ECU Cloning

We recently received an MSD80 ECU from a BMW 335i by a workshop who uses one of our slave tools. The issue? The vehicle wouldn’t start and the scan tool couldn’t even get online to communicate with the ECU. After a brief look at the ECU, we quickly realised that this wasn’t just a regular ECU failure - it had been submerged in water, which is a pretty common issue in many older BMW models.

Upon opening the unit up, we saw the damage - the corrosion had already made its way onto the board and affected some of the circuitry. At this point, we knew using standard tools to perform a basic clone procedure wasn’t going to work, as the ECU was essentially dead. But that’s when we decided to get a little creative.

Instead of going down the usual route, we went straight to the EEPROM chip. We manually read the data using a chip reader, hoping that it was still intact despite the water damage. Fortunately, we were able to get a full and direct read from the EEPROM!

Next, we sourced a similar ECU from a donor vehicle and transferred all the data over. This included the entire security system, as well as the factory configuration from 2009. While we had the ECU open, we decided to add a little extra performance and gave it a Stage 1 Tune.

In the end, we were able to deliver a fully functioning ECU complete with a fresh tune and ready to go. Another happy customer proving that a little creativity can go a long way when it comes to solving tough problems!