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PI2107 ECU UPDATE (KSDS 2.0L GDI) for 2017

10K views 39 replies 11 participants last post by  k2x4b524p 
#1 ·
Been here several years, but mostly lurk: Don't really have much to say that others haven't already said.

Guess I finally have something...

I was on the official KIA Owner's site last week and a KIA "PI2107 ECU UPDATE (KSDS 2.0L GDI)" showed up.

Appears to update my 2017 Soul Plus (2.0) ECU to add the KSDS (Knock Sensor Detection System) software. Sounds like they are extending that ECU update to even more model years now.

Called the dealer, they verified and scheduled me in to have it done last Friday (19NOV21).

Took it in, was told it should only be an hour to do it, so I wandered around the dealership for a half hour then went back downstairs to the Service waiting room to wait.

At about an hour and forty minutes my "Service Advisor" came out to tell me they had a problem updating the ECU software, that it got to 91%, then failed, and now the ECU wasn't responding.

NOT what I wanted to hear. Mandu, my KIA Soul, had died on the operating table.

He said they were waiting for a call back from KIA (probably GIT America) but they had a loaner car for me and they should have it taken care of by Monday.

If it is nothing to worry about, why are they calling home to the Mothership to find out what to do?

So, here I sit at home with a '19 KIA Niro Hybrid outside my door, and my '17 KIA Soul Plus sitting in a service bay at the dealership (yeah, it won't start).

Anyway, for those with Gen 2 Souls, it looks like there is a new "PI2107 ECU UPDATE (KSDS 2.0L GDI)" for at least model year 2017, but ...

I'll let y'all know if I learn more.

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#2 ·
...If it is nothing to worry about, why are they calling home to the Mothership to find out what to do?
:D

So, here I sit at home with a '19 KIA Niro Hybrid outside my door, and my '17 KIA Soul Plus sitting in a service bay at the dealership (yeah, it won't start).
...
I'll let y'all know if I learn more.
Sucks when what is suppose to take an hour becomes much longer than that. Good luck. Hopefully the Mothership has come through with the needed tech support.

Btw I like the lower body striping.
 
#3 ·
Sucks when what is suppose to take an hour becomes much longer than that. Good luck. Hopefully the Mothership has come through with the needed tech support.
Still no answer at close-of-business Monday. I'll light up their phones on Tuesday.
Btw I like the lower body striping.
Thanks! Wait 'til you see this night shot, her stripes are special...
Mandu at Night
 
#4 ·
Hey Thomas, very luminous racing stripes. Can I get a link to do that? I expect your ECU will be swapped out for free, so enjoy your renter car. I also like your low profile car camera. I have one mod I would like to see on Mandu. The $20 do-it-yourself augmentation of directional signal with sequential display. Our headlight assembly has a groove allowing this under hood mod to show through the clear part along the hood. See this thread:
Daytime running lights in white can be hooked to parking lights or Canadian style DRL.

Do it yourself, if you have soldering skills.

Do you miss your Scion XB?
Wheel Tire Car Land vehicle Vehicle

My Soul: debadged and illuminated.
Tire Vehicle Car Wheel Automotive lighting

At the TIME MACHINE in New Bern, N.C.
Wheel Tire Sky Vehicle Car

Glad you are on the board.
 
#5 ·
So many things to reply to, HAWKia
Hey Thomas, very luminous racing stripes. Can I get a link to do that?
I went to the vendor who cuts those stripes and asked if they could use the 3M Hyper Reflective vinyl and they said they didn't normally carry it but would be happy to do it for the normal price plus cost of the special material. Not cheap stuff, but I wanted the extra night visibility. (Comes in multiple day/night colors.)

Wheel Tire Car Land vehicle Vehicle


I'll look into those DRL LEDs on the headlight covers. Looks interesting. :)

Do you miss your Scion XB?
Very much so. Vanilla was probably the most enjoyable and dependable vehicle I've had over the past 60 years.

I also at one time had "moons" on Vanilla before I decided on which alloy's I wanted.

(I had three Scions before I got my KIA Soul.)

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#6 ·
UPDATE: Over 100 hours in the shop so far for a 30 minute job.

The dealer has now pulled the battery and purposely shorted the leads together to completely drain any power that may be in the car, hoping to revert everything to factory settings.

I have been promised a call back this afternoon, good or bad, to keep me in the loop. If it works I can pick up Mandu today, if not, it likely means a new ECU for her...

