Anybody here have any experience flashing computers/modules in newer cars?

[fastfredracing]

I have been looking in to this now for the last couple of years, and now it is getting to the point, that I am going to have to bite the bullet, and tool up the shop a little better.
For the last 6 months, at least once a week, I have been involved with a vehicle that I either had to send out to the dealer for reprogramming, or just have simply declined to take the job because I was unable to re flash the vehicle after I would have made repairs. This especially sucks after you have spent a couple of hours diagnosing something. Most of the shops in my area are kind of behind the curve a little as far as technology goes, and nobody but the dealers have the equipment to do this. I work on a ton of BMW"s and in the future I see my self leaning more towards just euro work, and as you all know, they are pretty much the most high tech, and damn near any thing electrical that you replace will be a module that will need flashed after installation.
So, I know a couple of you spin a wrench ( couple of dealer guys too I think)
Looking for advice on what equipment you may like/have, and any other good advice. I figure that if I am going to twist bolts on cars for the next 5-10 years, I will not even be able to survive without this ability. The final kicker for me, was that my own Jeep's ecm crapped the bed, and even though I could diagnose and could easily unplug, and plug the new unit in, there was no option, had to be flashed. I was so pissed, I had to take my own friggen' car to the dealer to make it run, first time in nearly 20 years.
I guess this stuff is available through snap on, and I may go this route because of the easy finance plan ( I can put it on the truck and pay no interest if I hustle and pay it off quick) but I am sure I can save a bunch of coin by looking at other avenues, and may not get as good tech support ( I am sure I will need this at some point) Any and all ideas appreciated, thanks.

[nocarrier]

Equipment to code control units/modules is very expensive.

I use DIS and OPPS for BMW. Coding is done in a program called "sss/Progman"

It is a royal pain in the A,, and I am always a little uneasy during the process. Some of these control modules are extremely expensive!

You also need a battery charger that can keep the voltage of the electrical system in the car extremely stable.

These chargers are very expensive as well. I have a work around for this and I have had great luck with it.

I am not sure what brands you are working on but maybe a " J2534 pass thru" device would work for you. I am not really sure though as I have no idea what brands will support one.

Oops, I just read that you are leaning towards more euro work. You should check out autologic.

[fastfredracing]

Almost 10 years later, and still struggling with this . . I have had a pass thru for a long time now, and am getting braver , I have pulled off quite a few reprograms to date . Mostly GM stuff, and a few BMW's
I just did my first body control module and pats key on a Hummer yesterday. You have to flash the module, and the reprogram the security system in the bcm, and pcm .
I was feeling pretty proud when I turned the key and it actually started .
This was after about 4-5 hours of diag time trying to figure out why so much electrical stuff was acting bizarre . I bet I have over 10 hours into a no start Hummer. Of course, she has no money, and towed it in thinking it needed a starter .
Any body else playing with this stuff ? The problem is , for a guy like me, that I only see this maybe 3-4 times a year, and it is always a different manufacturer. Learn as you go
The actual programming is usually pretty easy, the hard part is getting your laptop configured correctly, and creating accounts, , and logging into manufacturers websites .

[sc_rufctr]

"I figure that if I am going to twist bolts on cars for the next 5-10 years..."

Nothing to add but 9 years later and you're still hard at it. You've done well.

As I get older I look forward to retirement... If I can I'll go early.

[GH85Carrera]

I recently went to a local body shop that has "the guy" that is the old grey, that knows alignment on old 1980s cars like my El Camino. The shop is primarily a body shop but so many collisions need an alignment after the body work they have a nice alignment rig.

As I sat in the waiting room (pre-Covid-19) some chick picked up her Toyota 4 door sedan generic car model. They required each customer sign a separate document to give the shop permission to even access and hook up to the computer. They had to send her car to the dealer to get the parking and lane sensors aligned and programmed into the computer.

I was most amazed that even with other customers dropping off their cars, they made everyone sign the release for them to access the computer. I guess someone got a lawyer to sue over the data access or something like that.

[Nickshu]

Cool revival of your old thread.

Talking to a buddy who owns a car shop about this awhile back. He is focusing on only 1 or 2 brands as a "specialist" so he can buy the factory scanner for those couple brands as it's cost prohibitive to get them for all makes and nothing exists than can talk to all of them. Also he has to purchase these scanners "in the dark" through buddies in the industry as the dealers/mfgrs don't usually sell them directly to the public for obvious reasons.

He has an indy Porsche/BMW/Audi shop and has the scanners for all 3. He says he can do everything except for keys.

He also said the investment in these scanners was a 6-figure buy in and they need to be updated about every 3-5 years.

[asphaltgambler]

Fred - the answer is always changing. Currently Autel is the hot ticket, my experience. Really no competitor in the market in the last year or two. Problem is that position may change in say 5 years or so and your $8K+ investment go the way of a door stop. Technology and the players on both sides (manufacturer / aftermarket) are constantly evolving.

I believe you are a 1-man band shop and you would have to cost average a piece of equipment like that over the course of a year. Most shops charge a labor hour or two to program anything. But programming can be tricky, and time consuming just as your example above.

So if the process you described took 4-5 clock hours, and the fair market is 2 labor hours you lost twice. First is the loss off extra time spent you didn't bill, but also the extra hours that could've been spent billing at more than 1-to-1 shop rate.

You should be billing at least 1-1/4 labor hours VS clock hours for every working bay in your facility. While billing 1-to-1 won't make you rich, it does at least make the average.

Lastly I don't care what piece of technology you invest in, I promise you it will have an expiration date sooner than you think.

[sugarwood]

Depends on the car.
You can get the Foxwell BMW scanner for $179.
This does stuff like oil reset, TPMS, SAS, SRS, battery reg, etc.

This stuff is way easier than turning bolts!

https://www.amazon.com/FOXWELL-Automotive-Diagnostic-Transmission-Registration/dp/B019QCG5RE

[GH85Carrera]

The technology rate of change is a killer for the cost. Even if you buy all the best scanners for current cars, the manufacturers may well change the cars themselves and make the old stuff obsolete.

We have a similar dilemma in aerial photography. The company I worked at for many years finally spent $490,000 on the very state of the art new aerial camera system. It was a fantastic camera but it used film. It is now just a door stop and maybe worth 20 grand at most.

Right now the state of the art cameras are 1.5 million, and have a maintenance contract that cost many thousand bucks per year. If you go without the maintenance contract you camera can become a brick.

A state of the art scanner for a garage can have the same issue, just a pretty wall decoration if it has a breakdown and needs regular expensive software updates.

[asphaltgambler]

Yes ^^^ and the biggest challenge for an independent repair shop is you need coverage for most everything you'll likely to see^^^