Tuning. The final frontier of any car project. Anyone who knows anything about cars knows that you can only go so far with bolt-ons, and once you reach a certain point, you need to modify the ECU’s code to accept/adapt bigger changes. This was braindead easy in the 90s, when ECUs were just meant to keep an engine running. My honda for example has a PT3 ECU with a whopping 32 kilobyte ROM. You can’t make any changes to it unless you ‘chip’ the ECU, allowing you to write your own program to it. A bit of a pain, but in this case, every single PT3 ECU in your region (there seems to be differences between North America, Japan, Australia for example) has the exact same program, so sharing information amongst a community of enthusiasts is pretty easy. The various maps you want to tinker with are always in the same spot.

Now we have the S60R with its incredibly complex Bosch ECU that can be updated over the OBD port from your dealer. This already means there are many, many software variants out there. So which one do you have? Step one is to pull your bin. I used a $50 MPPS v18 clone I found on amazon to pull my bin, which involved removing the ECU from the car and connecting it to my computer using a USB adapter. There are tools out there (for example github/s60rawr/OpenMoose removed, use this: https://github.com/rlinewiz/OpenMoose/tree/main/RELEASE) that let you pull your bin over your OBD port using a DiCE cable! How convenient after I already went through hell removing my ECU without the special removal tool!

Anyway, the way to tell your bin version is to open it in a text editor (or a hex editor in ascii mode) and do a plaintext search for ‘.a2l’ . This will tell you exactly which bin version you have, which is important because EVERY VERSION HAS ITS OWN MAP LAYOUT AND NONE OF THEM LINE UP WITH EACHOTHER PERFECTLY. The reason for this is the ECU developers have their source code, and every time they make a change or add a function, and compile it into a bin, things get moved around a bit. Every time they compile a new version they produce an a2l file (which they apparently guard with their lives) which defines the names and locations of every piece of data in the bin. Soooo sharing map definitions with your fellow enthusiasts becomes much more complicated. The bin versions I’ve seen (lurking various forums) so far are:

• 50QGHJ
• 50QHHJ
• 50QKHJ
• 50GMHJ
• 50GPHJ
• 50GSHJ
• 50WRHJ

And each of these can be further divided into automatic/manual versions, and region (US, EU). Different regions have differences in the maps and the way they process data, I assume for varying emissions requirements and the LHD/RHD difference (everyone knows how critical the AWD system is on these cars), but the only difference between an automatic bin and a manual bin is a single bit that tells the program whether or not to enable the automatic functions. This will come in handy if I decide to manual swap my car later on..

So another bit of information I gathered is that map definitions are the same by bin version regardless of region or transmission, but you can’t just take a bin from another region and put it in your car. It will not work properly, if at all. You can however sometimes get away with flashing a different version. I’m not sure but I think the 50Q’s have to keep to themselves. If I’m not mistaken, Q is for -2004 (250kbps CANbus) and G is for 2005- (500kbps CANbus). W is apparently for 06+, adapted for the 6-speed automatic. Its also a fair bet that the variables in RAM will be in different places between each of these versions too, so logging will also be a shitshow. And anyone who knows anything about tuning knows how important logging is!

Taking a quick peek through the bin with winOLS and using absolutely zero reference material, I can see just how complex this bin really is. I’m not particularly experienced with this just yet but I can already see dozens and dozens of maps, some fairly similar, some really wacky. This will take a lot of investigation and nit-pickery, which makes for a fun hobby during those cold winter months. I’m sure there are people out there working on definitions and logging parameters for these various bin versions, and I can only hope they will share the information freely with the community that helped them attain it, rather than hoard it for personal gain. In any case, getting access to and being able to modify the data is just step one of the process. Tuning is an art, and while learning it can be a very fun adventure, you should definitely let an experienced, reputable tuner do this kind of work for you until you’re at least comfortable enough to experiment on your own car. Personally, I won’t be there for a looooong time, so I’m currently window-shopping for a good tuner for mine.