Can Cobb AP overwrite an ECUTEK tune?
 

I've had an ECUTEK tune for years. Since long before the AP was available here in Australia. For this reason I have stuck with my existing tuner for a few years but am kinda tired of the limitations of this software.

I have a couple of questions re: my situation.

1. Once I get an AP, will it be able to edit the ECUTEK tune, or does it lock the ECU out to all other software?

2. Ideally, I would like to save my current tune (it was done fairly recently) and be able to revert to it if I wanted to for the sake of comparison, or if I was to get rid of the AP in the future, I know I have a good tune that can be reverted to as a stock tune is not appropriate for my current mods.

The tune I have is 90% of the way there so I doubt much if anything needs to be done, the main question is to do with the potential conflicts of re tuning an already tuned car.

Hope yawl can help!

I have done this exact thing (overwriting an ecutek tune with an ap one). My understanding is you when you flash a map the first time you get the chance to save your stock map (which in my case was the ecutek one) and this is then stored somewhere as the stock map so if you unmarry the ap from your car that map will be reflashed. I tried looking for it when using accessport manager but no go.

I went from from Ecuteck to AP a couple years back,you can't edit the Ecuteck tune via AP/ATR

I did get the option to save the tune during install of AP but decided not to, have read people saved it as a back up and it did reflash when uninstalling the AP (only way you can flash the backup is to uninstall the AP}

Basically when going AP you will have to start from scratch with a tune.

But it is still possible to go back to it - Just requires that you uninstall the AP?

Sure, as long as you save it to the AP, you should be able to put it back on the ECU when you uninstall the AP. You will not be able to access the data tables with ATR, however. Moreover, it will probably save as a ".rom" file, instead of a ".ptm" file, so it may be a bit harder to find on the AP.

When the AP was being beta tested in Australia one of the beta testers was doing downloads of all the cars that he could get his hands on. My car was one of them and it seemed to download at the time just fine. No idea what came of it, all I know is he plugged it into my car and it took a few minutes to download, then everything was fine...... Still feel like I am missing a piece of the puzzle.

Once you reflash the car with the AP, it will over write the ecutek file if that is what is on there. So if it were my tune, that would simply flash to the car and we would start tuning based off the datalogs provided from the AP

Cool, so it's not locked out. But I want to get some kind of confirmation that we would be able to revert back to it again if we wanted to. It doesn't look like anybody has actually done that.

How about we re phrase this question. If I pair an AP with my car without trying to modify anything, will the existing tune remain untouched? Logic says it should but I don't need to go taking unnecessary risks.

i believe shaneski answered your question in that you can revert back to it when you uninstall the accessport. however you will not be running it after it's installed, and likely won't be able to modify it. i believe the accessport will save your ecu at its current configuration when you install it to your vehicle. so whether it's the factory tune or not, the current values will be stored within the accessport. it wouldn't make sense wasting 30 minutes saving the map before installing when they make the stock configuration available elsewhere if you opt to skip that step. now, whether your current tune's file type is compatible with the accessport is another story. i would contact your tuner about obtaining a copy of it, and discuss the file type and any possible conversion to a .ptm file (if this is possible, you can likely modify it). you could also always contact cobb to see if they have any insight to offer.

Yea he kinda did - but the fact that he didn't actually save the tune means it's not a guarantee.

As long as I can pair it and run some logs then that will give me a good starting point to see whether or not an experienced tuner will be able to find any obvious gains that might be able to be found. If we logged some info and found that this tune is close enough to optimum then at least I won't have to leap straight into getting it all re tuned.

I didn't save mine cause i had no use for a tune with a gtx2867 that felt sluggish. A tune with the AP made it feel like a nitrous kit was added even on just pump fuel.
My Ecutek was done same place as yours at Tunehouse and it just felt shit under 4500 compared to what i knew the turbo was capable of.
From memory it was Ray D that was also Ecuteked and when he uninstalled his AP to go to V3 AP it reinstalled his Ecutek tune...The Ecutek tune doesn't save to the AP when backing up, it saves it as a ROM file to the cars ECU..

If it did fail to reinstall you could go back to THouse to get the tune put back on as you own the license etc to it. Ecutek is possible to extract more grunt as it has just about the same tables to access that ATR has but places like Thouse MRT etc are behind the times with how to get power lower to mid range with these cars as it is a tiny percent of the platform they tune compared to Etuners that own these cars and know it like the back of their hand with shit loads of test and tunes.

Well to answer this question, I have installed the AP now and the ecutek tune didn't cause it any problems. I haven't tried uninstalling the AP tho to see if it restores the old tune correctly. Everything seemed to work ok so it looks like it will be fine.

Update: unpairing and restoring the default tune with the AP worked fine. Old ecutek tune was reflashed automatically and everything worked.

I am back on the ecutek tune now as it does a far better job with the SWAS sensor than the AP does. It also has far better driveability on the whole. I had exactly the same guy tune the car on exactly the same dyno using both ecutek and AP software and the ecutek one won for me hands down.