Team,
One item to remember when you take your car in for service (if you do). Dealers will often flash your ECU when new firmware versions are available, this is a free service and they might not even tell you. Make sure you tell them not to do it else it will over write the hondata reflash. I am not sure what Hondata's policy is but they may or may not reflash for free.

 

Are you nuts? No they won't. I managed a service department for Acura. They have to have the owner authorize ANY work performed, even service bulletins. New versions don't come out all that often anyway. There has NEVER been one issued for any K-series Acura. The only update of the sort issued was for the 2004 MDX remapping when Honda forgot to update the software after changing the car to a dual-exhaust setup. Other than that, I haven't seen an update from Acura in over 4 years.

I have no idea where you came up with this one.

Don't go telling the dealers specifically to leave your ECU alone. That will raise a red flag.

Please, before you go off posting threads like this, be a bit more researched first. You're going to get people worried over nothing.

JTso...could you lock/delete/edit this guy's post and follow up on my comments?

 

I am not nuts, they did it in my accord twice.

 

I was mearly pointing out that if one is avaible they may or may not tell you. Honda did it for me as a (freeebie). My intiention was not to cause a panic but to be informative. There was no need for you to be so rude.

 

kurt, while I understand and respect your credentials, I do remember reading somewhere that people have had this happen before so while your service department, properly run and managed, did not do this, other service departments may not be quite so smart.

I do recall also reading somewhere that Hondata charges a small fee to fix an overwritten reflash.

 

Thanks for the warning Zasker

 

But Kurt has a point as well. Don't start telling your service advisor not to touch the ECU, they're going to start wondering why the hell not.

Maybe this is a great reason to wait until after warranty to get the reflash.

 

I think it's only like $50 to reflash if it gets overwritten by the dealer.

Personally, I'm not too worried about this happening.

 

I took my car in to have a spare key made after my ECU was reflashed. The process involves connecting the HDS and writing/matching codes to the key, immobilizer and ECU. They didn't touch any part of my ECU and the reflash is still in place. In fact, they didn't do anything else to my car without my request. I just don't think the dealer will systematically reprogramming ECU unless there is a good reason to do so, such as a major recall to correct safety problem...


Zasker1, could you tell us how did you know the ECU was reprogrammed? Was your ECU modified? I just want to get an idea what model/year of Accord you have, as only certain ECUs are programmable.

 

Yeah, never heard of any dealer for any car producing company reprogram ecu's to newer versions.

 

I will see if I can find the the info as it was a long time ago and I dont have the car anymore. But I had a 00 Accord and had some small company do a reflash. (cannot remember the name). The gains were pretty noticeable howerver and after visiting the dealer one day to reset the SRS light. The gains were gone, thus I had it flashed agian.

Thinking back on this, it only happned once note twice. I think the other instance was on my friends TDI.

 

Well, it it is a small fee to get it reflashed, I guess I would say take the risk and not say anything till it happens. When it happens, have Hondata reflash it and start telling your service guy not to do a reflash.

Kind of interesting point though. If there is an updated firmware available, would Hondata go through the trouble to re-engineer their firmware depending on how critical the fix was?

 

<--- looking for all possible reasons (excuses!!) to NOT go Hondata


Reading the info from this thread, I am worried that the '05 ECU is simply non-reprogrammable because Honda/Acura figured they'd never issue firmware update. If that's the case, then there will be no way to Hondata a '05 ECU Maybe I should start hooking up with junk yard to look for a '04 ECU from a MT.

 

If the car was a 00 Accord, then I don't think the factory ECU is programmable. Which means the dealer can't reprogram it. Resetting the SRS light should have nothing to do with the ECU itself. Now, I'm curious of what type of "reflash" was done to your car. Please provide more detail if possible.

 

and miss out on 4 years or 50K miles of reflashed driving?

 

I don't think you'll find an ECU in the junkyard