It would be good to hear a current word from Scott Slauson and Todd Knighton about this.

 

Here's one . https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...leak-saga.html
"My dealer requested a remanufactured engine, however, the Porsche regional service manager approved a new engine block and instructed the dealership to rebuild the engine. He also raised the possibility that my modifications could have contributed to one or more of the leaks."

I presented ideas to this owner on the thread as to how to negotiate through the dilema . Was it the mods? Probably not . Might Porsche have denied the claim on a stock car ? Yep .

Now this guy could have sought the legal arbitration route but I adamantely opposed it . I told him to table negotiations on a new car .

Big problems usually cost money or headaches or both -- whether one has a flashed or unflashed car . My thinking is minimize the negative by hedging the loss and maximizing the positive by using his 150K broken down car as leverage to seek a diplomatic solution .

If the dealership, tuner, owner work together things go a lot smoother than if they don't .

 

This is correct for a flash that is a switchable type and you set it back to stock. What stock is in these types of flashes is the car runs as stock yet the DME is permanently altered. Any switchable mapping alters the 29F800 chip in this case so it is never original again unless fully flashed by a PIWIS tester or perhaps by the companies dealer. These types of flashes have been corrected in the CVN so that they would appear to be OK now.

Any flash in any given car other than the true and correct original is detectable and this even applies to Softronic. I should know as I personally check the binary for many different race organizations including Porsche,have more than 25 years with Porsche etc. This includes as a Master tech and electronic engineering.

You can look at the DME as a hard drive on a computer. The drive can be cloned to another drive and only work in the one computer. This drive is an exact duplicate or clone of the original. Now the hard drive may be a different make than the original , this is the hard part. The DME is the hard part in our discussion. These though are only encoded by what has been written to them as they are all the same. I should say by part number.

So could you make 10 DME's as an example the original DME for 1 car?, Yes.

Would these same DME's be original with a flash of any type even when trial software was used? NO

Could they be made to be original again ? Yes when done correctly.


I would have posted this under Marine8541 in which was my personal ID however 6Speed has deleted it... They have done this to some vendors yet not others selectivly... At times I would like to join in the discussions not as a vendor however that is not possible any further on this site. I do post under PCA-Tech on PlanetPorsche though since the only times I do so is to offer technical info to the members.

Should anyone have any other questions I would like to answer them however they will have to be under Softronic on this site.

This is only meant to be posted as known information on this subject of flashing on any modern DME and all tuned flashes would void most all factory warranties. All flashes beyond the factory should be considered for off road use only. This would also apply to any other non factory drive train modification.



Best Regards,
Scott Slauson

 

Scott, this was probably the single best explanation I have read regarding reflashing to stock. Thank you.

To clarify regrding this statement, what you are saying (or what I was trying to say in my previous post) is any ECU reflash to stock using a switching device will be detected. The only way to reflash to stock is to do so using PIWIS or a similar device to wipe the ECU, correct?

 

I can't see dealing with the warranty issue and hassle over 10-15hp. Really good info guys. I figure there is a 10-15hp variance between a hot and cold day on my stock 997S.

 

Yes you are absolutely correct. The device would also be Softronic.

Just for some more clarification or to add some further info. The Hours, Imob code and other data is stored in a separate chip outside of the 29F800. The 29F800 holds the Map that is exactly 1,024kb in size for the 7.8 40mhz DME. This info outside of the CVN is what is looked at with the PIWIS tester or in a Porsche Vehicle Analysis. This data has to be written or changed differently than the 29F800. This is why another DME does not work as a swap since the other chip is not incramenting with the Cluster or Gateway.


Best Regards,
Scott

 

It's most likely that the DME runs a firmware that can be checksum'd to confirm that the binary indeed matches that of the factory. Unless the firmware is bit-for-bit identical, it would be easily recognizable as aftermarket. Whether the aftermarket firmware drives the engine any differently than stock is irrelevant. The two checksums simply will not match, and that's likely all Porsche cares about.

If the data on the DME is separated from the code, then it's possible that you could replace an aftermarket binary with the stock binary and then only the data would remain as evidence that the engine was run equivalent to the odometer's reading. This would be ideal, and might be sufficient to satisfy many users for normal stock-to-aftermarket-and-back scenarios, except when that data reflects operations outside factory limits (eg. a raised rev-limiter).

Based on Softronic's comments, it sounds to me as though the stock binary is perhaps encrypted against a one-way hash of a unique identifier for the DME hardware itself. This would ensure that only the original binary would pass the fingerprint test on the hardware. Clearly, Porsche chose to enable flash modifications, perhaps to stimulate the aftermarket? That suggests that they are not entirely opposed to flashing.

Of course, these are merely ruminations from a technologist with no DME-hacking experience and I could be entirely off-base, but I haven't seen any information which renders the above implausible.

 

This is exactly what I'm referring to in the 2nd paragraph of my post, which was composed while your were replying. This is actually even more trivial than expected, then, as it means that if we can tweak the data, we can adjust it to match whatever "apparent" driving we wish the engine to suggest.

 

Great post Scott! Thanks for an honest post and producing honest ECU flashes that actually do work.
Thanks!

 

Long technical story short, Softronic flash back to stock is undetectable. Correct?

 

I'll wait for Scott's response too but I think that's what he said in his post

"Could they be made to be original again with no trace? Yes when done correctly."

I think the "done correctly" refers to the Softronic software/device.

 

Or, if you have $12,000 for a PIWIS.

Scott, if you wipe and clear a ECU with PIWIS, does the "hours of use" clock get reset to zero as well? Data from the odometer will reflect total miles driven, but if the hours of use is reset to zero, your total "miles per hour" will be exaggerated...hence alerting an adept service tech.

 

None on eBay or in the classifieds

 

Dang...I would have split the cost with you...

 

Sorry for the delay however I was doing compliance checking at LRP this week.

To answer your question, Yes.