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Found it! ECU Reset Procedure

645K views 99 replies 60 participants last post by  melikhayazwakala52  
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
* I highly recommend you take your ECU to a dealer to clear any faults. **

The difference between having the dealer "reset your ECU and you doing it is that the dealer only clears the faults the ECU has on memory, when you reset your ECU, it must basically re-calibrate itself and learn about all your car's systems from scratch.


Preparation Steps:

1. Make sure your steering wheel is not turned to either side.
2. Make sure your windows are all the way up
3. Make sure your sunroof is completely closed
4. make sure your parking brake is released
6. Turn off your stereo.
7. Make sure you have your stereo's Anti-theft code
8. Turn off your heat/AC blower
9. Turn off your lights
10. Make sure your door is UNLOCKED.
11. READ THE WHOLE PROCEDURE BEFORE GETTING STARTED

Reset Steps:
Open your trunk and disconnect the negative side of your battery, wait 30 seconds and re-connect it back.

Post-Reste Steps

Turn the key to position 2 (DO NOT START YOUR ENGINE)

1. Reseting your windows: You only have ONE shot at this so you must not screw up. Bring down both windows at the same time by holding the switches just before the click that brings them down automatically. Once both windows are all the way down make both switches click by pressing them all the way down. This lets the ECU learn that that is the end of the window track and it records it in memory. Do the same closing the windows by holding both switches and making them click once the windows are all the way up.

2. Turn on your blower and make both sides go to 72 deg. by pressing both up and down buttons at the same time. This will calibrate the ECU

3. Turn on your stereo and enter your stereo code. If oud doesn't have it. you can forget about listening to the radio.

4. pull the sunroof all the way back and all the way forward then up and then down

6. Turn all your lights on and off, including your fog lights

7. Turn the key back to position 0.

8. Turn on your engine. You will get 2 malfunctions, your ABS and ESP systems must be calibrated.

9. Calibrate your ABS and ESP systems by turning the steering wheel all the way to your RIGHT and then all the way to your LEFT. then bring it back to the middle. Notice the two yellow lights disappear from your dashboard.

10. Let your car run idle for about 5 minutes and then take it for a spin. Remember your ECU is still getting all the readings from all the sensors on your car so drive slowly first then faster... and so on. you are basically teaching your ECU how to handle your car.

Hope this helps, and remember, do this at your own risk. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD ANYTHING I MAY HAVE COMMITTED. ANY THOUGHTS AND CRITICS ARE WELCOME. Also if you go ahead with this procedure. Post how everything went on this thread.

YAHOO - juancpath
 
#4 ·
good question.. i would contact the chip's manufacturer and ask them.. my guess is that the ECU works hand in hand with the chip kinda like a PC.. once you add a RAM chip, it speeds the CPU up and nothing happens if you shut the machine down or not... I think its the same with the perf. chip... in all, the chip only maximize power output by distorting the readings coming in and from the ECU.

Can annyone add to this?
 
#5 ·
yes , if you do the reset and you have the performance data programed into it , it will erase it to oem set up , it happened to my buddy by accident and he had to re-do the performance upgrade , so be very carefull
 
#7 ·
qslick74 - 5/15/2005 10:00 AM

yes , if you do the reset and you have the performance data programed into it , it will erase it to oem set up , it happened to my buddy by accident and he had to re-do the performance upgrade , so be very carefull
Guys we're talking about two different things here. If you've had your car dyno tuned and the changed the setup then yes it would reset to OEM and all your time and $'s would be wasted BUT if you have a chip mod like PowerChip or SpeedTuningUSA they actual mount a surface chip to your ECU with the EPROM burned into memory so there is no way to erase it. SO either way when you reset the ECU you have to be careful though to follow the correct procedure.
 
#8 ·
grantwTXCLK - 5/13/2005 10:25 AM

qslick74 - 5/15/2005 10:00 AM

yes , if you do the reset and you have the performance data programed into it , it will erase it to oem set up , it happened to my buddy by accident and he had to re-do the performance upgrade , so be very carefull
Guys we're talking about two different things here. If you've had your car dyno tuned and the changed the setup then yes it would reset to OEM and all your time and $'s would be wasted BUT if you have a chip mod like PowerChip or SpeedTuningUSA they actual mount a surface chip to your ECU with the EPROM burned into memory so there is no way to erase it. SO either way when you reset the ECU you have to be careful though to follow the correct procedure.
Are you sure. I've heard dealers resetting the ECU with the Star Diagnostics only for the owners to find that their chips have been 'wrtten over', therefore promting them to send it back to have it reflashed... I dunno
 
#9 ·
I reset mine accidentally [:D] I was jumping my car off, needed a new battery, and it was dark, and well let's just say the terminals are negative a positive for a reason........lol. I was up in the car and I was like, shit smell smoke, almost caught the trunk on fire. The ABS and ESP lights came on but they went away after driving it a couple times.
 
