[joec500]

So I have a car with an MSD 80 and have been getting sporadic mis-fires, even after injector replacements, plug replacements, cam replacements, fuel pump replacement, and even turbo replacements. After reading around I have seen that there is a possibility there could be some issue with the ECU. I know I can pick up a used MSD 81 for around 300 dollars from a wrecking yard.

I was curious to know what the labor cost would BMW charge to re-encode the ECU to my car. Also...will they even re-encode an ECU that I didn't buy from the dealer?

[shifterboy45]

Originally Posted by joec500

So I have a car with an MSD 80 and have been getting sporadic mis-fires, even after injector replacements, plug replacements, cam replacements, fuel pump replacement, and even turbo replacements. After reading around I have seen that there is a possibility there could be some issue with the ECU. I know I can pick up a used MSD 81 for around 300 dollars from a wrecking yard.

I was curious to know what the labor cost would BMW charge to re-encode the ECU to my car. Also...will they even re-encode an ECU that I didn't buy from the dealer?

remember some components are VIN specific...
binary coded information for the DWS (anti-theft feature) is embedded in the DME --

when a new DME is ordered by the dealer it is special order and vin specific to the car requested ..

just think if a guy stole your car, and swapped DME in the car to get it started .. that would be a pain, heh?

[joec500]

Originally Posted by shifterboy45

remember some components are VIN specific...
binary coded information for the DWS (anti-theft feature) is embedded in the DME --

when a new DME is ordered by the dealer it is special order and vin specific to the car requested ..

just think if a guy stole your car, and swapped DME in the car to get it started .. that would be a pain, heh?

Damn them!! I guess it's a $1,500 deal regardless of how I look at it. Gone are the days when you could just swap DME's on the fly. *sigh*

[shifterboy45]

Originally Posted by joec500

Damn them!! I guess it's a $1,500 deal regardless of how I look at it. Gone are the days when you could just swap DME's on the fly. *sigh*

no doubt ... those were the days .. when all you needed was a MoDIC and a fresh Motronic off the shelf.. but remember too, those DME's would only allow 8 attempts to encode it... after that toast

with every feature upgrade comes some type of compromise....

but back then you had go have a HofCo or Vocalarm installed too.. oh and TeleTrack (pacbell) or Lojack .... oh those were the service days ......

DWS ASSIST SVR --- what next

[joec500]

Originally Posted by shifterboy45

no doubt ... those were the days .. when all you needed was a MoDIC and a fresh Motronic off the shelf.. but remember too, those DME's would only allow 8 attempts to encode it... after that toast

with every feature upgrade comes some type of compromise....

but back then you had go have a HofCo or Vocalarm installed too.. oh and TeleTrack (pacbell) or Lojack .... oh those were the service days ......

DWS ASSIST SVR --- what next

Yah...I used to own two ECU's when I had a B5 S4, just swapped entire ECU's when going in for service....