I'm not sure if this is totally a tech question, but...

A while back, I bought an ECU from SilverBeast (formely HoustonSi I believe) on here. He told me it was socketed, and it was programmed by PYR. The ECU seems to work great in my car, but I'm scared of overrevving since the rev-limit is higher than I can safely rev. Anyway, so I take the cover off the check out the chip and find out that the freaking chip is glued on! The ECU is socketed, but there's glue all around it. I'm not really sour at the seller (SilverBeast) because he didn't lie about what he sold... just didn't know it was glued in. WTF though. Is there a way that I can get the chip off without damaging the ECU?
here's a picture:




Modified by alfaaay at 12:36 AM 4/5/2004

 

Is it glue or silicone? It looks like silicone in the pic. If it is you can just carefully cut it away because its soft. If its glue then you might be able to use a pick tool & chip it away.

 

owned....

looks like glue from a hot glue gun... you could re-heat it... but i don't know... i think you could peel or chizzle it off... but be carefull...

 

IM sure thats there just to help hold the solder, try to just cut it away.

 

If is just pushed into the socket there's the chance it may fall out due to vibration. It's probably sometype of potting compound, electronics grade silicone.

Peel and replace.

 

i don't think he put that there for vibration... i think he just did it to be a jerk... changing the chip on a computer is pretty hard... you have to really pull it out, and jam that thing in there... just reheat the glue and call it a day...

 

hey bro, dont heat it, dont cut it, dont push it, its rubber cement...why he put rubber cement on the chip I dont know but go to radio shack and by a disposable electrostatic wrist band and a sheet of non inductive plastic for about $2.00 and lay the ecu on the plastic and strap you wrist band to the hand touching the chip and connect the band to something conductive to ground you. take a pick and hook a corner of the cement and pull it off. if it looks like it may pull up some of the tracing on the circuit board stop and use some endust on it to loosen it up. that should solve your problem. and by the way I am an elctronic technician / Journey man electrician.

 

oh yeah you can buy a chip puller for a couple of bucks at the shack also. just in case you have a solid socket. good luck

 

if you have to you can always unsolder the socket from the bottom of the ECU and a new chip/socket is ~$10 so I wouldn't worry about it too much if you just have to damage that stuff. BTW, i couldn't help but laugh when i read your post , sorry.

 

Update: I got all the crap off of the socket/chip. It was a total bitch to do. I've got a new problem though. When I took the chip off, I stuck it back in and then plugged the ECU into my car and threw a CEL. I'm not sure what it was because I only kept it on for 10-20 seconds at most. I just did a tune-up on monday and the car is running great, didn't want to mess it up. Anyway, I'm thinking that I somehow damaged the chip, which is fine because it's virtually useless to me anyway. Is it possible that anything else might have gotten messed up? Everything around the socket looks fine, none of the material came off with what appears to be silicone. I'm scared I screwed up the whole ECU though. What are the chances of that if I only took the silicone off. I kinda had to pry the chip off, and scratched the metal "teeth" on the chip for sure... so I hope that's what is messed up.

 

I'd bet that it was done so that the chip couldn't be removed and duplicated (read on a ROM reader)

Wes

 

My car threw a code when I took out the chip and put it back in... I then took it out and rexamined it and one of the lil teeth on the program had fallen off... So check that.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by drewlee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">My car threw a code when I took out the chip and put it back in... I then took it out and rexamined it and one of the lil teeth on the program had fallen off... So check that.</TD></TR></TABLE>

All the teeth are there, but I'm sure I messed them up, because I had to pull up on one side and the teeth on the other end got pretty bent. Also, all that silicone had to be removed with an exacto knife and paper clips and probably scratched up the teeth pretty good.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by alfaaay &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

All the teeth are there, but I'm sure I messed them up, because I had to pull up on one side and the teeth on the other end got pretty bent. Also, all that silicone had to be removed with an exacto knife and paper clips and probably scratched up the teeth pretty good.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Scratching the teeth is no big deal, but they need to be clean.

If you want to do it right and you want to use that chip, once you get it cleaned up have someone make a copy of it for you on a new virgin chip. Take off the old gunked up socket on the ECU and replace that. Personally I would have said eff it all and bought another less lame ECU. Who are these PYR lame-asses? They probably wanted to make it so it ws difficult for you to pirate their pirated programs.

 

i bet you installed it backward, make sure that the litle notch is facing the same way all the other little notches are

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by stumpyf4 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If is just pushed into the socket there's the chance it may fall out due to vibration. It's probably sometype of potting compound, electronics grade silicone.

Peel and replace.</TD></TR></TABLE>


-PHiZ