NWS4Guy

Let's be frank, both of those engines had large amounts of iron filings in the oil pan, no tune will cause that.

m444

That is not the point. Audi could makes the fix a lot more difficult, if the ECU tune was in place.

One failed engine had a fractured connecting rod, probably a manufacturing defect, but a dealer could blame an ECU tune.

One is never 100% safe, infant mortality can happen on new engines.

Audi55

How many times did the CB fairy visit you?

NWS4Guy

And that car was doing ~50mph at 3,400 RPM's or some such very tame number which I don't remember exactly, but you get the gist. They were able to pull that info from diagnostics. They would have to suspect the ECU to even look that direction in the first place.

uberwgn

Any concerns about the chip-tuning being over-written at a future service? Audi seems to release quite a few updates, some that will reset the ECU. Find out about the company's policy for restoring your tune should it become an issue in the future.

NWS4Guy

It happens, though very very infrequently. When it does, APR (for example) already has been aware in the past and has the reflash ready that incorporates the changes Audi made, which are likely for reliability, bug fixes, etc, on top of the original tune, and they always reflash for free. The trick is that right now that means shipping the ECU back and being with no car again for a few days.

helix139

IIRC, they hooked one of them up to some sort of special machine that verified that there was no tune on the ECU. Whether this supplies the encryption key and does an actual ECU checksum verification or just checks the flash counter bit that APR resets to zero, I have no idea. I suspect that in the case of catastrophic engine failure they may indeed look in that direction as it's a fairly costly repair, whether they suspect it or not, and the burden would then be on the owner to fight off in court.

In any case I do think the APR tune is safe, and I doubt there would be any sort of problem, but taking it past 1000 mi first isn't a bad idea at all if for nothing else than peace of mind.

m444

Putting on 1,000 miles first, before ECU tune, would be prudent, to make sure you received a quality engine. One should not treat the unlikely as impossible (the black swan mistake of the financial sector collapse recently).

NWS4Guy

Yes, the dealer has the ability to check the counter which shows how many times the ECU has been flashed.

APR (I can't speak for the others) always records whatever number is present before the flash it, and replace that same value there during the flash, so there is no incremental change in this number for them to note.