Quote:

Be careful, I think if you flash the gearbox ECU when it is the wrong temp it wont't take the reprogram, LR system has a temp check as part of the procedure. Has to be taken out and bench programmed.
Anyone confirm?

caverD3

Almost spot on, however the story and situation of this is a bit more detailed and interesting.

Because the Autobox ECU is physically located inside the Gearbox itself, it is affected by the Gearbox's temperature, and I guess from what LR did with adding a sub 80 degree Temperature check prior to allowing reflashing to be done on their IDS (now SDD) system they must have had problems reflashing this when the gearbox was too hot, resulting in comms errors etc.

The very first stage of any re flash on most flash able items is to erase all the existing contents prior to replacing them. Hence the warnings not to disconnect and to have a good power situation as any interruption could leave you with an ECU that having had the operating system erased will have also lost diagnostic communication abilities, leaving you with the possibility of ending up with an ECU that can no longer be communicated with at all and is therefore pretty much then scrap.

Thankfully, the later Ford based systems used in the D3 etc have overcome this unfortunate possibility by virtue of using primary boot loader technology. This technology means that the basic diagnostic communication abilities of an ECU are put in a different area in memory that is protected and are still working even on an ECU that has been completely erased.

IE, you can never totally loose communications to any ECU and can always re start re flashing it using the basic communication capability provided by the primary boot loader.

Unfortunately in the case of the Auto box the basic diagnostic capability provided by the Primary Boot loader does not provide temperature reading values.

So if a dealer tries to flash an Autobox, it will check first check that the temp is below 80 and if it is will allow Re flashing to commence, If any problem occurs during flashing any second attempt will try to check the temp and get an error, as the system can no longer diagnostically supply the temp value. Thus preventing any re try and providing a catch 22 situation that sadly sees most dealers replacing entire gearboxes, usually at the customers expense.

By adding the Temp check, they actually over rode the original primary boot loader safe guard.

Our MSV-2 system simply advises you check the temp to see it is below 80 but allows re flashing anyway.