How to check for Tune

PacotheTaco has spoken! Anyone else want to claim now that it cannot be detected? Your local shit stain Toyota dealer may not care, but the state government of Colorado sure does! And expect more states to follow suit (and soon) that do emissions testing.

 

My 991.1 track car is now not road legal in CA and I’m going to have to revert it to stock ECU.

 

I promise you California cares and tuners who claim that it can’t be detected are lying to you.

 

So what I’m reading is that there is one documented example of this and only applies to 2016 Tacomas (that transfer ownership) in Colorado…and was still resolved lol

Gotcha, definitely seems like we should be concerned.

No tuner is saying it can’t be detected. What they are saying is that it will not be detected unless you are specifically looking for it. Which the consensus is that dealerships do not, but that the states may.

 

Which now it is mandated that they have to specifically look for it. So I’m not exactly understanding your argument. And the dealership has all the necessary software and hardware to look for it as well.

The tuner is not the guy who is left holding a vehicle that is no longer able to be registered or operated in CO or CA or had to pay for warranty work so they don’t care.

 

I think you might have missed the point I was trying to make.

These tunes have been installed in 3rd gen Tacomas or trucks made from 2016-2023. The 2016 model-year trucks are just starting to require emissions testing, and in the case of CO won't need to have it done until 2024. On top of that, this new emission testing standard just became law within the past 3ish years, so this was never even checked for before. This is the reason why we are not seeing many cases of this.

 

What you’re not understanding is that I’m not arguing with you. All I’m saying is that if this starts popping up as an issue I’ll start to care. Until then, one post in a one thread isn’t really something to base concern on.


Besides, something tells me the tuner guys will find a way to get around these sort of tests…otherwise they’ll be outta business….

 

did you flash a stock tune? I'm wondering if flashing .cuw file via techstream will set cvn to stock

 

We did try to flash the stock tune. The CVN still did not match stock though so it was going to fail again.

 

I think the flashing the calibration file(.cuw) should take care of this issue.

 

Fortunately, there is a workaround but it is solely in OTT hands. If you look at the second pic I posted, in the comments, towards the bottom, it mentions that I could provide a CARB EO #. This is the solution. Hopefully OTT is working on getting their tune CARB certified and once they do you would just need to provide this CARB EO # and they will send you on your way. Unfortunately, until they get certified, this tune is illegal and will fail any emissions test that checks for a modified ECU.

 

I wouldn’t hold my breath, CARB is not handing out waivers anymore.

And part of this regulation is to put tuners out of business.

 

Like I said, IF this becomes a frequent issue then the tuners will figure it out otherwise they will be out of business. Even if it isn’t a frequent issue it sounds like they are already figuring it out.

Somewhat unrelated, but how would a CARB cert help with Colorado emissions. Isn’t CARB specific to CA?

 

We tried it once and it didn't work. He was working with a guy who was trying to make flashing ECU return the CVN/checksum back to stock but he was still working on testing it out and I was driving an unregistered truck around. I decided to just buy an ECU.

 

You're right and only time will tell. The good news is it looks like you got a 2023 so you'll be fine for the next 6ish years and that gives the tuners time to get this worked out before you have to worry. I unfortunately will have to deal with this every two years for as long as I own the truck or until they get it worked out.

I doing a full writeup now on my whole experience and my solution to hopefully help others out if they run into the same issues and consolidate all this information for the future.

 

You can only flash a CUW once, to update an ECU. It cannot be flashed a second time to keep the same ECU ID. For example, a 2016 AT can go from 04B03 to 04B04, but cannot be flashed from 04B04 to 04B04.

 

Since you now likely have two ECUs in hand, I'd have a tuned one and a stock one and physically swap them when needed. Certainly better than driving on the Stock tune.

 

Never had a tune and don't track CA requirements nor what the Tacoma ECU setup is but I program all sorts of microcontrollers all day long. There has to be a means with the salient information to upload and download firmware binaries (with maybe limited writing) from the ECU even if the downloading option is blocked to regular users. There is no doubt that an interested party could download the firmware and validate its checksum irrespective of what is available with the typical user protocols available at the ODBII port. Just technical perspective here, no idea what regs will hit the ECUs in the future.

That said, I have reluctantly stuck to S4+ECT in town and S5/S6 on the highway as a good enough solution.

 

Could be worse. Idaho diesel tuner was criminally charged and fined 1 mil

 

That is exactly what I did. My tuner offered to let me borrow a stock ECU to throw in for the test and then return to him. Nice of him but I didn't want to do that every 2 years and what if they went out of business? So I found a junkyard and pulled one from a wrecked truck. I thought the route of having 2 ECUs was a no-brainer. Still pricey but worth the peace of mind.