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420A Let's Figure Out How To Flash These 420a's ECU

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him if i dont have to buy an ms this is the route id like to go. have to find out more info regardign boosted 420a
 
He doesn't do 95 ECU's for some reason. I'll leave that bit of info for him to specify why.

i wouldve said you just killed my dreams but i went to boostbutton.com and they do 95 ecu so there is a chance. YEAH! i contacted them to see what they can do for me.
 
VelocitàPaola;153387179 said:
Who doesn't? I just posted a link to the company that flashes 95 ECU's...

Sorry I should of specified, Kevin at syked ecu supposedly doesn't, at least on his website he don't advertise for it but I'll leave that specific answer for him.
 
i wouldve said you just killed my dreams but i went to boostbutton.com and they do 95 ecu so there is a chance. YEAH! i contacted them to see what they can do for me.

Do let us know what they say.
 
VelocitàPaola;153383513 said:
That has nothing to do with it. With the exception of DSMLink, the engine management systems available for the 4G63 are virtually the same as the EMS's available for the 420A. And as great as DSMLink is, it's still forced to deal with the factory (i.e. 15-25 year old) hardware.

There are quite a bit more tuning options for a 4g63 car than a 420a. You have the ability to burn chips for 1g and 2g eprom ecu. There are quite a few programs that can be used to program chip, tuner pro, dsmap, evilscribe and a few others. You can even add in the moates ostrich for the ability to tune in real time like dsmlink. You can also open the .bin file in a hex editor and make any change you want if you know how to. The options are almost unlimited as to what you can do with a stock ecu in a 4g63 car. For the 420a you have improved performance ecus, but nothing that you can tune a full built turbo car with. It is like 100 to 1 the tuning options between the 2 on the stock ecu.
 
Couple things here:

1) Kevin can do 96+, but on FB he has a ton of personal stuff going on and at one point he said he was not tuning anymore. YMMV, but I have no idea where he is at. I know he does great work on the Neons/SRT's as my friend had him do his SRT.

2) Megasquirt is still the best option for a 420A car (I had it on my 420A car - MS1 and MS2).

3) Some may hate me for saying this: My TSi has Link because of the simplicity of plug and play. But if I ever decide to completely rewire the car, it will have Megasquirt. TunerStudio is much easier to deal with IMO.

There will never be a magical flash for the 420A cars IMO. You need to bite the bullet and go with Megasquirt, it is 100% worth it.
 
I talked to the guys at MS (actually i think it was DIYTune using MS) at a trade show, they said they could make a Plug and Play MS version. Problem comes down to engineering time and everything that goes along with it. The 420a market is just not big enough to justify it. Now if you could organize a group buy of say 20 units. I am sure they would do that. Short of that though...
 
I talked to the guys at MS (actually i think it was DIYTune using MS) at a trade show, they said they could make a Plug and Play MS version. Problem comes down to engineering time and everything that goes along with it. The 420a market is just not big enough to justify it. Now if you could organize a group buy of say 20 units. I am sure they would do that. Short of that though...

Hmm if it would be a possibility i would so be in for that
 
There are quite a bit more tuning options for a 4g63 car than a 420a. You have the ability to burn chips for 1g and 2g eprom ecu. There are quite a few programs that can be used to program chip, tuner pro, dsmap, evilscribe and a few others. You can even add in the moates ostrich for the ability to tune in real time like dsmlink... The options are almost unlimited as to what you can do with a stock ecu in a 4g63 car. For the 420a you have improved performance ecus, but nothing that you can tune a full built turbo car with. It is like 100 to 1 the tuning options between the 2 on the stock ecu.
But you're just listing different ways to do the same thing. I meant that the EMS hardware available to the two platforms is equivalent: stock PCM, AEM, Haltech, MegaSquirt, etc. Personally, I wouldn't want to stick with the stock PCM with either car; the hardware is old and limited, and there are much better alternatives now. DIY chip burning has been around for a long time, but it never gained quite as much traction as DSMLink. I think that probably happened for a reason...

You can also open the .bin file in a hex editor and make any change you want if you know how to.
Sure, you can do whatever you want with the stock 420A PCM too... if you have the know-how. Most people don't.


I talked to the guys at MS (actually i think it was DIYTune using MS) at a trade show, they said they could make a Plug and Play MS version. Problem comes down to engineering time and everything that goes along with it. The 420a market is just not big enough to justify it. Now if you could organize a group buy of say 20 units. I am sure they would do that. Short of that though...
The problem is that it's not as simple as re-routing the connections from the stock PCM connector to the MegaSquirt connector. The 420A PCM does a lot, so extra "glue" circuitry needs to be designed, tested, and implemented. Plus, like you said, the 420A market is basically dead. The few people that are left are hesitant to make big investments in this aging platform.
 
