Can anybody help me with a technical question regarding the re-flashing of original ECU's.
I know you can buy aftermarket 'piggy back' chips such as Powerchip & Unichip but I have heard conflicting stories about the overall effectiveness of the power gains achieved when using these chips.
So I was wondering if anybody is aware of a way of reflashing an existing ECU.

The reason I want to is that I have a Ralliart engine fitted but never changed the ECU to a Ralliart ECU because of the problems associated with the ECU vs BEM (Body Engine Module).

The later TL & TW's cannot have different ECU's fitted (this is what I found out from Engineers whilst I was at MMAL) because they need to be married together when they are first installed. What happens if either fail and you need a replacement?????don't know the answer to this one either.
The MMAL engineers had special programmable ECU's....would love to get one of these..YEH!!


Any help appreciated

Cheers Derry
2005 TW AWD VR-X (Ralliart)

I believe software is out there, but not freely available. I think Jasons VRX has the software and cables, I could be wrong.

Firstly look to the greddey emanage or haltech piggy back, they tend to be the preferred ones.

The reason their effectiveness is limited isn't to do with their ability to tune, its because the Magnas are agressively tuned to begin with. So fitting a piggy back to a stock magna will yield little improvement. Once you start doing some high end mods, eg Cams (including your ralliart cams), the ability to tune with the mods comes into its own. This is when you see real improvements.

Greddy is about $1300 installed and tuned, Haltech is about $1500 I think. Minus about $300 if you install it yourself.

I'd get one of these be done with it, and not worry about flashing the ECU IMHO.

I believe software is out there, but not freely available. I think Jasons VRX has the software and cables, I could be wrong.

Firstly look to the greddey emanage or haltech piggy back, they tend to be the preferred ones.

The reason their effectiveness is limited isn't to do with their ability to tune, its because the Magnas are agressively tuned to begin with. So fitting a piggy back to a stock magna will yield little improvement. Once you start doing some high end mods, eg Cams (including your ralliart cams), the ability to tune with the mods comes into its own. This is when you see real improvements.

Greddy is about $1300 installed and tuned, Haltech is about $1500 I think. Minus about $300 if you install it yourself.

I'd get one of these be done with it, and not worry about flashing the ECU IMHO.

Yes i have the software and the cable to remap mine.

Oh and to answer derry's question about "special" MMAL engineering ECU's, the only thing special about them was that they were TH model ECU's that can/could be reflashed by MMAL, hence why mine has had the codes broken and is now reflashable (Thanks to a unnamable mate in R&D at MMAL for cracking my ECU and making it workable) :D