California Emissions

[Highlander]

When I purchased my car 12 years ago it had an FVD tune on it.

 

No issues with the emissions until this year.  Apparently CA now checks the ECU as my car failed with "modified software".

 

I'm not that bothered with having the tune so I took it to my local Porsche dealer and have them reflash the SW back to stock.

 

However, my car is still failing emissions due to "modified software". 

 

Anyone have some guidance on how I can get my car through emissions?

 

Thanks!

[Loren]

Back in 2006 Porsche started putting a tamper byte the ECU - I'm pretty sure once that byte has been set it cannot be reset by normal means.

Have you tried FVD to see if other California customers have reported this? and what they did )if anything)?

 

[JFP in PA]

Porsche, and a lot of states that check, use a simple "check sum" procedure to verify if a computer has altered software; any modifications as simple as changing the ignition timing would alter that summation value, even if those modifications were disabled, failing the car.  Unfortunately, I really don't know how to circumvent this problem.

[Highlander]

Thanks.  I left it with the Porsche dealership to see if they could figure out what's going on.   You would think a stock reflash would have been sufficient, but you can never underestimate the stupidity of CARB. 
Maybe I'll just go register the car in Montana 😁

[JFP in PA]

Porblem with aftermarket reflashes is that you never know what the system is writing to the DME; if it wrote something extraneous to the cluster for example, which might not be over written or replaced during a factory reflash, leaving something to trip the checksum values.  Over the years, we have seen many horror stories about this kind of thing which sometimes ended up replacing the DME, which is an extremely expensive proposition.

[Highlander]

Update - It passed!

Took my car back to the dealer.  They kept the car for 2 days and eventually reverted to a "slow program".  They ran it through their emissions box to confirm no modified software notification.  I couldn't get a certificate from them as I need this from a "Star" emissions station.

 

The Star station I took it to originally retested and sure enough, I drove away with a pass!

 

Shout out to Porsche Rocklin for getting to the bottom of it and only charging me about 1hr labor.

 

I can definitely feel the difference, but it still pulls like a train once the boost builds up!

[JFP in PA]

[Silver_TT]

There is no way to circumvent this problem except to flash back to stock.  This is why some tunes have a device you can buy for extra $ which can be used to flash between stock, the tune, or or a high octane track tune, etc.  Unfortunately these devices don't always work the way they were intended to for whatever reason as I experienced.

 

I am surprised CA waited this long to start using a checksum to verify the ECU code hadn't been altered in any way.  I ran into this problem in Saint Louis over 10 years ago but I also know they had outsourced this software that checks to a 3rd party software vendor.  CA might have been using their own in house software.

 

All tunes are different but personally when I took Revo off and flashed back to stock I literally couldn't tell a single bit of difference.  As you said once the turbos spool it generates a ton of boost and power.  And the customer service of Revo was horrendous.  Glad you got this sorted..