My '01 ECM VIN was changed to match '96 Dash Plate...Bad idea?

[kpeters59]

Hey All!

In order to ensure that State Inspection went as smoothly as possible, I had a Tuner change my ECM VIN to match the VIN of the truck. He used a different software than HPTuners to accomplish it, however, the tune that turned off VATS and whatnot was done with HPTuners.

Was that a bad idea?

I'm getting conflicting information as to whether or not HPTuners can now be used to tune my truck.

A tuner last week connected to my truck to 'pull' the tune and reported that he wasn't reading various PID's even though I know they're working because my BlueTooth scanner was reading them as I drove over there.

Is it as simple to work-around as manually changing the ECM to the '01 ECM that's in it?

Any input is sure appreciated.

Thanks,

-Kyle

[Bill@HPTuners]

You should be able to read and license it with software version 3.0

[kpeters59]

So, does that mean NOT in 2.xx?

Also, are you saying that changing the VIN is no big deal? How do I verbalize that to him? Doesn't really matter as I expect that someone else will be doing the tuning. I'm sure tired of paying for licenses, though...

He was able to get me a copy of my tune so I could have it looked over, he was just trying to tell me that my harness was defective because he couldn't read my PID's. Any reason that you can think of that would cause that?

Thanks,

-Kyle

[Montecarlodrag]

A 01 PCM has only 1-wire communication from the OBD2 port to the PCM, so I find it hard to believe that He can't read the PIDs or whatever is happening because of the harness.
If you can correctly scan it with another tool and/or can read the tune file from the PCM, the harness is right.
Some scanners use the VIN to identify the vehicle type to poll the information, other scanners use the OSID and others use different methods.
I have had several PCMs with a changed VIN and they scan correctly.

[Bill@HPTuners]

2.24 & prior versions cannot license invalid vin/os pairs.

3.0 can.

[kpeters59]

Great!

Is there an explanation as to why I've been watching (and logging) most all the PID's via my BlueTooth ScanTool Device and either Toque or OBDLink without issue, but this Tuner proclaimed rather promptly that he couldn't read many of my sensors. He was able to pull the tune out of the ECM.

Specifically, would HPTuners, because it thinks it's looking at a '96 due to the altered VIN, be able to pull the tune and read some PID's, but not others, in an '01 Chevy Gen III V8 ECM?

And is that the likely explanation as to why this happened?

And most any HPTuners owner/user would simply change the loaded/detected ECM to the 'actual' ECM via the software?

Thanks,

-Kyle