MS uses flash memory which isn't affected by loss of battery power. You can unplug the unit and keep it on a shelf without losing the tune.

Most corruption is laptop comms related

turbodan wrote:I've never had a problem like that. MS uses flash memory which isn't affected by loss of battery power. You can unplug the unit and keep it on a shelf without losing the tune.

True dat.

FirstFives Dictator wrote:Most corruption is laptop comms related

Hmm... Peter, is it feasible that some type of corruption was uploaded last year when I reflashed the ecu or when I last uploaded a tune? In that case, wouldnt it surface right away vs. a year later?

Not that it should make a difference, but I'm running winXP with a usb > serial converter to interface into MS. Thanks!

I was going to say it was hooking the laptop up and reflashing firmware that would bring the car out of it's funk. I remember using an incorrect usb adapter left me stranded in a parking lot after burning some changes on my car. I had to have my wife bring my old laptop(w/ serial comm) and cable. Everything was normal after that. LJ's seems to throw hissy fits every spring. Lol!

Nebraska_e28 wrote:

turbodan wrote:I've never had a problem like that. MS uses flash memory which isn't affected by loss of battery power. You can unplug the unit and keep it on a shelf without losing the tune.

True dat.

FirstFives Dictator wrote:Most corruption is laptop comms related

Hmm... Peter, is it feasible that some type of corruption was uploaded last year when I reflashed the ecu or when I last uploaded a tune? In that case, wouldnt it surface right away vs. a year later?

Not that it should make a difference, but I'm running winXP with a usb > serial converter to interface into MS. Thanks!

Some settings only take effect on power cycle
If you burned something that created a configuration error, you would not know until next power up (fuel pump relay clicks on and off)

FirstFives Dictator wrote:

Nebraska_e28 wrote:

turbodan wrote:I've never had a problem like that. MS uses flash memory which isn't affected by loss of battery power. You can unplug the unit and keep it on a shelf without losing the tune.

True dat.

FirstFives Dictator wrote:Most corruption is laptop comms related

Hmm... Peter, is it feasible that some type of corruption was uploaded last year when I reflashed the ecu or when I last uploaded a tune? In that case, wouldnt it surface right away vs. a year later?

Not that it should make a difference, but I'm running winXP with a usb > serial converter to interface into MS. Thanks!

Some settings only take effect on power cycle
If you burned something that created a configuration error, you would not know until next power up (fuel pump relay clicks on and off)

Previously the car had been keyed off/on maybe 100x & was running fine. This just happened one day out of the blue without any interface to the laptop for tuning. I'm baffled.

Nebraska_e28 wrote:

FirstFives Dictator wrote:

Nebraska_e28 wrote:

turbodan wrote:I've never had a problem like that. MS uses flash memory which isn't affected by loss of battery power. You can unplug the unit and keep it on a shelf without losing the tune.

True dat.

FirstFives Dictator wrote:Most corruption is laptop comms related

Hmm... Peter, is it feasible that some type of corruption was uploaded last year when I reflashed the ecu or when I last uploaded a tune? In that case, wouldnt it surface right away vs. a year later?

Not that it should make a difference, but I'm running winXP with a usb > serial converter to interface into MS. Thanks!

Some settings only take effect on power cycle
If you burned something that created a configuration error, you would not know until next power up (fuel pump relay clicks on and off)

Previously the car had been keyed off/on maybe 100x & was running fine. This just happened one day out of the blue without any interface to the laptop for tuning. I'm baffled.

you could try a new processor but I've never seen it help.
Also open mini terminal and see if the MS reports anything

FirstFives Dictator wrote: you could try a new processor but I've never seen it help.
Also open mini terminal and see if the MS reports anything

Thanks, will look into this & report back. Leave it to me to always have the oddball issues only occur every other century.

IIRC, the wideband input doesn't update unless it's getting a tach signal. It's unclear whether or not the engine was running at the time you took the readings, but if it wasn't, that could explain the discrepancy.

Of course it would not explain the no-start...