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DIY BD1 Programming - Burn your own chips!

thedrip

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I decided to exercise my Google-fu. I've been thinking this information had to be out there somewhere, that Wester's Garage can't be the only game in town for do-it-yourself 94-95 6.5 programming.

After some digging around on this, and and 20 other Diesel, tuning and DIY EFI forums I came up with what you need to tune your truck yourself.

I'm just providing the files, and links to the equipment. If you do this, its all on you. Its quite easy to blow up your truck. I was mostly interested in the 2nd gear TCC lock up, and some DTC eliminations. Stock truck (for now).

First, the software you need. TunerPro, available (for free!) at http://www.tunerpro.net. The free software is all you need software wise to burn replacement EPROMs. For a more flexible solution, TunerPro RT (plus some hardware), allows you to do realtime tuning before finalizing a chip and burning it. Not required by far.

Second, a few data files. I did some serious googling to come up with these. I've hosted all these files and provided links, so hopefully they never disappear.

BPAA.BIN - the original eprom image from a 95 F-code with 4L80E trans. EGR is already deleted. Since my truck has an BPAA eprom stock, I stopped searching at this point for others

BPDP.BIN - Original eprom from a 94 truck. S-code, and probably auto, as it has all the EGR and trans tables filled out.

$EC.XDF - The definition file while allows TunerPro to interpret the .BIN image. This is a "universal" 94-95 6.5 Turbo filemask.

$ECA.XDF - Same as above, but a slight variant. I havent found details on when to use it, but $EC is correct for the BPAA image

$ECB.XDF - Another variant. Not sure on whats different, but it matches BPAA much better than $ECA does. I still recommend $EC.

$ECS.XDF - For Non turbo 6.5's.

Third, the hardware you need. There are a few ways of going about this, you have to choose the best one for yourself.

I will present some of the options I've found, you can do a little more research on this, as the hardware side is a little more universal to DIY eprom programming.

Our trucks use a 27c512 eprom. This is erased by exposure to a UV light source. UV erasers are cheap, and available at radio shack, ebay, or any electronics supplier.

A standard eprom programmer wll work with the original chip. You have to remove the chip from the blue carrier, flash, then reinstall.

www.moates.net offers a number of products that can make this easier.


This is an adapter which allows you to use any 27c512 chip in your pcm without the blue carrier (replaces the blue carrier).

This is the mirror image of the above adapter, and allows you to flash the OEM chip without removing it from the blue carrier. Also allows you to read OEM chips without removing from the blue cover. Handy if you wanted to pull your own stock image, and modify it, rather than starting with BPAA.

Moates also has a low cost ($85) chip programmer option called the BURN2. Rather than using 27c512, you use 27sf512. It can read the oem chip, but no reflash it. From a practical point of view, the 27c512 and 27sf512 are interchangeable, the only different being the programmer hardware. As far as the PCM is concerned, they are the same thing.

So for $30 for a chip carrier, $85 for a programmer, $20-30 for a UV light eraser, and $5 for a new chip, you can be doing your own tuning.

To help you, I also found a very short primer from Wester's Garage that was openly available on the web about tuning the 6.5. I have rehosted this as well, its just easier for me to keep everything in one place.
Westers_Garage_Simple_Diesel_Tuning_Tips.doc
I really hope this helps someone. If nothing else, its just nice knowledge to have. Maybe someone with some real tuning knowledge will give us a new option.

As a side note, I only looked into this, because I'm much too cheap to pay $300 for a tune. If WalkingJ had a chip for $100-150, it would already be in my truck!
 
Thats what Tunerpro is for. The links won't open directly, you have to save them, then when you're in Tunerro, open the appropiate XDF and BIN.
 
Buddy and Kojo are some people to talk to about this. Also there is another fellow who does calibrations for a living that has this computer turned inside out and then some.
 
I guess as an aside to this, if some of the more experienced tuners want to post some of their custom BINs, that would be great. I'd like to see the changes they make.
 
I'm thinking an on the fly, six position, changeable tune for the obd II crowd could lead to early retirement for the developer. That and be the most popular kid on the block. Hint hint.
 
Although I don't know what/where the errors are, a good source of information informed me some of those definition files have a few errors in them. Some of the parameters are a bit ambiguous too, such as the post-glow minimum on time. Looks like there's two of them, one at 4DB4, the other at 4DB8.

I doubt it would be detrimental to the health of your engine and this will certainly be useful to tweak some settings...but just something to know in case something doesn't quite work like it should.
 

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I'm moving forward with this, slowly collecting what i need. I'm looking for a spare/old/extra OEM eprom from a 94-95. I don't care S vs F, manual vs auto, I just want a spare one to try an experiment on without disabling my truck.

Whos got one in their glovebox after installing an aftermarket chip?
 
I'm moving forward with this, slowly collecting what i need. I'm looking for a spare/old/extra OEM eprom from a 94-95. I don't care S vs F, manual vs auto, I just want a spare one to try an experiment on without disabling my truck.

