Hey there. Firstly, I was brought to this forum by this thread here:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...cs-expert.html

The users on there, Chernobyl in particular, seem to know what they're talking about, so I figured I'd carry on my research here.

For the last few weeks I've been looking into programming E-chassis BMWs using NCS Expert, and after tons of YouTube tutorials and articles I'm fairly confident I've got the basics pinned down well. Being someone that does actual programming, I enjoy the whole process of coding cars, and I'm seriously considering getting into the field of doing it for others as an on-the-side thing, since there's virtually no people in my area that do it, and then maybe moving on to F-chassis when I can.

With all that in mind, before I make a commitment to do this, I want to be sure I'm armed with as much as knowledge as possible from those who have been doing it for years, to minimise (or eliminate, even) the risk of me bricking any one of the tons of cars that I might be working on.

So far in my research and on that thread, it appears the guidelines for virtually zero-risk programming with NCS Expert are:

- Backup the original .TRC file (with all the car's pre-tampered modules in it)
- Use the latest datens
- Hook up the car to a battery charger
- If you do end "bricking" the car using NCS Expert, code a blank FSW_PSW.TRC file to revert back to the car's defaults

For those of you who have been meddling with this sort of stuff for a while, do you have anything you've personally learnt that you'd add to (or take away from) it?

Related to the above, I also have a few specific questions.

With regards to the battery charger - is it necessary? The cost of one is a big one for me to sink, so I'm wondering just how necessary it is to hook the battery up to one while coding? Does everyone here find they largely need to do that on the cars they've worked on, or do you mostly get away with it?

Also, exactly how easy is it to brick a car? Have you ever permanently bricked a car, or had one that you just couldn't fix? I'd hate to go into this thinking I know what I'm doing and end up bricking people's cars left and right.

I think that's pretty much all the questions I can think of atm. I understand this is a long read, so thanks for reading it all, and thanks for any help in advance. :D

 

No-one at all?

 

You may get more responses from the Electrical section under 2nd Generation > Modifications > Electrical, that's where most of the coding threads are posted. i do not know anything about using NCS Expert, sorry :(

 

Ah ok. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll post it there now!