Hey guys:
I'm new, although, I've spent good enough time here reading your posting. I'm in Mebane, NC originally lived in Long Island. I've had two FZ1's one Buell XB12 which I've hottrodded two years ago from scratch and now I"m tasting the bitter sweet Ducati S4R Testa.
Bitter sweet, because as any rookie I've not been aware of the red (communistic shit) key issue.
So I've bought the bike, got an excellent deal and then found out that that $50 key will cost me chunk of money. What's worse is that to fix the bike ( had front end damage - forks, wheel, oil cooler) is not a big deal, but to get the bike unlocked is a mystery worth remembering and passing down to my kid some day.
I understand the system, I've even crack opened the cluster to see which chip is responsible for the havoc and it is the PCF7991AT worth few bucks at most. The cluster runs 8 bit CPU MC908LJ24 which is only a couple of bucks, but what's inside is what really interests me.
When I had my XB12 I was in simmilar situation. But, I was fortunate to find www.ecmspy.com (//http://) and build their radioshack TTL 5VDC dongle that hooked to the ECU and download their free software and I was rolling. I could upload my custom maps, redo throttle body adaptation, etc.
We need this kind of freedom to wipe out the greedy dealers.
I've called the Cupertino headquarters today and got an answer just as many out there:"sorry sir but we do not provide and keep records of the red keys to the customers, you will have to buy thousands worth of stuff from us so that we can give you your red key".
My blood is boiling. There's nothing wrong with my ECU, the cluster is new and I've got blank black key for fifty bucks.
I say the ducati onwers should pull together and protest this rapist shit from the dealers.
Since I'm not going to eat up the costs of this I will try to do whatever it takes to crack this thing once again.
By the way, my next door neighbor is working for the duc dealer here in NC and he doesn't know 1% of what I've learned in past two weeks.
I need help, because no one out there really tries to help. I've e-mailed Ducati depot in Florida, so far no phone calls and very unusual e-mails kinda thanking me for e-mailing them, but very specific as to what they can do for me.
I've emailed and called MOTORVEX, the guy promissed to call back, so I have yet to see what he's got.
I've e-mailed the guys in Check republic that sell complete ecu, even spelled the crap in Slovak, since I've been there in the army way back and still no e-mail back regarding my options.
I've tried to call the guys in Australia but no success.
Is there anybody out there, who's not going to waste my time and is able to crack the original cluster and program one black key for me, as well as reflash the ecu to accept the new code, simply eliminate the immobilizer so that the ecu doesn't care if it is on?
I'm willing to pay decent amount for this service. I'm not talking about this guy said this and that. I need a phone number of a real person who's not gonna waste my time. I will sooner or later know the exact functionning of the system. I work as a C programer and did some stuff in assembly way back and have microelectronic background as well. The true problem is to decode the map downloaded from the flash memory in the cluster CPU, I believe. That's where the red key code is stored and enables the immobilizer chip to burn new black keys.
I want to hear your opinions on this subject, and thanks for your help
roman.
I've come to america from europe to escape this shit and here I am facing it yet again.
Welcome to the DMF, sorry to hear about all of your frustrations.
You will probably get more responses in the Tech sub-forum:
http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?board=4.0 (http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?board=4.0)
You might also want to try contacting member MonsterMash as I believe he has the capability to reflash ECUs; I don't know the details though.