Needed new ECU and the mechanic has been trying to program/u

[rick24wag]

My 2016 m235i ECU broke and I took it in and my mechanic put in a new one but they have been updating/programing it for well over a week now. They say BMW has given them instructions and the updates are taking a very very long time. Is this normal? This is at least day 8 or 9 of them just doing the updating part. The car starts fine now so just the computer programs are left but can it really take this long? thanks

[Greydog]

Morning Rick

Not sure what equipment they are using but I do know that downloading and then uploading to the car for even some of the more basic programs can take a few hours. So my guess would be they start an upload and then do other stuff, then check on progress if the program required an action obviously everything stops until the action is taken. As a garage they clearly have to schedule the downloads around other work to ensure the best use of time.

Good Luck sounds like it's almost done

Dave

 

[rick24wag]

15 hours ago, Greydog said:

Morning Rick

Not sure what equipment they are using but I do know that downloading and then uploading to the car for even some of the more basic programs can take a few hours. So my guess would be they start an upload and then do other stuff, then check on progress if the program required an action obviously everything stops until the action is taken. As a garage they clearly have to schedule the downloads around other work to ensure the best use of time.

Good Luck sounds like it's almost done

Dave

 

Thanks Dave, yeah everyday the secretary there gives me an update saying the updates are still going but its been 2 weeks now that they have been doing only updates. They got the new ecu from bmw and they have spoken with bmw techs a few times since they needed some new usb cables and some other things. I've spoken to a couple other people and everyone says the same thing, the update should take a day or 2 at the most. Should I ask them anything else specific to this issue to get more info? thanks a bunch, rick

[Greydog]

If they brought the ECU from BMW then surely it should have been ready programmed for your car/chassis. The issue may well be all the other control modules that need to communicate with the ECU over the Bus system 

If they have had to programme the ECU from scratch ??? I don't know as I have never done it, I have replaced individual control modules for friends and family that in a couple of instances BMW Dealers said "can't be done" again my interpretation was "we really don't want to do that" 

The time they are taking I would suspect they are not on it all the time so as said if there is an action required and no response the upload times out and they ahave to start again.

Good Luck

Dave