Hello all , I am new to the tuning tbi ecm's and need some guidance. I did a bunch of reading and search's like the sticky note said in the beginning of the forum but cant find what I was looking for or at least didnt put the right search characters. I have a few questions on ecms and prom ID's.

1) When programing a chip with your bin can I edit the 0$004 byte to match my ecm?, does the 0$004 byte even matter? or is there a checksum in there some where that will have to be corrected? I have a 2 $AO prom ID/bin's with the matching 4428 ecm but what would happen if I was to clear a chip and put the bin on it and run it in a 7747, 7746 or numerous other ecm's I have? Or how would I go about this? I know I have experimented and took the AMC 258 chip and put it into several ecms (7747,7746,4288,7137) and it ran almost the same every time which really confuse's the hell out of me and also brings me to my second question.

2) Every where I read it tells me that each prom ID is specific to a service number/ecm/engine size and to keep the ecm close to the engine size you are trying to match up. So if I have a 4 cyl. to look for a 4 cyl ecm but I have 2 ecm's that are 4288's/$AO's prom IDs but one runs an AMC 258 and the other a AMC 360. Does this tell me that I can program almost any engine to a chip/ecm as long as the bin file is setup correct??

I wanted to burn the bin files to 2 other chips and have spares for the road/trails but have 2 different ecms to do it with and am trying to clear up some questions so I dont do some thiing wrong and burn up an ecm or worse yet an engine.

Thanks in advance for any info.

 

The prom should match the engine due to limp mode fuel & KS in some cases. Also the bin looks for certain info in the prom hardware to verify that a 8 cyl bin is on a 8 cyl prom. If not then your in limp mode.
The prom/bin needs to match the ecm and engine.
The ID is for info only & Check sum defeat. Some scanners look at it for auto detect.
There is a check sum in there. As long as you change nothing in the bin, the checksum will be correct. And the ecm will use the prom/bin. If the checksum fails, it will use the limp mode fuel.
You can put $AA in for the ID to bypass the CS if you want to edit.
TP calc's the CS for you during a Save so you don't have to mess with it.


AMC is the BCC, the 360 is like a series number 1,2,3 etc or date code. Not sure which. But AMC is for a specific engine trans etc.
It's easier to pick a BCC close to your combo first. But not necessary. Any similar engine will work. With some work, you can use 6cyl code on a 4 or 8 cyl. The amount of work varies with BCC.
$58 is the most common example of code used on several cyl counts. Just need to use the matching prom for the engine and change a few things in the bin.

 

Thanks Z69 for the info, I did also just see the $AA on a chip from Howell and wondered what that was, newbie stuff you know. So it true then that I can use just about any ecm to program any engine as long as the editting is right?

I do have a lot more reading to do along with question asking and a few bumps along the road too.