Gintani glued my ECU shut

[SYT_Shadow]

Originally Posted by CaryTheLabelGuy

Obviously this was their intent. But it isn't their DME, it belongs to the customer.

It isn't necessary as this isn't going to keep anybody from retrieving their "tune" and all it does is possibly damage a DME that doesn't belong to them.

If anyone tries to steal a Gintani 'tune' then should be eligible to a Darwin Award

[CaryTheLabelGuy]

Originally Posted by jwzimm

Honestly, you can see this from both sides of the coin.

Tuner side: They spent a large amount of time developing a tune which was not free. Since they don't (can't?) encrypt the tune it is open to any other tuner to download and steal/resell as their own.

Owners/buyers side: It is their DME and they should be free to do with it as they so choose. Adding this epoxy to the DME board prevents the owner from removing the tune and installing a different tune.

Perhaps a better solution than this would be to have the buyer sign a contract that would hold them liable if the tune is stolen or resold. Then at least the tuner would have some legal recourse to pursue should their tune be downloaded and released.

Honestly, if the tuner is that paranoid, he's in the wrong business.

I never attempted to prevent the stealing of my tunes because if somebody was that motivated, they could easily get the info they needed to do it themselves. This (tuning) isn't really rocket science, despite what tuners want you to believe. It is complicated, but the nuts and bolts are pretty simple when you understand it. I could reverse engineer most tunes with just a datalogger and some patience.

This is going to ruffle some feathers and hurt some feelings, but the guys that take the most measures to prevent their tunes from being reverse engineered are usually the guys that don't know shit to begin with and/or stole their tunes from somebody else.

[CaryTheLabelGuy]

Originally Posted by Railgun

Ha. I'm pretty sure BMW would have a thing or two to say about that. You know, IP, copyright and all that.

They "the tuner" stole from BMW/Bosch.

[DavidGP]

[SROC3]

Gosh that's terrible. I actually wonder why they are still in business. Those guys blow engines and have the worst service. And now they are gluing ECU's....

[TruthGuY]

Gintani are you guys out of your mind?? Did you tell the customer you were going to be putting glue to his ECU?? This is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE no excuse for it

[BPMSport]

Unfortunately this isn't the first (or last) time we've dealt with an ECU that was glued or epoxied.

It took quite a bit of time and finesse to remove the glue without damaging the main board.

We have never, and will never do this to a customers ECU. It's completely unacceptable and against our policy. If someone wants software that badly instead of doing the due diligence and development themselves, they can have it.

[Valentino_f82]

Gintani what's the matter ?

[Sales@Gintani.com]

Hi guys. Alex here. Let’s try to clear a few things up before this gets too out of hand.

As other people have mentioned in this thread, the stuff that we put on the ECU is meant to deter other tuners from trying to access our files. The tunes that we developed as well as any other Gintani products that we manufacture are very precious to us and we don’t want other people copying our stuff. As a lot of people don’t know, the main reason aside of just our tune that we were trying to protect from other companies reading out, was the aggressive startup and the burble. We were able to create our own aggressive startup and burble tune over a year before BMW ever released this burble and startup as an option in the GTS and competition package cars. The way we were doing our burble and startup setups, was not a map that existed in the old software versions where you could just switch on and use the burble feature from the GTS and competition package as everyone is doing these days. Since we had created our own burble setup and our own aggressive startup setup, from what we know, we are still the only ones that are capable of providing these options for other chassis (ex: X5M, M5, M6, 550, etc) without any hiccups or issues in drivability. But of course since this ECU was most probably read out we will see our own burble setup available in the near future on the other cars.

That being said, the stuff on the ECU is NOT glue and can be easily removed in under a minute. We would never put anything on an ECU that would damage it. We tune cars daily and know how expensive an ECU could be so why would we put ourselves in a position to destroy an ECU?

The stuff on the ECU is not meant to make the tune permanent. The tune could easily be flashed back to stock or changed at any time, and since we are the ones that tuned it, we prefer to be the ones that flash it back to stock or re-tune it. This customer has never contacted us regarding any issues he was having with the tune or that he was interested in removing it. If the customer wanted us to remove the stuff on the ECU we would’ve gladly done it for them.

Coming back to the complaint regarding the throttle being very aggressive, earlier software from BMW has had this aggressive throttle issue from factory. Tuning the car intensifies it. These cars have had more software updates to fix bugs in the first year of production compared to other BMW that have been in production for much longer. We obviously had some complaints from some customers in the past that were running those old versions of software and have found a fix to get rid of it. If a customer does not let us know of the issues then we are unable to address it. Some customers are not bothered by the aggressive throttle. We get feedback from our customers regularly and we highly recommend that all customers contact us if they are having any issues or don’t like something on their tune so that we could help them fix it. We have tuned close to 100 F8X cars all over the world with no issues and if there is ever something a customer doesn’t like we go above and beyond to try and give them what they want.

