[misguided_will]

hi all

can dealer's tell a car has been previously flashed even after it's been flashed back to stock?

reason being im buying a demo 340i with balance of new car warranty so wonder if i should wait or go ahead and flash it.

thanks

[sspade]

Yes. They can most certainly tell... if they want to look.

But... they probably wont look unless you have a major warranty issue.

In other words, taking it in for normal maintenance and unrelated minor warranty issues- they will never know. Or care.

[Kailec]

Originally Posted by sspade

Yes. They can most certainly tell... if they want to look.

But... they probably wont look unless you have a major warranty issue.

In other words, taking it in for normal maintenance and unrelated minor warranty issues- they will never know. Or care.

To elaborate on this, if you flash back to stock they won't see any flags and that will be fine. However if they need to do big warranty work like replacing an engine they'll look at logs that you CAN'T hide, which will show higher than normal boost through the different gears. With this they will know. Think of it like not reporting your taxes 100% honestly. Most of the time the government won't bother looking too closely. However if you give them a reason to audit you, like say...buying a mansion while reporting that you work as a McDonald's cashier, they will look into it. They'll see all the income that you get regularly that doesn't match what is expected of someone doing a minimum wage job. They will know you lied. Same deal here, but those are the risks you take.

[deviantspeed]

Originally Posted by Kailec

To elaborate on this, if you flash back to stock they won't see any flags and that will be fine.

That is not true. Flash counter will increment and tuners can't touch that value.

Flashing back to stock can be detected.

[Kailec]

Originally Posted by deviantspeed

That is not true. Flash counter will increment and tuners can't touch that value.

Flashing back to stock can be detected.

I've heard otherwise, BM3 says they freeze the counter. In any case it doesn't matter, point still stands. They can detect if they want to look.

[Wires]

Boils down to a saying my buddy used to say "You gotta pay to play".

[eluded]

Chances are they will only flag your car if they readily see it. Otherwise you are safe unless you blow your motor. Then they will fly out the engineer who designed the B58 to personally look what's left of the motor along with a small team of ECU engineers to review if the car has been flashed. However, if the car looks stock and you're old and have a good story (I just left Starbucks and got on the freeway going to work gently accelerating on the on-ramp in rush hour traffic and BOOM the motor blew up) they might warranty it.

[deviantspeed]

Originally Posted by eluded

Chances are they will only flag your car if they readily see it. Otherwise you are safe unless you blow your motor. Then they will fly out the engineer who designed the B58 to personally look what's left of the motor along with a small team of ECU engineers to review if the car has been flashed. However, if the car looks stock and you're old and have a good story (I just left Starbucks and got on the freeway going to work gently accelerating on the on-ramp in rush hour traffic and BOOM the motor blew up) they might warranty it.

Hook up car to mothership at dealer. Mothership detects reflash. Dealer immediately demands diag and storage fee from customer, unless you go out of pocket for repairs under "warranty".

Enjoy, this stuff isn't hard to look up. If you got lucky, then you got lucky.

[Poochie]

There is a part of the Bosch ECU, used in all F-series model BMWs, that is not erasable (EPROM). This system records and time stamp, each time ECU program was flashed.

If BMW wants, they can see how many times your vehicle flashes and based on their own records, form an inference to deny your claim.

Tuners attempts to freeze the counter is fruitless simple because how the computer is design, it has a "black-box"- like EDR memory, with is designed to record perceived faults, such is change to programming.

[upsidedownfunnel]

If you're worried about the warranty, just get the MPPSK. It has a pretty sweet exhaust and ups the power to 355hp.

However, I would personally wait until you're close to end of your warranty. First, you should get a good feel for what the car drives like stock. Second, there may be manufacturing issues that show up in the first few years. You don't want to get those warranty repairs denied because you happened to flash it. Lastly, it will give you time to plan out your modifications. I don't think you need any modifications to a B58 for a stage 1 flash, but you should do some research and figure out the best things to do. There will probably be more things coming out soon since the B58 is still a relatively new motor.

[FastF30]

Originally Posted by deviantspeed

It's also why piggybacks are so popular in this day and age, and not just on BMW's.

Unfortunately they look at the transmission logs... there is a sensor detecting torque on it... only piggy back that won't throw a code is the jb+ piggyback limited to 3.5 boost added which is in their parameters... JB4 on setting 2 etc. will be detected...

[deviantspeed]

Originally Posted by FastF30

Unfortunately they look at the transmission logs... there is a sensor detecting torque on it... only piggy back that won't throw a code is the jb+ piggyback limited to 3.5 boost added which is in their parameters... JB4 on setting 2 etc. will be detected...

I never said a piggy back is undetectable, but for initial diag, you will have to agree that a piggy back is more stealh than a hard flash.

[FastF30]

Originally Posted by deviantspeed

I never said a piggy back is undetectable, but for initial diag, you will have to agree that a piggy back is more stealh than a hard flash.

In the end they both are detectable except as I stated...Comes down to your luck if something goes wrong if it will be covered...