#11 ·
DanStubbs - 5/13/2005 1:34 PM

I reset mine accidentally [:D] I was jumping my car off, needed a new battery, and it was dark, and well let's just say the terminals are negative a positive for a reason........lol. I was up in the car and I was like, shit smell smoke, almost caught the trunk on fire. The ABS and ESP lights came on but they went away after driving it a couple times.
I had a feeling you were a menace.
 
#12 ·
ThrillKill - 5/13/2005 5:58 PM

DanStubbs - 5/13/2005 1:34 PM

I reset mine accidentally [:D] I was jumping my car off, needed a new battery, and it was dark, and well let's just say the terminals are negative a positive for a reason........lol. I was up in the car and I was like, shit smell smoke, almost caught the trunk on fire. The ABS and ESP lights came on but they went away after driving it a couple times.
I had a feeling you were a menace.

Yeah and they let me have a gun too [}:)]
 
#13 ·
juancpath - 5/12/2005 5:18 PM

Hope this helps, and remember, do this at your own risk. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD ANY THING I MAY HAVE OMMITTED. ANY THOUGTHS AND CRITICS ARE WELCOME. Also if you go ahead with this procedure. Post how everything went on this thread.

YAHOO - juancpath

Thanks for posting this procedure, juancpath. I was having an issue with my '98 CLK 230 where the engine was kicking/shuddering when in neutral. This procedure seems to have solved the issue, and also helped with getting the drivers window to close fully!

Can you tell me where exactly the ECU is located in my car, and point me towards any good sites for tuning?

Thanks,

Dave.
 
#14 ·
The ECU is located under the plastic cover up in the passenger corner nearest the windshield under the hood. As far as tuning, do you mean ECU tuning or just tuning in general? I can't really recommend any ECU tuning places right now but there a few out there. As far as other tuning mods you can always....actually, I'll stop myself right there. Just noticed you had a 230. I personally don't know anything about what you can do with those cars.
 
#17 ·
Say would this reset the BAS if you abused the brakes too much? Or would this reset the memory on accceleration and gear changes of the newer models?


Does the instrument cluster prompt you to do these things step by step or you just have to read the procedure somewhere and memorize them to do prioritized steps?

Good to know for future reference, if we ever had to change battery or something.
 
#18 ·
W208Cab - 9/1/2005 3:59 AM

Does the instrument cluster prompt you to do these things step by step or you just have to read the procedure somewhere and memorize them to do prioritized steps?

Good to know for future reference, if we ever had to change battery or something.
I just printed out the procedure and followed it step-by-step. My instrument cluster didn't indicate what I should do at all.
 
#20 ·
blackbenzz said:
I've never heard of an actual "chip" being used in a mercedes to increase performance. They flash the ECU which changes the programming and put the ECU back into the car. They dont add a chip. I would assume resetting the ECU would erase the programming back to stock, it makes sense to me.

Man i just reset my chip to stock, It was an accident. So the pulleys are doing a great work on it BB you need to them bro.
 
#97 ·
This thread is almost 10 years old so, I'm hoping, note expecting a response. With that said, I sold my w208 a couple years ago to a man who didn't drive it much. Talking to him recently, he said he had to replace the battery. After replacing the battery the car started, ran poorly after driving a short distance, then died, restarted and he "limped" back home about a mile; the car running rough the entire way. I immediately thought of Limp Mode, and an ECU reset because, when I replace battery, I always make sure there is a minimum of 12volt by 2.5 amps are supplied to the ECU. He didn't do that. Does he need an ECU reset or, does he need to drain the fuel tank and replace both fuel filters and try again. I really hope someone with reply to this thread or email me a dlbehrns@gmail.com Thank you.
 
#22 ·
bs00clk said:
YIKES! How do you accidently reset your chip to stock? How did you do that and how did you have it tuned to begin with?
It happen cause my battery die since i dont drive my car all the time. I know a guy name Oliver who works for SpeedTunning USA thanks to blackbenzz he has hook up my car manytimes with the chip, plus hes local to me and BBenzz.

Im so fucking mad cause i have to take a trip to Oliver's shop and get it again.
 
#26 ·
mbenzz said:
do you guys think buy resetting my ECU it would fix my window problem.
my problem is that my window dosnt go up when you close the door or it dosnt come down when you open the door!!!
any suggestions?

It depends on what year you have. I've got a 99 - it doesn't have the feature of auto open/close upon entry/exit. I'm not sure when MB added that, but I haven't heard of it in a 99. If there's another issue with your window, you could go through the window reset procedure.