Locking the program on an ECU is a topic that always sparks a heated debate between vehicle owners and tuners.
A lot of tuners choose to lock the program on their customer’s ECU’s once they have completed the tune. Each tuner has a different reason for doing it but the most common reasons programs are locked are as follows.
- To stop the owner of the vehicle messing around with the tune, potentially damaging the engine or altering the tune. This is something that could cause warranty issues for the tuner.
- To protect the tuners “secrets” from falling into the hands of opposition tuners.
- To stop people “copying” a tune then distributing that particular tune to other people for financial gain, potentially robbing a tuner of potential income.
- Some governing bodies require an ECU be locked so the tune cannot be altered once the vehicle has passed an emissions test.
To avoid getting ourselves caught in the middle of a legal nightmare, we WILL NOT unlock a customer’s program over the phone.
Although you may have paid a dyno tuner to tune the car, the actual program in the ECU is often considered the “intellectual property” of the tuner.
You have paid the tuner for their LABOUR TIME not the actual program itself.
For us to unlock a program and allow someone access to another person’s intellectual property, it can be considered an infringement of copyright which can carry serious legal implications and hefty fines.
We are not willing to put ourselves in that position, regardless of the situation.
If you have a MicroTech ECU that you wish to have the program lock removed on, you have a couple of options.
- We recommend contacting the original tuner first and ask them to unlock the program for you. If you have a genuine reason for wanting your program unlocked most tuners will gladly do it for you, or assist in rectifying the problem you want the program unlocked for in the first place.
- If the first option is not feasible, then you can send the ECU into us to be unlocked. We will completely wipe the existing tune, zero the password, re load the base map and send the ECU back to you unlocked ready to take to the tuner of your choice. A standard labour fee will be charged for this service.