Whos got one in their glovebox after installing an aftermarket chip?

Not sure if anyone in the 6.5 community has tried it yet, but if you're wanting to experiment, there are several 27cXXX emulators floating around(romulator, etc...) that will allow you to change things on-the-fly. I know some of the honda ECMs use the same chip and they use the emulators along with tunerpro.
 
without having a dyno at hand to allow me to tune and test drive at the same time, I most likely won't be making changes often enough to be much of an issue with swapping in new chips. I do have a zif socket on the way to make inserting and removing the chips much easier.

I wanted an old chip to hack up the plastic carrier from it, rather than buying the adapter from Moates for $30. I'm not even sure what I want to do with it is possible, thats why I don't want to try it with the one thats currently running my truck.
 
I'm not even sure what I want to do with it is possible, thats why I don't want to try it with the one thats currently running my truck.



Extend glow time, small fuel increase, small boost increase......Play SAFE...

Definatley need gauges......boost, EGT, Tranny temp, Fuel pressure would be nice.

Gotta start somewhere....
 
What I was referring to what taking apart the stock eprom carrier, and attaching a ZIF socket to make swapping the chips easier.

I have an idea what I want to do with the programming itself. Definitely playing it safe, and adding gauges over time as I gather the hardware and knowledge I need to do the programming.
 
SUCCESS.

My eprom burner showed up yesterday, so I've had a number of advances, and a couple setbacks in the last few days.

China eprom burner works great.

All my adapters work. I even made a new one with a ZIF socket, that works too. I duplicated the two Moates adapters for a dollar a piece (or less).

I verified that the chip in my truck (BPAA) was bit-by-bit identical to the BPAA image I've been playing with.

I burned a BPAA image to an eprom, put it into one of my adapters, and put it in the truck. It works perfectly. SUCCESS!

I burned an eprom with a modified BPAA I've been playing with in tunerpro. Truck wouldn't start, PCM wouldnt respond to OBD requests. My heart was broken and I gave up for a little while.

Grew some balls and went back out. I decided to try changing one thing, burning a new chip, and see if it works. I simply upped the fueling for > 2400rpm and > 76% throttle. Burned a new chip, IT WORKS. Truck is a little faster (knocked a half second off the 0-60).

So now i need to go through and modify one thing at a thing, until I find what the PCM didnt like. I'm sure it has to do with the known inaccuracies in the EC.xdf I have been using.

So all-in, today was quite a success. My truck is tuned. a little tiny bit, but all the pieces are there. No its just a matter of buying a lot of fuel and testing. I wish I had a chassis dyno around.
 
SUCCESS.

My eprom burner showed up yesterday, so I've had a number of advances, and a couple setbacks in the last few days.

China eprom burner works great.

All my adapters work. I even made a new one with a ZIF socket, that works too. I duplicated the two Moates adapters for a dollar a piece (or less).

I verified that the chip in my truck (BPAA) was bit-by-bit identical to the BPAA image I've been playing with.

I burned a BPAA image to an eprom, put it into one of my adapters, and put it in the truck. It works perfectly. SUCCESS!

I burned an eprom with a modified BPAA I've been playing with in tunerpro. Truck wouldn't start, PCM wouldnt respond to OBD requests. My heart was broken and I gave up for a little while.

Grew some balls and went back out. I decided to try changing one thing, burning a new chip, and see if it works. I simply upped the fueling for > 2400rpm and > 76% throttle. Burned a new chip, IT WORKS. Truck is a little faster (knocked a half second off the 0-60).

So now i need to go through and modify one thing at a thing, until I find what the PCM didnt like. I'm sure it has to do with the known inaccuracies in the EC.xdf I have been using.

So all-in, today was quite a success. My truck is tuned. a little tiny bit, but all the pieces are there. No its just a matter of buying a lot of fuel and testing. I wish I had a chassis dyno around.

Congrats!

It's very satisfying when your first upload fires up and runs isn't it? ;)

I generally don't mess with fuel and timing below 1500-ish. Go the wrong way and you start negatively effecting turbo transient times.

Timing is the real gotcha.

Be conservative with your advance until you learn how it responds. Remember too much advance breaks things.

Stick with adjusting base timing and base fuel maps in the beginning.

Leave the modifier tables alone until you get the swing of it.

Leave the transmission tables alone until you get a good feel for the engine tables.

Slow and steady wins the race and keeps your short block together.

I am often surprised how well these old beast respond to what seems like small changes in the tables.

"Tuning" is far too mystified by a some people IMHO. Especially on a diesel as old as ours.

It's not black magic, it just requires some commitment in time and effort and having a schmeck or two about internal combustion engines.

You can contact me at my Gmail account (PM for it if you want it) if you wish to discuss "tuning tricks" further, but it might take a while for a reply as I'm not on here much anymore....
 
That's awesome drip, thanks for sharing this. I'm interested in the progress too.. Keep us in the loop!

Curious, would this burner setup work for a mid 80's Tuned port injection SBC setup?
 
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