Yosh alpha slip-on?

[Snakes709]

Since I have had a run of bad luck. My bike is staying stock until the warranty is up. Only had it for 3 weeks (1300kms) and it already needs a new fucking swing arm.

[HouTexH2SX]

Dealerships cannot tell if the ECU has been flashed... period.

The flashing tools and software (at least from Woolich) are made and tested against OEM diagnostics hardware/software to ensure 100% compliance and transparency through KDS.

If a dealer hooks up KDS to a bike fitted with a flashed ECU, nothing will appear out of the ordinary. Everything will check out normal, nothing is out of place, no flags are raised, nada. KDS is simply a diagnostics tool - it cannot dump the ECU contents and display it in assembly code to see if the underlying code has been modified. Even if it did, your typical tech that studied at MMI isn't going to be able to understand a single bit of the code. No offense, but they simply turn wrenches along with pages in a book, not write custom assembly language coding or have the background to understand it. I have seen this first hand on the H2 when a friends bike I tuned was having issues. Dealership who we both are good with in and were sponsored by, hooked up to his bike and nothing was awry. Everything was as it should be.

Now, if an ECU is sent back to Kawi themselves overseas, then yes, they can likely tell as they have the ability to dump the ECU contents, read it out, verify checksums, decompile code, etc.

All my bikes have tuned ECUs with the exception of one - only because the software hasn't been done for it yet. All my bikes have been in for recalls and periodic service I couldn't do myself due to time constraints. All my bikes are still in their original and/or extended warranties. Not once have I ever been shy or coy about the fact of me doing what I do (all my bikes have Woolich stickers, hardware and key tags) nor have I ever returned an ECU to a stock image to bring it in. Bottom line is, if you give the dealership reason to pry, they will. And if you have a legitimate worry (spun bearing, grenaded the tranny, etc) you can simply return the ECU to stock before bringing it in and set it back to the tuned state when it comes back.

Key point right there. If a bike comes into a dealership with a motor failure. The manufacture will do anything and everything to not have to warranty it. So if the dealership cant find out what happened, Kawasaki will ask more and more questions. Which is what happened in my case. They asked for measurements on every fucking piece to the motor. Eventually they wanted the ECU. Game was up right there. I wasn't hiding anything. I told the dealership my bike had a full exhaust and auto tune before I put it back to stock. Wont stop the manufacture from asking for parts to be sent to them if they cant find out what the cause was. What pisses me off in this particular case is they spent more time finding ways to deny my warranty then finding out what happened. I found out what happened and provided Kawasaki with 7 contacts (names, phone numbers, addresses, vins and what happened) of other people that had motors fail for the same reason. Suggested a recall on all years of the ZX14R but they said no and kept finding ways to deny my warranty.

+1

There is no way Kawasaki is going to foot the bill for a $5K - $10K motor repair without a thorough investigation and they will find out that the bike was flashed and deny the claim. I'm not talking about a minor service issue that the dealer controls. Each to their own if they want to take the chance.

[WR-NA]

+1

they will find out that the bike was flashed and deny the claim

If the ECU is flashed back to a 100% stock image Kawi cannot tell the difference, at the dealership or at the factory level, that the ECU has been modified at all. The image put back into the ECU is a 100% exact digital copy from the image that comes out of the ECU. Meaning every single 1 and every single 0 is in it's exact place where it should be. If you were to wire up to the MCU IC on the PCB, do a raw dump of the internal ROM and did a checksum comparison of the two, they'd be 100% identical between what is pulled from the MCU and the image Kawi has on hand. Again this is something that only Kawi could do at the factory - NOT the dealership. Dealerships do not have the tools, techs or training necessary to do this, let alone comprehend the data contained in the ROM image.

If you have no idea on how electronics works, I will be glad to help you understand it all putting it all in the easiest possible way to understand, but quit spreading bad/false/incomplete information.

Long story short:
1) Only the factory could tell if an ECU was flashed
1a) If the ECU is flashed with a stock image, as pulled out of the stock ECU, it will be a 100% exact digital copy of the image Kawi puts in. Meaning if they dump the ROM and do any sort of checksum comparison or decompile it and review code, everything will be in place and appear normal and they can't tell any difference at all or that the ECU was ever flashed.
1b) If the ECU was sent back to the factory with edited values, then yes, they could detect and see that.
2) A dealership cannot tell if an ECU has been modified unless there is some etching, stickers, etc on the ECU itself or you yourself disclose to them the ECU has been flashed.
2a) A dealership is only going to start poking and prodding if you're bringing the bike in for a major warranty claim (blown motor) - in which case you'd be dumb to bring the bike to them with a flashed ECU only giving them more ammo against you.
2b) A dealerships KDS system works 100% flawlessly and transparently with an ECU flashed with Woolich Racing products (can't speak for others). Woolich works with a local dealership and tests out new ECUs on models the dealership loans them to develop tuning software for (yes, local dealership gives them models to test on). This is done to ensure nothing pops up on their systems to show that the ECU has been modified via software.

[HouTexH2SX]

+1

they will find out that the bike was flashed and deny the claim

If you have no idea on how electronics works, I will be glad to help you understand it all putting it all in the easiest possible way to understand, but quit spreading bad/false/incomplete information.