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#7 ·
The update takes less than 20 minutes to perform so obviously something went wrong during it. It is rare but over the course of a year we get a few that crash during the update (it is super important to verify your battery is good and strong before doing an update as that accounts for more than half the crashes if voltage dips during it) When the update crashes during automatic mode then it has to be done manually, the dealership has the all the software versions available as well as the passwords. Something must have gone haywire to not be able to just manually update it. Do you have any aftermarket accessories on the car, reason I ask there are several things like remote starters etc... that plug into the can-bus communication wires and we have had to remove them before as they disrupt the flow of data and crash updates.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Bedz75, the battery was two days old and fully charged when the car went into the shop, and the first step in the ECU Update is to connect a charger to the battery to prevent a low voltage situation.

Just about everything in that car, right down to the headlights, seems to talk to the CAN bus. ;)

So, I have LED headlights and an OBDII connected speedo/tach/temp display that they were warned to unplug. Everything else CAN bus capable is OEM, including the Remote Start.

I've never been all that impressed with this dealer's service or parts departments, but they are my reasonably close choice. :confused:

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#9 ·
I used to own a focus. Local dealer I went to for an update used Wi-Fi. Update failed because their wifi stopped with the update about 80% into it. Everything still worked. Went to a different dealer , download took about 20 minutes. When I worked in a gm dealership you downloaded the update from the system to the tech 2 scanner , plugged the scanner into the obd2 port. Sometimes the download wouldn't work , have to re download the program into the tech 2 hit the download button and walk away while the scanner did the download. Most of those were for drive ability problems. Also replaced a lot of factory radios, they had to be programmed with the tech 2. I don't know much about the Kia programs. I've been retired for a few years. If I went back to a dealership I would be lost.
 
#10 ·
Just for reference: This is the update for some 2014-2016MY Souls produced from July 21, 2013 through August 11, 2016 with the Nu 2.0L GDI engines.

My 2017 KIA Soul Plus was built in December of 2016 and takes a slightly different Product Improvement Technical Service Bulletin: PI2107.

They are likely very similar except for the details on software versions and such.


PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT CAMPAIGN 2002B, REVISION 1, 28OCT2020



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#14 ·
Just got word back from Car Pros Kia - Tacoma, Service: 877-438-2193, that they are trying to get
approval from KIA
to replace the ECU under warranty.

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It damned well should be covered under warranty: The car has 7500 mile on it, is less than 4 years old, and was turned over to their shop with zero problems, just for a KIA required software update.

What's to approve? Just return my vehicle to me in the same condition I left it, or better, with no cost to me.
 
#33 ·
Car Pros Tacoma?

They have been trying to buy my 1 Mil back for months.......

I've also gotten the notice of impending doom... Is this an actual recall or are they covering their a55e5 because some schmuck couldn't take care of his 2017-2019...

Man... I loved having something with no TSBs or anything like that...
 
#15 ·
<SNAP!>

Well, I just snapped and called KIA Consumer Assistance, talked to Debbie there. She checked on my vehicle via VIN and the dealership has not updated the "Techline Case" information since last week.

Apparently the dealership has involved the Regional KIA high muckety muck, Mark, for approval.

KIA called the dealership on their special number, call was answered, she asked for an update on car, put on hold, and never re-answered.

Will likely not hear anything back until next week - holidays and such, ya know.

At least this is now all documented at the Mothership... 🛸

I need coffee. I'll update if I have anything.

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#16 ·
Very odd. Reason I asked about the push button is that those cars have an immobilizer. If ECM got wiped they often need to be neutralized along with the immobilizer and you need the pin code for that (which your dealer can pull up on KGIS) I'm certain they tried that. One of the reasons the techline case may not be updated is sometimes they will just tell them that they tried and tested everything they should and to contact their dpsm for approval of the replacement ECM and that is what sounds like happened in your case. Unfortunate but it happens and hopefully it won't be much longer till you get the car back.
 
#17 ·
hopefully it won't be much longer till you get the car back.
Hopefully!

The fancy KIA Niro Hybrid loaner is still sitting exactly where I parked it when I drove it home from the dealership. I neither like driving, nor being responsible for, someone else's car. If possible, that Niro will sit exactly where it is until I drive it back to the dealership.

(And my car still has the five brand new AGM batteries for my backup home power sitting in the back. I was going to change 'em out this week - at least I hope they are still there.) :oops: Almost past caring, though. :confused:

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#18 ·
Just got a text from Car Pros KIA Tacoma: My car is ready to pick up.
Time to go inspect it.
BRB
• • •
I did a quick physical check of everything they might have touched and found the positive battery terminal loose - came right off the battery.
Put it back on, drove to other side of lot and had a tech tighten it down.

