Flash limit?

[Autochef]

I thought I remember reading somewhere that there's a limit to how many times you can flash the ECU. Is this true? if so, how many?

Within the last three months I have flashed 27 times.

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

there is no set limit. Some people have issues at low #s of flashes, but I have flashed mine 100+ times.

Keep the battery charged. Greg also said he's had luck fixing "bricked" ecu's by flashing the previous tune over it a few times. Also, make sure your ecuflash is up to date.

[familyMAN]

Hundreds and hundreds, oh wait, I'm AEM...finally found one reason to not regret waiting for flash before buying AEM

[futurevr4man]

It's actually kind of situational to each ecu. I am not going to explain what the "flash" physically does, but its like anything else... Some last 50 flashes some last hundreds (just like some people build their engines in clean rooms with gloves on and spin a bearing in a thousand miles and some build them outside in the rain and they run forever lol)

I would say you should expect it to last 100 - 150 flashes, but I'm not promising anything

[Greg E]

There's no reason to flash your ECU so many times. ...unless you're a really bad tuner.

The manufacture rates the chip at 100 flashes but my current ECU is well over 350 now. The ECU in my first 99 was flashed over a hundred and the one in my 98 was flashed over 250 times.


...guess I'm a bad tuner...

[mb3000]

Never knew there was a theoretical ceiling to the number of flashes, not really happy about that. Would have made me think twice about purchasing one as it doesn't seem like a good long term option to me anymore.

After you hit the magic number, is there something in the ecu that can be repaired, or is it just toast.

[anyonebutme]

you swap out the IC chip, and go again, lol

Honestly, how often do people mess with their SAFC settings? unless you're testing stuff like Greg is, how many times do you REALLY need to flash an ECU.


Related note: we NEED an emulator.

[mb3000]

How much is the chip, how difficult is the removal/install, is your tune lost, etc?

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

All flash has a limit to the number of times it can be rewritten, even the precious AEM. It is likely that since AEM planned on the ecu being written to a lot that they used flash that had a lot of write endurance. Mitsu of course did not expect the ECU to be written too much, but that doesn't mean that there is a counter in there that ticks over and shuts the ecu off.

The CPU can be replaced by Jester or Brett. Don't blow this out of proportion though, it is unlikely anyone will ever actually run into this issue.

[anyonebutme]

How much is the chip, how difficult is the removal/install, is your tune lost, etc?

if you're not well versed in PCB IC chip soldering, don't even think about it. Ask your friendly flashable ECU provider. Your tune is on your laptop, so why worry?