Here is a video of me applying and removing the stuff off of my own ECU.

If anyone ever has any concerns about our tunes or wants to see how the drive feels, you’re more than welcomed to stop by our shop and go on a test drive in one of our shop cars.

[Sales@Gintani.com]

Originally Posted by Mike Benvo

Unfortunately this isn't the first (or last) time we've dealt with an ECU that was glued or epoxied.

It took quite a bit of time and finesse to remove the glue without damaging the main board.

We have never, and will never do this to a customers ECU. It's completely unacceptable and against our policy. If someone wants software that badly instead of doing the due diligence and development themselves, they can have it.

Hey Mike,

Sorry you had a hard time taking it off next time just give us a call.

[Sales@Gintani.com]

Originally Posted by maximumpsi

We have potted E36 and E46 ECU's since 2007. It is one of several read protection strategies that helps keeps others from copying/reselling software that we have spent thousands of hours developing. The difference is, on those platforms the ECU's are all flashed via OBD2 port, so we are not preventing other people from programming them, only deterring people from stealing what is not theirs. We will always flash a car back to stock at no cost.

The difference here is that for us to use our current programming equipment on the ecu pictured above, we would have to access that section of the chip under the epoxy, and ultimately may damage a very expensive ECU.

Hey Guys,

This is not EPOXY and is easy to remove.

[Bomiz]

As a side note, I'm pretty sure evolve had the burble tunes over 2 years ago

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by Sales@Gintani.com

Hey Mike,

Sorry you had a hard time taking it off next time just give us a call.

Never said it was hard.. Just wanted to be extra careful to avoid damage. I didn't put any liquid on the ECU in my removal of the covering.


Regardless, I just informed the customer of what I found. I have no intention of discussing this with you further, nor do I have any comments about your products/services.

We just don't do this, whether it's removable or not. Your policy may be different and that's up to you.

[Sales@Gintani.com]

Originally Posted by M3GTC

Well I wanted to switch tunes from the Gintani Burble tune to BPMs Tune. The Gintani tune was just too rough and made the car almost undriveable. I brought my car over to Mike left it with him to take out the ECU and tune my car. When they removed the ECU we came across a major problem. There was a layer of glue over the ECU that was put on by Gintani when i had them remove my ecu to put their tune on my car. The glue essentially made the tune permanent with no chance of tuning over OBD with other tunes. Attached is a picture of the glue of the ECU and one without for comparison.

To solve this issue we spent hours carefully removing the glue without damaging the board to be able to reprogram again and the other alternative was to just order a new ecu.

All in all be aware that the when going with Gintani's tune it may be permanent and your stuck with it.

Just wanted to share incase anyone was thinking about their tune.

It's unforunate we could not settle the matter between us. We couldn't possibly know that you were having issues without contacting us. Updates are free and even the labor of removing the ecu for the first update is free, and of course any issues or concerns you have we are more than willing to help with. Best of luck with your new tune.

[Who's on first]

If it's so easy to remove... why do it in the first place... did I miss that?

[Sales@Gintani.com]

Originally Posted by Bomiz

As a side note, I'm pretty sure evolve had the burble tunes over 2 years ago

Sorry we edited the original post didn't mean to have the E9X Platform in that list as that was done several years ago. We were referring to the F chassis cars .

[dzvero]

I dont see how that glue will protect their product. If someone wants to steal the code that wont stop him. So I can call it BS ruining customers property. No offense to the product but the approach to the customer.

[hotrod2448]

So in the event that someone is willing to buy the necessary equipment, learn the details of what is required in reading/writing to the ECU, is willing to remove and crack open an ECU to steal this map the easily removable glue is meant to be the last defense that stops them from accomplishing that? Seems like a bad plan.

[frankiebones]

Originally Posted by jwzimm

Perhaps a better solution than this would be to have the buyer sign a contract that would hold them liable if the tune is stolen or resold. Then at least the tuner would have some legal recourse to pursue should their tune be downloaded and released.

Legally speaking, that would be challenging. buyers would not wish to enter into such a contract, and you would have to prove that buyer (and not the other 1000 you sold the same tune to) caused the tune to be stolen or resold, and then you would have to prove actual damages.

[Arcades]

Gintani, I am sorry but I'm with most of the others here. Glueing ECU regardless of your intentions is bad practice is a terrible idea to begin with. I have no clue why you guys believe that is a good thing to do.

[Who's on first]

Originally Posted by Who's on first

If it's so easy to remove... why do it in the first place... did I miss that?

???

[Daft]

Originally Posted by Who's on first

If it's so easy to remove... why do it in the first place... did I miss that?

From the video they posted it looks like they use some sort of secret formula to dissolve the glue that only they know of and won't divulge.