Locked ECU
 

Bought an Evo IX from Washington State (I'm in Colorado). Took it to my local shop to have it tuned and they found the ECU to be locked by the original tuner (in Washington State).

So, I called the shop in Washington and they told me that they couldn't unlock it without the car being there. The shop here in Colorado said that there was nothing they could do other than put a new ECU in it or get a standalone tuner for it. None of those options are cheap, especially on top of the amount of money it took to get it running in the first place, plus the $750 for the tune. I obviously knew this wasn't going to be a cheap project car, but this is just a really silly hold up/extra expense.

Another wrench in the plan is - we were tuning for E85 and the shop put E85 in it before they found out that the ECU was locked. SO, we either let the car sit there until we decide what to do, or we have them drain and refill with 91. Which is just a pain in the @$$, honestly.

My question is - is anyone familiar with bench flashing these ECU's? Is there another way to unlock them? Really not wanting to spend another $1000 just because the ECU is locked. Any pointers?

what ECU are you talking about? I assume OEM ECU and that you are trying to use ecuflash?

I guess it could be tricky even if you managed to flash the base data back on due to the immobilizer.

I never heard of an OEM ECU being locked! The tune file can be locked but not the ECU, so the other shop should be able to flash it with a new file with no issues. The immobi can be disabled altogether via any modded rom.