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Un-chipping question! [URGENT]


thorkild
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My car was chipped by APR last year, and as I am now selling it I would prefer to un-chip it so to speak.

I spoke to Fontain and they quoted me around £150 to put an original ECU back on the car. The other option they gave me was to download the original program onto the ECU they put on my car. He didn't know of the top of his head what that would cost in case there would be a cost of downloading the program. Waiting for an answer on that one.

Anyway, I would far prefer to replace the chipped ECU with a clean and original one. I believe the chip itself only costs something like £7-8 IIRC, and not taking program cost into account. First of all the buyer wouldn't then be able to discover that the car had been chipped in a previous life, and second of all I could (potentially) flog the chipped ECU.

Is the price of replacing the chip with an original one outrageous? The guy mentioned soldering and stuff, but the pdf's available on apreurope suggests that it's a simple plug and play job which I easily could do myself if I had the correctly programmed ECU to hand.

What is the truth? Could I for example buy a programmed ECU for my car from somewhere and then install it myself?

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£100 still sounds a bit steep as I don't believe they have to do any major work. If it is just a matter of unplugging the chipped ECU and plugging the original ECU on then that is a job worth looking into doing myself.

And charging me for the software and ECU is actually a bit cheeky since they kept the original when they chipped the car...I can understand charging for the labour however...

I will give Mitchell a call in the morning, as I believe he was the one who mentioned the price for the ECU some time ago...

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The problem is that the chips aren't socketed, they have to be unsoldered from the PCB and a new chip put in its place. So you're paying for the specialist labour not the components, after all the chip is only a form of static memory storing all of the engine maps, not the actual processor.

Chris.

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Apparently taking the chip off and flogging it is not an option. Mark from Fontain called me again after reading the thread grin.gif

The process of unsoldering it from the PCB renders the chip or at least the data on it unusable.

I'm thinking I should sell it as it is. I know it restricts the market, but it's a lot of money to make it stock again... frown.gif

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Sounds like a lot of hassle, but I will have a check to see what the number is tomorrow or thursday. cool.gif

Are you sure about this immobiliser sync Danksy? Looking at the pdf's available on apreurope in the customer support section it tells you to leave the ignition in the ON position for a few minutes to allow the ECU to learn the 'relative throttle positions', but it doesn't mention the immobiliser...

I don't want to get in the situation where I have a car with no ECU (or at least a non-working one) and a potential buyer asking for a test-drive... grin.gif

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[ QUOTE ]

Sounds like a lot of hassle, but I will have a check to see what the number is tomorrow or thursday. cool.gif

Are you sure about this immobiliser sync Danksy? Looking at the pdf's available on apreurope in the customer support section it tells you to leave the ignition in the ON position for a few minutes to allow the ECU to learn the 'relative throttle positions', but it doesn't mention the immobiliser...

I don't want to get in the situation where I have a car with no ECU (or at least a non-working one) and a potential buyer asking for a test-drive... grin.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry mate, its the immboliser 2 that needs Synching with the ECU. (It's all part of the dasboard cluster and the ECU that controls that).

Its tricky to do, but NOT impossible!

I'd just bite the bullet mate, and go to AmD or someone and get them to put OEM s'ware back in for you if you're that bothered!

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