Second Hand Cloned ECU: usable or useless?

Any members every purchased a cloned jailbroken ecu and made it useful?


Long Story Short


Bought a Jailbroken Second Hand Cloned ECU from an FK8 Owner.
Before buying, did my research whether it was a possible to link that ECU to my own car without voiding my warranty. - even emailed hondata to avoid any possible misinformation.
They told me it was easily doable and ANY dealers would do it.
After the transaction, i asked around, apparently, the FK8 ecu is more complicated to "rewrite;" whether its rewriting the vin, or assigning the key/ immobilizer to the new ecu.
I call back hondata, this time i land on a DIFFERENT technician;

" we cant rewrite cloned ecus, and you will have no choice but to go to honda dealer, some of them will not ask questions, but some will possibly leave a note that ECU has been tempered with." ( pretty much told me its none of their business, because i'm buying second hand, even though they gave out the wrong info) Tried explaining to him that there's 0 common sense in this- if i buy a cloned ecu, it's mainly because i want to preserve my warranty as much as possible; why would i drive into a dealer with a jailbroken ecu?

I am not taking a risk in losing my warranty because i was misinformed; i have to assume responsibility, but who would have known that you can be misled by the developer of the product. I've purchased Kpro for my k24 dc5, and referred a few friends to flashpro from different gens of civic. Really disappointed by the way they handled this.

Sorry to say but it's a paperweight at this time. I also wanted to do what you intended and I called Hondata and they told me that they cannot modify it unless the ECU was programmed to my car. Luckily I was able to get a refund from the original seller.

I do not believe the email was misleading. You emailed asking how to get an existing cloned ECU to work on your vehicle and the reply was "You would have to get Honda to match the VIN and immobilizer.". The cloned ECU is no different from any other ECU in that way.

The devil is in the details - if you had asked how to get two ECUs matched to the vehicle at the same time then the answer would have been different.

That is why i guess i should have been more clear and assume responsibility on my end. But lol , seriously who would buy a jailbroken cloned ecu to discard their warranty...? And, yea your staff did apologize, but the other rep i got was rather unwelcoming.

If thats your way of doing business, then i dont think ill refer customers to your line of products anymore.

https://www.civicx.com/threads/ecu-cloning.35422/
Hey OP check out this thread about cloned ECUs. It’s not exactly like your situation but you will be able to read that even with a second ECU the dealer will be able to tell. It’s not really smart to try to deceive the dealer because they have a lot of tools to be able to tell if it has been tampered with. Anyways hope this helps with your decision going forward.

xGreyWorm said:

https://www.civicx.com/threads/ecu-cloning.35422/
Hey OP check out this thread about cloned ECUs. It’s not exactly like your situation but you will be able to read that even with a second ECU the dealer will be able to tell. It’s not really smart to try to deceive the dealer because they have a lot of tools to be able to tell if it has been tampered with. Anyways hope this helps with your decision going forward.

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Yepp. Its starting to be a general consensus that cloned ecu will not pretend warranty from being voided. But in my case its frustrating to be stuck with something i cant use; especially if i was directed properly, i would have purchaed one brand new.

Yeah it sucks there was a misunderstanding but the main or only reason I can think of to have a cloned ECU would be to not have any down time for your vehicle. Just wondering but why don’t you when your warranty runs out take the jail broken ECU to Honda and get it paired to your car? Or is there more to it than just Honda pairing the jailbroken ECU to your car? I wish dealerships were more welcoming of mods they might actually get more business in the service department rather than doing recalls, oil changes, and warranty work all day.

xGreyWorm said:

Yeah it sucks there was a misunderstanding but the main or only reason I can think of to have a cloned ECU would be to not have any down time for your vehicle. Just wondering but why don’t you when your warranty runs out take the jail broken ECU to Honda and get it paired to your car? Or is there more to it than just Honda pairing the jailbroken ECU to your car? I wish dealerships were more welcoming of mods they might actually get more business in the service department rather than doing recalls, oil changes, and warranty work all day.

Click to expand...

warranty wont be ending for a while... haha..but ya its a HUGEEEEE misunderstanding for developers of their own product. it explains why Ktuner is growing in popularity.

Hondata said:

"You would have to get Honda to match the VIN and immobilizer."

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How is a brand new ECU different from a used ECU? Why can you clone the new one (including the immobilizer pin code) but not the used one?