zzimbile

Yea I hear what you guys are saying. I am definitely not looking to do anything to void the warranty. If its something like a plug-n-play or piggyback, I would consider, but with 3 years of warranty at my disposable, not about to risk it.

It is very tempting though because coming from RWD I was never able to fully put the power down. But now with AWD, I want to see what this bad boy can do...

Syrome

Been meaning to buy the flush kit, thanks for reminding me. I'm in the boat of not Stage 1 until the warranty is over, but I am strongly considering the APR Carbon intake.

Fixeroh

I doubt doing a Stage I flash would screw a car up in any way what so ever. But with the 2015 S3s being new models technically, would hate to see an issue like with previous Audi 2 liter engines and the oil consumption come up only to have the warranty be nixed due to an ECU flash.

The power delivery on the S3 is spectacular to say the least! It just hooks up and goes. No real effort required. And lot of drivers are also commenting how they previously were upset by lack of a manual transmission option but are now stupefied by the superb DSG tranny. Me included. Can't beat it. Amazing piece of engineering.

zzimbile

Has anyone looked into any kind of exhaust upgrade?

Kevin70

I understand what TD1 is but how does the dealer know the ECU has been re-flashed?
Does the ECU have a flash counter that cannot be reset?


I don't know if I'd ever flash it I'm interested in knowing how this is detected.

hilld

They look at the checksum from the software. If it does not match the factory checksum, it is altered. Pretty simple actually.

From what I understand, part of any sort of warranty work, requires the dealer/tech to hook up the computer and that information is then transmitted to the Audi mothership computer where this is then detected.

Kevin70

If the checksum is the indicator as to if the ECU were or were not flashed they must have a hidden flash counter embedded in the ECU. Otherwise flashing back to stock should not be detectable.

hilld

It certainly is possible, but not sure if you are really flashing back to stock. The Audi software is encrypted as far as I know (I could be mistaken), so if somebody cracked the encryption and resaved it as an unencrypted file, the checksum would then be different. I would think that reflashing it back to stock would be with the unencrypted version and therefore would have a different checksum.