SO this morning I had an adjustment to my tune and was in the middle of programming the ECU with my SE EFI Race Tuner when the computer died. I got the computer plugged in but after that the software said it couldn't communicate with the ECU. SO I disconnected the battery to reset the ECU and tried to talk to it but then I got a message that the ECU needed to be serviced by a dealer before I could use the software to program it again. Is there any way I can get around this to reprogram the ECU? I'd rather not take this to a stealer and just have them tell me they have to replace the ECU or something.

 

Program corrupt?

 

Possibly, the ECU doesn't even prime the injectors and I get DTUs whenever I switch the bike to run.

 

There's no way around the issue. The dealer will have to reprogram the ecm with a stock map. If Digital Tech computer cannot talk to ecm, replacement required (also requiring new tuner since HD won't support race tuner). I'm betting all it needs is the stock map reloaded by dealer---expect a 30 minute charge-- the download is free from Harley.

 

So I'm not going to have another Delphi EMU installed if they can't fix this one. Anyone had luck with having a dealer reprogram the ECU? I'm not talking just flashing the MAP to it, but reinstalling the OS on the micro as well.

 

Most embedded systems have what is known as a "Boot loader" programmed into the start-up code that usually cannot be over written. The is real common in things like cell phones, and other better embedded systems. I would suspect that HD has given this ability to the dealers in case this issue should arise. It's not something they would give to the end user..

If the ECU wasn't damaged physically when the computer died, say by a power surge, the dealer should be able to reload the code.

 

Yeah, the bootloader generally loads the new program and data in to the data space when you cycle the micro. I had done some reading on the pre-2004 Delphi micros and it sounds like when they had some issues using redundancy to error check the data before loading the bootloader could get corrupted as well and they couldn't reprogram that part of the memory at the dealer. The only thing I don't get is why anyone would design an embedded system that doesn't have direct UART programming port so that at last resort they could erase and reprogram the entire micro to factory if need be. Maybe they had that but the dealers didn't have access to it and that may be what they changed in 2005.

 

What do you think the programming connection for loading maps is?

 

From the order the SERT runs on the 2005 and up it seems like it tells the program that a new MAP is being sent, the bootloader is told that there is a new map as well (it says it communicates with the bootloader during the steps, for all I know it writes over the bootloader every time though), then the MAP is written to some non-volatile update space. It must talk to the bootloader only so that it knows to look for the MAP and copy it to the active lookup tables on the next run signal (really I am just hoping they do this simple step to prevent all kinds of other issues). The way I see it though they should not be telling the bootloader about the new MAP until the very end of the process. That would prevent it from looking for the new MAP and possibly copying a bad or corrupt MAP to the active lookup tables. The details of what they are doing are not clear, but they should be telling the program of a new MAP, writing that MAP to a memory area only used for an update space, writing a CRC of the MAP to a known memory address, have the user cycle power, when the bootloader kicks in on power cycle it scans the MAP to calculate a CRC, checks that CRC against the one written in step 3 and then only if they match it copies the new MAP from the update space to the active use tables. Shoot, you can do that with active programming as well. Good programmers can do it with the bootloader only having the active program write over the bootloader.

 

Not sure why you wouldn't have another Delphi ECM. It's an incredibly robust and reliable unit. Any other option is quite a step backwards in my opinion. All replacement ECUs come blank from Harley--The dealer can take care of yours in all likelihood.