Well right before work today and right before vacation I decided I should upgrade my firmware on my 2014 FLHXS boom 6.5gt infotainment radio.

I downloaded the zip. Unzipped it. Copied the ISO to the 32GB thumbdrive. Went out to the bike, put in the thumbdrive, everything came up normal. It asked if I wanted to update, clicked yes, then it verified the file. This is where the scary stuff began.

The radio switched to a screen that said updating firmware, please wait. There are no progress bars or anything like that. 10 seconds later the screen turned off went black. about 5 seconds after that the Updating firmware screen reappeared. It kept repeating this for 20-25 minutes before I decided this isn't normal. I tried to find somewhere on the internet that describes what the normal update screens should look like but couldn't.

At this point I turned off the bike. Waited a minute and turned it back to accessory. No luck that same pattern of screens came back. No buttons seemed to work and no way out. Turned the bike back off, removed the USB drive, and turned it back on. It said this time Please insert the USB to continue the update. Good Sign!

I determined that although it validated the ISO on the thumbdrive it still had problems with it. Went searching through the house for another drive. All I had was a USB micro SD card reader and 32GB card. I copied the ISO on this thing and ran to the bike. This time is seemed to take a minute then eventually decided there was no USB drive inserted. I remembered the card may be formatted for a different type of computer, so back inside I reformatted the card to FAT and put the ISO back on it.

Back to the bike I stuck the drive in and this time I got progress bars and everything worked.

Why do I share all this?

• If someone else has an incompatible drive, this can help them
• If someone wants to know if they can use a card reader instead of a thumbdrive
• If someone wants to know what a normal update should act like
• If someone is hacking the unit, it appears to validate the ISO before starting the update and it lets you switch the drive. It may be able to switch to a hack ISO.

 

I have had similar issues updating the software on my wife Lincoln. Hate the process.

 

Thanks for the info for the very reasons you listed. It should be SOP to have the process documented so we know what to expect and how long it should take...

 

It says in the instructions to use an 8 gig mem stick not a 32 gig. Maybe that was the problem?
I did my friends bike for him with an 8 gig and it worked perfectly.

 

I used 4gb san disk No problems

 

If I remember right it says to use 8gb or larger formated as fat32, mine took around 30 min to update.
Just dropped my 14 limited off for the 1000 mile service and to install the sirius radio, I requested that they check to see if there is any updates for the radio than 1.17.11.

instructions - http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_US...structions.pdf

 

The Ford/Lincoln Sync System is scary at times as well...while most of the updates take a few minutes, and the screen will cycle through a rest of the system or two, the last major update they did took almost an hour, engine running the whole time! It does some cool chit, but the price you pay for this awesome, feature rich, "time saving" technology is is the time and effort to monitor them and update as needed.

 

So heres my problem with the instructions. No where does it say how long it will take.

 

The instructions are just a general how to, remember this will be the way that map updates are applied and they may take a lot longer to update

 

I believe the instructions said 7 minutes but I forget if it said that on the bikes screen or after we loaded the mem stick. It did take about 7 minutes though