RE: Could a tuning chip produce increased emissions fault light

[swally76]

Ladies/Gents,

Bit of advice needed if possible:
Drove to Stafford in my 2011 E70 40d from Northumberland in all a round trip of 400 miles approximately.
Bought the E70 with 107,000 With FSH in February 2017 Car has only been driven 2 weeks out of 3 months.
On route back the I drive started throwing up faults:
Level control system failure - Rear passenger airbag leaking ( found the leak myself)
Engine Management - Reduced power take to BMW ( nothing wrong with power) I drive states no faults
Increased emissions - got no idea about this one ( I drive says no faults )
FTM Failure - reset but keeps coming back 

Still got warranty on the vehicle through Stratstone - Vehicle in Stratstone now
Phone call this morning from Stratstone saying warranty is void as vehicle has been chipped ( Never even knew )

Stratstone will repair leaking airbag under warranty
Stratstone will not touch anything on engine faults because of chip!! & warranty void

Could the chip be causing increased emissions ??
Could the chip be causing reduced power fault ??

If I located the chip what happens after I unplug it & reconnect the original engine lead?? Does anything need done as in resetting ECU

Best Regards & thanks in advance for any solutions

Paul

[grumpywurzel]

Where did you buy the car from? You say you got the warranty from Stratstone so was the car from there?

If you bought it from a private seller then you might be stuck with it.

Sure X5Sport will be along soon but I believe that any plug in boxes can be removed without issues? Crappy tuning boxes used to just trick the ECU into over fuelling so that might be causing your emissions issue but not the reduced power... might be wrong but the idea of these things was to increase power no?

[swally76]

Alright Grumpywurzel,

Traded E90 M3 so it's my first x series.
I've spoken to the garage in Sheffield (not Stratstone) but vehicle came with extended warranty (Brilliant warranty by the way) only things that aren't covered is bulbs & trims!! Only void when some plum installs a chip that Bmw can detect (garage in Sheffield didn't even know it was chipped)
Totally agree that the chips are to increase power but unfortunately this isn't my Field of expertise so I need info from guys like yourselves.
Fair play to Stratstone for replacing the airbag under warranty as it's supposedly void.

When the reduced power fault displays the I drive says ok no faults ???

Regards,

Paul

[X5Sport]

A chip modifies the tuning parameters and could indeed mess up the emissions, hence it almost always being best to have a remap done on the vehicle as it will (or should) make sure you stay inside the emissions limits.

If the supplier had scanned the system they would have found it by the sound of things, and ignorance may not be a defence in law if a check by them could or would have found it.  You could argue that they sold you a car that had been modified which puts you at risk of having your insurance cancelled and making the vehicle illegal to use in the road, so what are they going to do about it.....hint 

IDrive system doesn't show all errors up, but check control might.

A BMW dealer will find both a chip and remap, but a remap usually just gets overwritten the the Munich based servers and set back to the delivered state (plus official updates).

[swally76]

X5 Sport,

Cheers for the info, I've just spoken to the master technician @ BMW!! They have fitted a new airbag spring unit under warranty but are saying the car has been remapped & the warranty I had is now void for engine, transmission issues that would be covered under the said warranty.
I was also told that because it's now flagged up on the BMW system that I wouldn't be able to extend my current warranty??
They have reset everything as there are no faults shown up, they did say when they plugged it in that the first thing that came up was the EGR Valve needed replaced ??
Car is now running with no faults codes.......any suggestions on what to do next I.e. Warranty?? Replace EGR??
Or just soldier on.

Cheers,

Paul

[martin33100]

People need to be aware that the BMW ISTA service sofware can pick up if the ECU file has been changed by an unauthorised means ie a remap.
Our X5 isn't under warranty so it's no issue for us but after the remap performance file  was flashed on this is the message we now get if I do a diagnostic:-

[X5Sport]

Ouch!  I expect the only way around that is to recode without altering the 'checksum' bit value in the data blocks away from factory values - and that is hard to do.

[kkx5]

[quote="martin33100"]
People need to be aware that the BMW ISTA service sofware can pick up if the ECU file has been changed by an unauthorised means ie a remap.
Our X5 isn't under warranty so it's no issue for us but after the remap performance file  was flashed on this is the message we now get if I do a diagnostic:-


[/quote]
Yep, had a few with this ista message...

[Insight G40]

If you got it from a BMW main dealership in Sheffield, then if it were me, I'd look to get my money back as they sold me a modified vehicle as stock, both voiding my insurance in the event of an accident, and warranty.
I'm guessing even if reverted to stock map you'd still struggle to get anyone to provide warranty on a previously remapped vehicle.

Even if non BMW dealership, I'd still threaten legal action if they refused to take car back for price paid.

[X5Sport]

Absolutely.  Car dealers are required to check a car is fully roadworthy and warrantable.  Modifications must be declared.  The tools are available to check the diagnostics and a check by any BMW Dealer would have found it.