PCM Diagnostics & Tuning HP Tuners | Holley | Diablo

Engine/PCM swap, no VIN, how to program?

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Old Apr 1, 2009 | 01:34 PM
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Default Engine/PCM swap, no VIN, how to program?

I'm doing an 02 LQ9 swap into a 68 vette.
I'm thinking about getting programming software even though my computer was reflashed by a 3rd party already. But I may have a problem. I dont have the VIN from the car the engine/computer came from.
It looks like HPtuners wont be able to run without that.
Is that true, if so how about EFIlive?
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Old Apr 1, 2009 | 02:14 PM
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As long as the vin slot isn't corrupt you more than likely can enter a valid vin right in the calibration details window in our software & program away.

I've helped customers with this issue countless times and its usually as simple as that. However you WILL want to have the vin actually flashed to the pcm and the proper vin change procedure followed so if someone ever needs to read the pcm again they don't run into the issue again, but writing to it won't be an issue in most cases from my experience.
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Old Apr 1, 2009 | 02:20 PM
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So you're saying I can flash the VIN from a 68 vette (obviously no OEM computer) into a 02 Escalade LQ9 computer? And I dont have the Escalade VIN.
I thought that would throw up red flags for liscensing issues.
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Old Apr 1, 2009 | 02:37 PM
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No, it needs to be a valid VIN. 17 digit VIN code,the old school VIN won't work.
I am not endorsing this but people have been known to go to the trader sites or ebay and use a known good VIN for a similar vehicle that you are using the OS from. The VIN will probably already be in your PCM anyways since whoever programmed it had to have one.

Back when I first did mine I just used a full tune from the HP Tuners repository and then made it my own. My PCM thinks I am a 1999 Trans Am.
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Old Apr 1, 2009 | 02:57 PM
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Sorry for my ignorance, I'm new at this and the liscensing has me lost.I dont want to spend $600 on software I cant use.
I thought the VIN info was needed to liscense the software to a particular vehicle PCM. If I dont have the VIN up front, can the HPtuners get all the necessary info off the PCM?
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Old Apr 1, 2009 | 06:20 PM
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HP tuners will use the credits it gives you and license the pcm. Its pretty painless.
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