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sailerman1951

Member
My mates 1997 2.5 diesel (bmw engine) auto was great. Early this year in really cold weather she refused to start, a company dealing with electrics said the imobiliser was faulty, they opened the ecu and removed the imobiliser i total, she now starts but with no power, she will rev out of gear but not in gear, after about 5 mins she will run fine but fuel consumption is terrible any ideas please
 
I don't see how they removed the immobiliser from the ECU. It can be disabled in the BECM using a Nanocom. You need diagnostics to tell you what is going on anything else would be guess work. Failure to start in cold weather would have been duff glow plugs nothing to do with ECU or immobiliser.
 
sailerman1951 said:
My mates 1997 2.5 diesel (bmw engine) auto was great. Early this year in really cold weather she refused to start, a company dealing with electrics said the imobiliser was faulty, they opened the ecu and removed the imobiliser i total, she now starts but with no power, she will rev out of gear but not in gear, after about 5 mins she will run fine but fuel consumption is terrible any ideas please
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Never heard of a faulty immobiliser. The EMS sometimes goes out of sync with the BECM? You can replace the chip but leave the security code off. Might have done that but they'd have to copy all the maps and stuff over. Sounds like a whole lot of opportunity for a visit from Captain Cock-up.
 
Do you have lots of black smoke going out the rear? Could be the turbo pipes are off / blocked.
 
most garages won't touch te p38's, dont forget or if you didn't know alreadybuddy, there are a lot of computers on board, not knowing this is like digging in a world of shït. M my own before I bought it, had a rear door that had super locked and wouldn't open.. It was immobilised in a field!! The local garage wanted to send it land rover in Bordeaux, we jump started the lick with a lawnmower battery after an hour or so learning how to test the door locking mechanisms, it thought it had been tampered with and went into lockout mode, great car but overly complicated. Advise is Just take care when faffing with the becm. It is the heart of the car and can make things really difficult if it's compromised. if you can find somebody local on here who would be willing to share their mistakes/experience and help. You would be in better hands! Good luck fella. World if shït is a big planet !!!;)
 
sailerman1951 said:
My mates 1997 2.5 diesel (bmw engine) auto was great. Early this year in really cold weather she refused to start, a company dealing with electrics said the imobiliser was faulty, they opened the ecu and removed the imobiliser i total, she now starts but with no power, she will rev out of gear but not in gear, after about 5 mins she will run fine but fuel consumption is terrible any ideas please
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May help if you put in your location, someone could be local.
 
A had a problem a few years ago where my P38 had completely immobilised itself.. Somewhere on the internet I read that if the eeprom on the board is erased then the Diesel ecu will not lock out and it will run... I have eeprom and eprom gear for my business so was tempted, but just sent it to a guy in Brighton who reset it back to factory and all was well (ish, but that is another story!)

I did however open up the diesel engine management and noticed there was a couple of 24 or 28 pin EPROMS which I instantly clocked (as a bit of a Bosch ECU tinkerer) as the likely location of the maps and potentially software in my assumption.

I also clocked an 8 pin serial EEPROM which from my messing again with Bosch ECU's thought "That is probably the one they mean with the immobiliser.

If this garage is *semi* savvy, they might have also read this about the P38 immobiliser wherever it was on the internet, but they thought the EPROM's was what was mentioned, not the EEPROM, and therefore erased the EPROM (easy to do with UV light), found it did not work and then maybe got it re-synched somewhere.

Just a guess, and I would have thought it would not run at all, but Bosch ecu's that I work with in some variants will run with the EPROMS blank, just without any power at all, depending on if the EPROMs have just maps or maps and software on them.

It probably is not this, but you never know... Just a thought!
 
Sarbirus said:
A had a problem a few years ago where my P38 had completely immobilised itself.. Somewhere on the internet I read that if the eeprom on the board is erased then the Diesel ecu will not lock out and it will run... I have eeprom and eprom gear for my business so was tempted, but just sent it to a guy in Brighton who reset it back to factory and all was well (ish, but that is another story!)

