Need to Refresh "TUNE" flash?

[Gary Kong]

Several months ago I flashed a regular gas performance tune. This week I replaced my battery and while the terminals were getting cleaned, the car was without power for about 1/2 hour. I thought I read on another thread here that tunes should occasionally be re-flashed. Did I misinterpret something or should I actually reflash?

 

[Carey Frennier]

That's a great question but I don't believe you need to reflash it.

 

[Keola P]

It's to my understanding that whenever you service the vehicle, you should always flash it back to stock beforehand. It depends on what type of service you'll be performing, but in your case, probably should have been returned to stock, serviced, then reflashed.



Based on what Todd z said on one of my previous post regarding a potential transmission problem, over time, the installed tune will tend to get "stale" and will need occasional reflashing to keep the tune working at it's full potential. I just reflashed mines with the same premium fuel performance tune I've been running for the past few months and yeah...big difference.

 

[Carey Frennier]

That's good info.



There really needs to be a collective thread "Sticky" about stuff like this.

 

[Gary Kong]

Hi HawaiianST. I was over on Kona this summer, saw lots of ST's in the area. Sweet.



So, I did not unflash before the battery change and have not re-flashed since. The ST runs fine but does it mean that the ST may have gone back to the default factory flash while it was without power? No problem reflashing, but I'm so lazy I'd prefer to avoid it if I could.

 

[TRACket Paul]

Eltee, there's really no need to reflash. Continue with your lazy mode.

 

[Keola P]

Howzit Eltee,



If it aint broke, don't fix :banana:

 

[Rodger Tellefson]

I agree with TRACet Paul. You do not need to re-flash your tune after disconnecting the battery as I have done it several time with no problem. Just make sure you leave the negative terminal on the battery disconnected for at least 20 min.

 

[Eric Pennal]

Based on what Todd z said on one of my previous post regarding a potential transmission problem, over time, the installed tune will tend to get "stale" and will need occasional re-flashing to keep the tune working at it's full potential.

I've got a question regarding the technique for this process:



Do you simply flash the performance tune on top of the "stale" performance tune, or do you flash back to stock first, then flash the performance tune? Doesn't the XCal download the current tune into the "Stock" profile slot, before installing the "Performance" profile into the CPU? Am I remembering that right? If that's true, would you lose your stock tune if you flashed the performance tune on top the stale tune? :blink:

 

[Keola P]

Yes to the first question. I just reflash it with the same tune to "refresh" it. The extra step of returning to stock first isn't necessary. As far as I know, the only way the tunes can be removed is if you connect the xcal to your computer and manually remove them...so I wouldn't worry about losing any stock or custom tunes.



Disclaimer: I'm not an xcal expert, just sharing with you what I do personally and what works for me. Try contacting SCT on their website if you're really concerned. They have excellent tech support