His Holden Monaro is very similar to the GTO, but in 2002 they were using a p01, and in 2004 when the rebadged GTO was exported they used a p59. I have no idea what the factory OS for a 2002 with a p01 might be. If he had a p59 like the later ones, a 12587604 OS has a pretty complete xdf floating around.

 

Hello GT,

As always, all perfect advice. I still appreciate your assistance with my Catalina vert 5.3 liter swap motor - I had my O2 sensor cables on the wrong side of the motor.

Rick

 

Glad that one worked out for you. My advice is definitely not always perfect, but I have accumulated a fair bit of knowledge over the years. A lot of it was hard learned by figuring out my own screwups, or having someone else help with figuring them out. I recently had to reread a 54 page thread from 2013 to figure out an issue I was working on last week, so these archived forum threads can be extremely helpful for years to come.

 

Thanks for the info guys.
Please bear with me as I'm new to this stuff.
I assume if I wanted to change the OS I would then have to do a full tune from scratch or is there a way to transfer the data? If it has to be done from scratch then that's out of the question and well beyond my talents. The main stuff I want to adjust is gearbox related.
If I happened to brick my pcm, can I just upload the tune to a new one or do I need the old one working to somehow clone it?

As per my original post, I'm happy to purchase the HPT hardware if it will make things easier but have a couple of questions about that as well. Does the fact I was able to read the tune with LS Droid mean it's not locked, and, is the custom OS something that only the original tuner will be able edit correctly or can anyone edit it without problem using HP Tuner?

 

In many cases, you can change the OS and just copy over settings without a problem. With a custom HPT OS, if they used any of the custom features you would likely need to start over almost from scratch, depending on the OS. If you brick your pcm you can clone your tune over to another one. Anyone with HPT should be able to change the tune you have now, as being able to read it with no other steps involved means it should be unlocked. If you really are just making transmission adjustments, it is likely that Universal Patcher has those areas mapped properly. I doubt that HPT messed with the transmission area coding on their custom OS. It would definitely be worth trying with the free software before going to the expense of buying HPT for the limited amount of changes you want to make.

 

Thank you, it's much appreciated.
The current tune is very good, it's just that its cammed and stalled and I drive it quite often in a bit of traffic. I mainly just want to fine tune some shift points and soften some gear changes when daily driving. Once I find the info online to do what I want I guess I'll just make one small change at a time to be safe.
Any recommendations on the best places to learn? I've be reading a bit on PCM Hacking and HPT forums but I can't find anything specific to Universal Patcher.

 

The tables and tuning process are going to be similar, if not identical. The real difference is in the directory tree of how to find the tables you are looking for. Universal patcher, Tunerpro, and the commercial EFIlive software all use a similar directory structure. HPtuners uses a somewhat more user friendly layout, but the result is the same. No matter what you use, there is no substitute for just opening a file and playing with the software, although some of them do have descriptors and help files to make it easier. There is also a transmission tune settings tool called "Bluecat" that can help with deciding on shift strategies for autos.

 

These are the tables for my 1-2 upshift and downshift in normal mode.
Can anyone explain why the downshift table would be all over the place? Is it possible that Universal Patcher mixed it up being a HPT file or is it just how it was tuned?
One of the few changes I want to make is holding first slightly longer which looks fairly simple.

 

I could be wrong, but that just looks like someone "fat-fingered" a few spots while tuning that table. You will occasionally see tables with some random anomaly when the tuner is in a hurry and does not proof read their work. Also, it should NEVER be in a spot that is actually used in the tune, but some of the good pros will leave a specific meaningless change somewhere in their tune to make it an identifiable signature. of their work.

 

Update for anyone interested and another couple of questions.
I have successfully transferred my tune to a secondhand pcm I bought from US eBay, and made a couple of minor changes to my shift timings that seem to have worked ok.

As per my previous posts, i had to use ls droid to read my tune due to it being a hpt custom os. When I first flashed my new pcm I used pcm hammer. It seemed to work ok with no errors but my car would fire and not run. I flashed again with ls droid and it worked fine. Not that it matters now but I'm curious, is this just because pcm hammer didn't like the custom os?

My next question is, I want to soften my 2 to 3 gear change at lower throttle positions as is bumps in a bit too fast when I'm just cruising. I changed the shift timings by adding 0.1s which took some of them up to 0.4s but it didn't make any difference. Should I keep adding to this table or is there a better way to make these changes a bit less "instant".

Thanks for all the help so far.

 

PCM Hammer and LS Droid both fundamentally just copy what's in the .bin file onto the PCM. But there is a nuance...

By default, PCM Hammer will only copy the calibration section of the tune, because 99% of the time that's the only part you change when you're tuning, and it saves time. But when you get a new (used) PCM, you want to do a full flash (aka "clone") so that 100% of the PCM's flash memory matches your file. PCM Hammer can do a full flash, but the command to do it is under the Tools menu, so if you didn't start the flash that way, you just got a calibration flash.

I'm not sure about LS Droid, but it might do a full flash by default. That will include the section of the .bin file that links the PCM to your BCM and anti-theft system. If you used PCM Hammer to do a "calibration" flash, it doesn't do that section.

I'm not 100% certain that's the issue, but that's the only explanation I can think of for what you encountered.

If I'm right, you should have no trouble doing calibration-only flashes with PCM Hammer now, since LS Droid has (I assume) already taken care of the rest. In the future if you get a new PCM you can use PCM Hammer, you just need to do a "full flash" before you do anything else.

The new / upcoming version of PCM Hammer has UI that makes this a tiny bit clearer, but the new version isn't completely ready yet.

 

Interesting. I'm did the full flash(clone) write. I checked it after and the os and vin had changed. I even re-read the pcm after as this is all new to me, and that bin looks ok as well. It doesn't really make sense but I guess doesn't matter now anyway.

 

Another Update.
PCM Hammer won't write the tune at all because it still thinks it's 0Bytes.
LS Droid will only let me overwrite the the OS each time I flash. It won't let me write just the calibration file.
Is it worth trying Universal Patcher to make a patch of the differences and swap that into what would have been my original OS?
If I do that, is it a matter of if it runs the same it should be all good, or is it possible some of the engine parameters my be off, but still run ok and cause other problems?

 

If you can post your current .bin, I may be able to run it through the HPT tune translation service to convert it to a .hpt, then look it over with the HPT editor and see if it is using anything of value to necessitate it using a custom OS. If it is not, then you could revert to the factory OS and avoid the custom OS issues you are having with pcmhammer and lsdroid. That is IF you don't need the custom OS and IF a stock file for your model can be found. Otherwise you are stuck with the unknown of exactly what the custom HPT OS may have changed, as well as the freeware read and write issues.

 

Hi gametech,that would be much appreciated. This is the original read of my bin before I made any changes. I've only changed a few things in the trans settings since. My original OS was 12225081 according to the sticker on the PCM.
If you manage to change it to a .hpt can you please also post it back here?

 

It appears that your stock OS was converted to the 1bar SD enhanced HPT OS with RTT enabled. If you are running with no MAF, as it appears, you will probably need to retain the custom OS just to keep the PCM from faulting to the secondary VE table, low octane spark table, and a few other issues that occur. Here is your file converted back to .hpt.
edit--it appears your original OS was 12225074

 

Thanks again gametech.
Does it really matter if I have to flash the whole OS each time I make a change? It seems to be working ok so far. At least now I can have a proper look through the tune in HP Tuners.

 

Technically you are always taking the risk of bricking the PCM if a full write is interrupted. A calibration only write is supposedly much easier to recover from a problem during a flash. How much this bothers you is entirely up to you to decide.