Mandu is back home and under cover.

Reset some of the settings back to where I want them.
Seems to be OK. They did wash and vacuum her, more or less.

They sure ran the battery down while they had the car. 🙁

Just for laughs, here are two of the techs pushing Mandu out of the service stall after the initial failure of the ECU/ECM/PCM update and the car would no longer run.

ECU Update Fail - no-start pushback VIDEO

(Mandu kept an eye on what they were doing as much as she could.)

Outerwear Cap Jacket Recreation Event
 
#26 · (Edited)
(Mandu kept an eye on what they were doing as much as she could.)
Outerwear Cap Jacket Recreation Soldier
Dang, it looks like a couple mechanics from Duck Dynasty.
 
#22 ·
According to the service advisor their Techline contact gave them the correct "password" (a 4 digit code) for the factory ECU/ECM and they were able to update the original unit without a problem - it just took them a week to get it sorted out.

What he did not say is if the codes in the TSB were incorrect, or if they simply entered the incorrect codes.

There was a whole sheaf of papers attached to the dealer copy of the invoice, but the customer copy was just what you see. :mad:
 
#27 ·
The codes were likely correct on the TSB, what most likely happened is they were putting wrong version on so ECM was taking it but car wouldn't start, just speculating not adding fuel to the fire. I'd love to tell you that I never made that mistake but I have as there are so many versions so you have to decipher all the vehicle options and region etc.. and choose the correct one and even then the alphabet soup and number combinations are a little confusing. The only difference is I figured it out my mistake right away and installed the correct one so it delayed the customer 20 minutes rather than days so they were probably never even aware of it as it didn't affect them. Worst mistake I've seen in the shop, I asked you about immobilizer earlier, was one of our techs mistakenly installed a version with immobilizer on a car without one. Turns out once an ECM sees an immobilizer it can never be removed even when you reinstall the correct software it will still look for an immobilizer (I remember same thing on Chrysler's as they had issues with the "thing" that reads they key so you needed a fresh ECM and make sure the immobilizer was unplugged first time you start it, if it didn't see an immobilizer first time it never looked again). We had to replace the ECM and program it correctly. Best practice that we all use in the shop last couple of years is to take a screenshot of current version and the version it wants to update to in auto mode so that if something happens it makes it a lot easier to back trace and install the correct version if something crashed. I had a Forte crash during an IBU update and because at that point it wouldn't see a key or even turn anything on I couldn't even start communicating with it as I couldn't wake the module up, I turned on the hazzard lights which woke the module and allowed me to talk to it and install the software, gotta think outside the box sometimes.
 
#28 ·
I received the KSDS campaign letter yesterday for the software update on 2017-2019 MY Kia Soul vehicles with 2.0L Nu GDI engines. I am going to try and have it done ASAP and hope for a better outcome than the OP. At least it will extend the warranty to 15 years/150K miles for repairs neeed due to connecting rod bearing damage.
 

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#29 · (Edited)
“Changing the oil and filter pursuant to your vehicle's oil maintenance schedule is
ESSENTIAL to the proper functioning of your vehicle's engine and to the prevention of excessive wear. Failing to do so can result in engine damage and/or failure and, in the worst case, an engine compartment fire may occur”

Are they doing this because people still won’t check or change their engine oil?

I guess it’s only a matter of time til my 2019 1.6L gets the KSDS and an extended warranty too 😃
 
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#30 ·
It is such a rampant problem that we started to document it on the MPI forms for when people complain later. Perfect example: on Friday I had an original owner Optima with 66k on it, it was there for a radio issue. During standard MPI I noticed oil looks like nasty gear oil, had our dealership sticker in window to be changed at 55k, it had the Kia oil filter so it wasn't done somewhere else in the meantime so it's been 16k since oil change. I fixed radio issue, recommended oil change and 3 of the 4 tires that had zero tread and customer declines everything and going to drive on that sludge some more and later complain their engine uses oil or blows up. Wish this was rare but we often see it several times a day and that's on cars that actually come to a dealership for service.
 
#31 ·
Wow, that’s incredible. People treat their cars like it’s a kitchen appliance and then wonder why it breaks. It will be amazing if Kia still warranties that car if, or more likely when the engine blows up.
 
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