hand shake reset
 

With the battery out for winter (wimper...sniffle), is it worth while to perform a hand shake reset of the ECU while the opportunity is there? Is there anything adverse to having the pos. and negative leads linked together all winter???

Thats not a hand over, its a hard reset, big difference.

Jake, what is the difference between the two?

Hand job?:D

A hand over is done electronically, it requires a scan tool thats properly equipped for the task, like an Autologic.

A "hard reset" is done by removing the battery leads and connecting them together to drain all the energy from the DME and various capacitors throughout the car.

Okay pardon the incorrect terminology....is this hard reset of value as far as establishing a fresh learning cycle where intake and exhaust modifications that have been made along the way can be fully and correctly accommodated by the ECU?

Technicians are taught to never let the battery go dead or disconnect the terminals in Network/CAN bus cars (especially Mercedes), because you can trash a control unit on the interior bus if the power is removed while its going to sleep. The terminals should be kept hot with a booster pack and jumper wires during a battery replacement.

Some computers may be "stuck on stupid" even after resetting with the scan tool, requiring a hard reset. For example, if the dashboard would be indicating a transmission malfunction, and you perform the repair and fix the codes, the light may continue to stay on even though faults are no longer stored in the transmission ECU. A hard reset corrects this.

Why are you disconnecting the battery? Why not leave a trickle charger on it?

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I pull the batt every winter as there is no charge source to be had in the storage location. I have tried rotating power packs plus a trickle in the past but they seemed to have just barely kept the batt. alive and led to sulphication