LAMBDA Heater Sensor Circuit.

[John and Angie]

Evening everyone, hope you are all keeping well.

I have a simple question but feel I need to provide a little background to my ask. My 2006 C6 has had (previous to me purchasing) several upgrades which had required a tuner to code out the Rear (secondary) LAMBDA sensors. Unfortunately, they forgot to code out the LAMBDA heater sensor circuit as well. As such my car's 'Check engine light' stays illuminated.
I have spoken with the tuner via email and he has confirmed this to be the case, but he has said that I can only get this rectified by returning to him in Coventry (I live in Sittingbourne, circa 150 miles away). I believe that he has locked the PCU and therefore only this tuner can access the car to code in/out as required. (It has been tuned for the header mods and the transmission).

My question is, 1) Is a return to the original tuner my only option? It is a long way away and I feel a little like I am being held to ransom. 2) What happens if this garage goes out of business, closes, he emigrates, etc... There must be some way to fix the issue?

The car runs absolutely perfectly and is an absolute beauty, but I am worried that if the Check Engine light illuminates for any other reason I will not know. My cousin (C3 owner) sent me an OBD2 reader but this does not connect to the ECU.

All of the above may give you the impression that I know about engines, the truth is I don't! It may as well be written in Japanese to me. I know that the LAMBDA sensors deal with the emission and the Catalytic converters (upstream/downstream) but that's about it. So if you have any advice, please write it as if I am 5 years old

Thanks, everyone, have a great weekend.

John

 

[teamzr1]

John Sorry to hear you got screwed over not just by a moron who does not know how to correctly tune with quality
but stole your PCM by locking it claiming he has ownership to your property by locking the PCM (Powertrain Control Module)

I have been doing custom tuning since 1995 as a business.
I have seen this many times, and it really pisses me off
I have seen owners go on a trip, drive out of town, the car breaks down and have to be towed to a dealer to find
the PCM locked, the dealer has no replacement PCM, so now owner is stuck there and worse the engine has lots of mods like a supercharger
so even if PCM is replaced the tune in old PCM cannot be gotten so now with GM tune the engine would not run with the boost engine has

There is more to this such as if you had to go get your C6 repaired, or worse under GM warranty
the first thing they would do is go connect to the PCM, to find it is F'd up as being locked the Tech-II tool they
use would NOT be able to connect
Thus, the tech right then cannot do any of his work or even do any GM TSB software updates and worse
considers the PCM is bad (when it is not) and requires the PCM, and it's cost and labor to replace the PCM
Of course if still in warranty GM would void it

The tech cannot simply flash a new GM calibration in as with the password changed the tool cannot connect at all
so the tool is useless as T's on a bull :-(

Assholes do this for one main reason is to hide the crap work they did as no one like me could then go into that
tune and see all the F'ups they did and to force their customers if they want changes they must go and pay the F'er who stole your PCM :-(

Frankly contact this Ahole and tell him you're mailing your PCM to him and he better unlock the PCM and leave the tune he did intact
as you had paid him in full or flash the stock GM tune back in it and return what you paid for the tune

Or find a big dude and have them go over there and shove their foot up his ass

Other options, is finding a place that sells PCMs, that by giving him your VIN # and they then flash into another PCM to mail you to install in
Or there are places that you mail the PCM to them, they de-solder the flash memory chip where the tune resides and put a blank one in and then flash a GM calibration in

I have never locked a PCM nor never will as it is not my property

As to your problem,
I define a bit

Call the left side of engine Bank 1,
right side is defined as Bank 2

Your C6 has 4 O2 sensors
Here I opened a PCM for a 2008 C6 Z06
I know it is not locked because when asked by my tuning tool the PCM replied and give me its info as seen on right side
If it was locked, the PCM would not reply, so the tool would think the PCM is bad when it really is not

As you see where I put the red arrows on left side
If you see the first one which has an error code (DTC) of P0036,
Sensor 1 would mean before the CAT, Sensor 2 is after the CAT
Bank1 Sensor 2, it is checkmarked on the left which says that heater error is allowed to trip the check engine light
To the right of that there is a small pull down table that allows to change when and if the DTC trips what it would report to
a OBD-II scanner of a repair person's test tool like a Tech-II

For one is will stupid to NOT have left the S2 O2s installed, I do in all cases even if the CATs were removed as the PCM uses those O2s for other reasons and 2 if he knew what the F he was doing it would take 10 seconds to set these so that the CEL would not come on nor report this to
a test tool or scanner.

You lucky I assume you do not have to do SMOG tests as here in USA and tested and fails, cannot sell the car, cannot get license plates for it
as if SEL is on and what he did also prevents the on-board smog tests to be in a passed state where proper tune even with no rear O2s would show as passed.

 

[John and Angie]

Thanks for the detailed response. I will elt you know how I get on, but very grateful.

Cheers

John

 

[teamzr1]

Your Welcome John

Maybe the cheapest route is to install the 2 rear O2 sensors to keep from tripping DTCs and CEL

 

[John and Angie]

Just managed to contact the Tuner via EMail. It appears that they have NOT locked the PCM. What has happened is that they have used a software package called EFLlive? This means that I would need to purchase a further license for a different Tuner to use as each and evidently this is what is needed. He seemed a nice fella to be honest so I don't think his intentions were nefarious to be fair. Whilst I still know nothing about this, this seems like more positive news! Had a quick look and the price for the license is $125.00 so not terrible (not great before Christmas, but is what it is).
Thanks again.
John

 

[Stingray]

These things always beg the obvious question - if it's simple why hasn't it already been done? Surely the seller would have got a better price for a C6 without the Check Engine light illuminated, the price difference easily paying for the simple fix.

You'll need this issue sorted out well before you get anywhere near your next MOT test. There's an MOT exemption for "driving to a pre-booked MOT test" but there's no exemption for driving the car to a tuner to get it fixed.

 

[teamzr1]

Just managed to contact the Tuner via EMail. It appears that they have NOT locked the PCM. What has happened is that they have used a software package called EFLlive? This means that I would need to purchase a further license for a different Tuner to use as each and evidently this is what is needed. He seemed a nice fella to be honest so I don't think his intentions were nefarious to be fair. Whilst I still know nothing about this, this seems like more positive news! Had a quick look and the price for the license is $125.00 so not terrible (not great before Christmas, but is what it is).
Thanks again.
John

I have Efilive (comes from like New Zealand) but refuse to use it because of this crap in paying them a license fee per PCM and can lock the PCM if choosing to
Tool I use is once bought can be used unlimited times and no tool fee.

Missing as to why if they tuned that C6 and was licensed for it and the tune done would have been saved to tuners computer
so it is on file to be simply tweak tune to correct rear O2 issues

If someone else local to you needs to do the tune corrections they can use any tuning tools, does not need to be Efilive
and if not having a tuning tool that means buying a toll which is about $500 US plus the license fee if buying Efilive or HPtuners

As I mentioned in another post, I sell just a PCM flashing tool, no per license fee and once they have that tunes can be done via emails

Here I loaded a PCM tune for a 2007 C6 Z06 with Efilive and would take 10 seconds to turn off the DTCs for the S2 O2 sensors

 

[John and Angie]

Once again, thank you so much for the help.