I did however open up the diesel engine management and noticed there was a couple of 24 or 28 pin EPROMS which I instantly clocked (as a bit of a Bosch ECU tinkerer) as the likely location of the maps and potentially software in my assumption.

I also clocked an 8 pin serial EEPROM which from my messing again with Bosch ECU's thought "That is probably the one they mean with the immobiliser.

If this garage is *semi* savvy, they might have also read this about the P38 immobiliser wherever it was on the internet, but they thought the EPROM's was what was mentioned, not the EEPROM, and therefore erased the EPROM (easy to do with UV light), found it did not work and then maybe got it re-synched somewhere.

Just a guess, and I would have thought it would not run at all, but Bosch ecu's that I work with in some variants will run with the EPROMS blank, just without any power at all, depending on if the EPROMs have just maps or maps and software on them.

It probably is not this, but you never know... Just a thought!
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Sounds like you know more than they do.

Yes, those two chips are the ones. That's why the Nanocom has to access one at a time with 2 screens. They do indeed contains the maps etc. The chips are 1 write only as far as i am aware.
 
Grrrrrr said:
Sounds like you know more than they do.

Yes, those two chips are the ones. That's why the Nanocom has to access one at a time with 2 screens. They do indeed contains the maps etc. The chips are 1 write only as far as i am aware.
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The annoying thing for me was that before the car became immobilised I used to get a regular 25mpg (Manual 2.5 Turbo Diesel P38) even with driving it hardish, and it was relatively quick'ish.. I often thought about chipping it, as a friend had one done by DMS and it ended up being very rapid and he mentioned got 25mpg (Auto 2.5 Turbo Diesel P38) so I thought I would probably get more with it being an manual... When I got the ECU and BECM back from the chap in Brighton who fixed the immobiliser issue, it was noticeably slower and I was lucky to get 17mpg! So I think it may have already have been remapped previously and the chap may have written new standard chips out for it.. Who knows, but I wish I had read the chips before it went off so I could look at the differences now..

The large chips are probably one time UV erasable if you take them out and in a eprom writer they can be written once and used, but to erase or alter them you need to us a UV Eraser first to blank them, something like a 27C64, 27C128 or 27C256.

The smaller 8 pin EEPROM is probably a serial eeprom, used by Microchip keyloc or megamos security systems which are on most cars, and can be electrically erased and re-written either via the ECU or with a slightly higher end EPROM/EEPROM writer, on most ECU's these are where the immobiliser codes and other security lives, and to be honest, if you are used to it, the encryption is pretty easy to hack on Keyloc and Megamos which are the two most popular examples used by everyone from Clifford, Toad, BMW, VW, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Ford, Jaguar, Alfa, Fiat etc etc..

I would like to add though, I have a P38 2.5 TD Range Rover, but I am a complete amateur with them, my area of knowledge is with Porsche Ecu's with a casual interest in other vehicles.
 
Pretty sure if that's @Rick-the-Pick you're talking about, if he changed anything that could cause poor fuel economy he would have known about it.
17mpg is pretty well down on normal so sounds like there's another issue. I get that kind of mileage from my V8
 
Wazzajnr said:
Pretty sure if that's @Rick-the-Pick you're talking about, if he changed anything that could cause poor fuel economy he would have known about it.
17mpg is pretty well down on normal so sounds like there's another issue. I get that kind of mileage from my V8
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That's reassuring, having looked up @Rick-the-Pick his signature mentions CallRover and I think this is who dealt with it, but it was quite some time ago, but good to know he would not have done anything in the process of sorting out the immobiliser that would have caused issues with the general ecconomy of the ecu.

Also reassuring that the ecconomy should be better than 17mpg, I thought it was just me.