Sorry I should of specified, Kevin at syked ecu supposedly doesn't, at least on his website he don't advertise for it but I'll leave that specific answer for him.
AFAIK, Rob (at BoostButton) had already put a lot of time and effort into the 95 PCM's by the time Kevin came around and started modifying the 96-99 PCM's, so I think they had a gentleman's agreement not to step on each other's toes: Rob sticks to 95's, Kevin sticks to 96-99's. Of course, he can clarify if I got the story wrong, but that's what's been documented on Neons.org.
 
I'm guessing you didn't actually read that link? Because it says 95 NEON right in the paragraph.
Thanks for the snark, now here's some for you: I'm guessing you don't actually know what you're talking about. Rob has mentioned that he can flash 420A DSM PCM's. The firmware differences between the DSM and Neon versions of the PCM are trivial.
 
Mentioned? Meaning he can but has never done it with proof of gains? For the price it's worth a shot but most calibrations have very little gains from the factory pcm. Correct me if I'm wrong. I own a flashed ecu so I know a little bit about it from experience, I'm not just speculating.
 
Mentioned? Meaning he can but has never done it with proof of gains? For the price it's worth a shot but most calibrations have very little gains from the factory pcm. Correct me if I'm wrong. I own a flashed ecu so I know a little bit about it from experience, I'm not just speculating.
He said he can; if you want more detail, you'd have to ask him. I've seen some graphs of the performance increases floating around, but I can't remember if they were uploaded by Rob or Kevin.

I wasn't advocating using re-programmed factory PCM's. If you look at my posts in this thread, you'll see that I've been consistently suggesting that the advantages may not outweigh the cost.

Out of curiosity, which "flashed" PCM did you have? AFX?
 
Just to clarify I'm not trying to be an ass just replying on what you wrote. Others would have thought the same thing. You're right the advantages are not worth the gains.

Yup afx. I noticed a little gain from it but the pcm had an injector driver problem during tuning so I had to go back to stock. And it just sits around now.
 
Yup afx. I noticed a little gain from it but the pcm had an injector driver problem during tuning so I had to go back to stock. And it just sits around now.
I've heard anecdotal reports that some of the AFX PCM's sold more recently are just stock PCM's with a sticker. I don't know whether or not that's true, but like you said, the gains from just replacing the PCM will be modest.
 
1) Download MPTune (freeware)
2) Download stock 94-95 Neon Cal file from shelgame website (google it) (the dude who owns boostbutton.com makes all his cals available for free for the DIY community)
3) Open neon cal in MPTune
4) Scale maps for 3bar map sensor (select 3 bar map), set for injector size.
5) Retune fueling and ignition maps on stock ecu
6) Done.

Now, that's the basics, but all you need to find out is what wires are the Tx and Rx (which is readily available), and what wire you need to put 12v to put it into bootstrap mode. I assume the N/T DSM ecu is the same as the Neon ecu, since they look identical online. If that's the case, then boosting one on the stock ecu (at least OBD1 anyway) should be easy.
It seems pretty straightforward, for the 95 PCM's at least. I didn't think Rob fully documented the procedure to get the PCM in bootstrap mode, though. The last I heard, he was working on an interface to do it automatically.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure this will ever be possible for the 96-99 PCM's.
 
On all flashable ecus, from any manu, boot mode is accessed by putting x volts to x pin. The pre-95s was pin 11 (in the dodge world). I'd assume that any good pinout would have the flash pin labeled. If you ask him I'm sure he'd tell you, since he provides links to the tuning software, and a huge library of Neon/ACR/Mopar Performance cals for the 94-95s. That means the info is available somewhere :).
 
On all flashable ecus, from any manu, boot mode is accessed by putting x volts to x pin. The pre-95s was pin 11 (in the dodge world). I'd assume that any good pinout would have the flash pin labeled. If you ask him I'm sure he'd tell you, since he provides links to the tuning software, and a huge library of Neon/ACR/Mopar Performance cals for the 94-95s. That means the info is available somewhere :).
I don't think that's necessarily true... certain ECU's are put into bootstrap mode by grounding a pin, and others (newer ones) do it all with serial commands. Nonetheless, you apply 12V to the Tx line while applying power to the PCM for Neon/DSM FCC's. You still need a hardware interface between your laptop and the PCM, though--something to convert USB to serial (easy enough), the something to do level shifting. I'm not sure what, if anything, is involved beyond that (e.g. handshaking protocols, etc.). Here's the bare board from Rob's interface:

www.neons.org • View topic - Neon PCM Reprogramming

I've spoken with him a number of times. He's a good guy.
 
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