I'm a licensed electrical engineer so I don't need you to explain anything to me. And, I'm certainly not spreading false information--just providing friendly cautionary advice since I've always heard that edits to an ECU can be detected even when returned to factory specs which opens up the possibility of the factory denying a warranty claim for a major engine repair and is exactly what happened to Snakes79 by Kawasaki. How much more proof do you need? There are certainly conflicting opinions about this, enough to give me great pause about flashing my ECU, but it's your bike so you can do what you want. To me it's just not worth jeopardizing my warranty for bragging rights about 40 more HP (yeah, I know, there are other benefits but if the truth be known that's probably why most owners would want to do it).

I don't think it's wise to profess to absolutely know what Kawasaki can or can't do with the data in their ECU's--there are black boxes in cars these days that you can't access that will nail you with information when you're in an accident.

[cOoTeR]

+1

they will find out that the bike was flashed and deny the claim

If you have no idea on how electronics works, I will be glad to help you understand it all putting it all in the easiest possible way to understand, but quit spreading bad/false/incomplete information.

I'm a licensed electrical engineer so I don't need you to explain anything to me. And, I'm certainly not spreading false information--just providing friendly cautionary advice since I've always heard that edits to an ECU can be detected even when returned to factory specs which opens up the possibility of the factory denying a warranty claim for a major engine repair and is exactly what happened to Snakes79 by Kawasaki. How much more proof do you need?

Snakes79 said he told the dealership his bike was flashed they didn't find it. That's not proof of anything.

[Snakes709]

+1

they will find out that the bike was flashed and deny the claim

If you have no idea on how electronics works, I will be glad to help you understand it all putting it all in the easiest possible way to understand, but quit spreading bad/false/incomplete information.

I'm a licensed electrical engineer so I don't need you to explain anything to me. And, I'm certainly not spreading false information--just providing friendly cautionary advice since I've always heard that edits to an ECU can be detected even when returned to factory specs which opens up the possibility of the factory denying a warranty claim for a major engine repair and is exactly what happened to Snakes79 by Kawasaki. How much more proof do you need?

Snakes79 said he told the dealership his bike was flashed they didn't find it. That's not proof of anything.

The dealership is the one that told me to go back to stock, including the flash. I would assume if they are telling me to go back to stock, they aren't dumb enough to tell Kawasaki my ecu was flashed. Therefor, Kawasaki found out by other means.

[HouTexH2SX]

+1

they will find out that the bike was flashed and deny the claim

If you have no idea on how electronics works, I will be glad to help you understand it all putting it all in the easiest possible way to understand, but quit spreading bad/false/incomplete information.

I'm a licensed electrical engineer so I don't need you to explain anything to me. And, I'm certainly not spreading false information--just providing friendly cautionary advice since I've always heard that edits to an ECU can be detected even when returned to factory specs which opens up the possibility of the factory denying a warranty claim for a major engine repair and is exactly what happened to Snakes79 by Kawasaki. How much more proof do you need?

Snakes79 said he told the dealership his bike was flashed they didn't find it. That's not proof of anything.

Yeah, I guess honesty is just not the best policy.

Your warranty states that any modification can void your warranty so when you flash your ECU and then grenade your engine it's best to return it to factory specs and then lie to Kawasaki and hope they don't do a thorough investigation and find out. IMHO if you want to gamble with your bike then you need to be willing to accept the financial consequences if you overshoot its limits.

It's just hard to believe that Kawasaki and other manufacturers don't have some way to know that an ECU has been modified to protect their interests with all of the aftermarket tuning available for these high performance bikes. It would be so easy for them to be able to save ECU parameter history that cannot be tampered with. Just my opinion--I have no proof of that and I'm just not willing to find out.

[Palmer812]

My neighbor is shop foreman at a local dealership. We took my friends 2017 zx14 in for warranty work with a flashed ecu. I had aksed before bringing it and my neighbor said Kawasaki didn't need to know about it. He called asked if we were sure it was flashed because they couldn't tell. I had to let them in on a way to tell. I assume the h2sx is the same way but on the 14 if you turn off traction control it comes back on by itself after you cycle the ignition. After the flash it will stay on. They tried it and were surprised. So the dealership couldn't tell at all.

[WR-NA]

It would be so easy for them to be able to save ECU parameter history that cannot be tampered with.

When the ROM is dumped, it is dumped in it's entirety - first bit to the very last. No matter what chipset they use for the MCU - SH70xx, M32R, etc, all of the info about how that MCU is programmed is freely available online from the manufacturer themselves. So once that data is dumped (in accordance with the manufacturers specs) everything dumped in that ROM can be changed very easily. (In the motorcycle world) relatively nothing is safe inside of the ECU once it is cracked open. Dump the ROM, run it through IDA to decompile the raw data back to assembly, identify tables, define tables - poof.

Cars? Totally different.

If manufacturers wanted to prevent this sort of thing they could simply stop making the boards with certain specific legs of the MCU IC leading to pins on the ECU connector or to test pads on the PCB itself. That wouldn't stop it entirely though, as you could always cut the casing open and wire leads direct to the legs of the chip or test pads. It would make it more of a pain in the ass and less approachable, but definitely not a 100% stop-all. If they were smart and really wanted to mitigate it, they would move to some sort of eFuse setup to nip it all in the bud.

[Zdude]

Kawasaki builds much more performance into these bikes then they need to, they know most of us out here are going after that extra power. This isn't new, headers and rejetting carbs has been around ever since Kawasaki built the 1st Z1, every bike, including my old Z1, I have had has been tweeked, some a little, some alot. Futhermore, everybody I know that rides these type bikes do the same thing, it's your freaking bike, flash it if you want,if you don't want to, well, it's your bike just be used to seeing the flashed H2sx's tail-lights - LOL!!!!