However, it was almost night and day, before it locked out the immobiliser it used to get 25mpg as an easy to get average, afterwards it would only get 17mpg, but now you have me wondering what would lock out the BECM/ECU immobiliser, but also cause this, such as a voltage spike from the alternator perhaps or other issue, which may have damaged something else such as a sensor.. I feel some more P38 learning curve pain on the horizon! :eek:(
 
17mpg from a diesel sounds pretty bad even with a lead foot.
Mine does about 20-22 on the German autobahns set at around 80mph on cruise and around 17-19 on general running around. But, that's a 4.0v8.
Do you have any diagnostics? I'm pretty sure you have something wrong with it at that mileage.
 
We have a Hawkeye with the P38 enabled, which was the best I could find without spending a fortune about 6 years ago when I first bought the old girl.. No faults logged in the Engine management system.. Occasionally I get a fault from the BECM which I can not remember what the code is, usually about 100 miles into a road trip very occasionally complaining "the vehicle has moved" which then causes a general fit by the air suspension! Other than that, all clear.
 
Sarbirus said:
We have a Hawkeye with the P38 enabled, which was the best I could find without spending a fortune about 6 years ago when I first bought the old girl.. No faults logged in the Engine management system.. Occasionally I get a fault from the BECM which I can not remember what the code is, usually about 100 miles into a road trip very occasionally complaining "the vehicle has moved" which then causes a general fit by the air suspension! Other than that, all clear.
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If Rick did change any maps they would have been standard p38 ones so you should still be getting your 25+ mpg. I can't see any reason why your mileage would have changed due to that. I must say, he's not done any work for me but his reputation on here is second to none.
 
Wazzajnr said:
If Rick did change any maps they would have been standard p38 ones so you should still be getting your 25+ mpg. I can't see any reason why your mileage would have changed due to that. I must say, he's not done any work for me but his reputation on here is second to none.
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Could always pull it out and post it to him at Callrova to check it. I have some maps here in the EDC_EMS.zipx file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By7n3F7TXDU8NzVXVnkwN3JFZW8

If you were just doing short journeys around town all the time then 17mpg sounds about right. On open roads 25mpg sounds about right for an auto. On open roads I can get about 30 mpg or a bit more with the manual box.
 
Sarbirus said:
We have a Hawkeye with the P38 enabled, which was the best I could find without spending a fortune about 6 years ago when I first bought the old girl.. No faults logged in the Engine management system.. Occasionally I get a fault from the BECM which I can not remember what the code is, usually about 100 miles into a road trip very occasionally complaining "the vehicle has moved" which then causes a general fit by the air suspension! Other than that, all clear.
Click to expand...

Vehicles has moved is not a fault. It simply means that the suspension has self levelled since last switched off and the sensor readings have changed.
 
Don't really have a clue about the diesels or where the maps are programmed/what format they are in sorry.. I know they're stored on an EEPROM inside the ECU but as far as reading, making sense of and reprogramming it, I am cluesless... sorry!
 
martyuk said:
Don't really have a clue about the diesels or where the maps are programmed/what format they are in sorry.. I know they're stored on an EEPROM inside the ECU but as far as reading, making sense of and reprogramming it, I am cluesless... sorry!
Click to expand...

As far as i am aware the maps in the P38 ECUs cannot be changed electronically. The info on the chips cannot be deleted or re written. To re map them a pre programmed chip has the be substituted for the original.
 
Yeah, the chips are just a pair of EEPROMS - so if the chips are removed, and you have the correct EEPROM programmer then you should be able to read/program etc the chips.
That would then just give you a hex dump of what's programmed into the chips... figuring out how it relates to a fuel map, and which values to change is the bit that the tuning specialists would know. Hence it's easier for them to send a couple of pre-programmed chips that are just swapped out. Some EEPROMs can be finnicky to program aswell, and it's a bit more involved than what most 'home users' would want to be doing, so the plug-and-play solution is by far the easiest!
 
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