We routinely get asked about turn around time for various ECU services we offer. So I'm putting this page up for future reference.

First, understand the process of getting an ECU worked on by us. The steps are listed below.

1. Customer places an order on our website that include some sort of ECU service.
2. Customer sends the ECU to us along with a printed copy of the order.
3. We receive the ECU and usually examine/test it right away. We provide feedback to the user on what we find and we indicate whether we need approval for any additional work. This feedback will be provided by e-mail and by updates to their order history (which they can view online).
4. If we need an “OK” from the customer to proceed, we'll sit the ECU on our shelf and wait for that reply.
5. Once the customer gives the “OK” (or if we didn't need any additional authorization to begin with), then we'll pull the ECU off our shelf and put it into our queue to be worked on.
6. Once it's done, we'll retest and confirm that everything is working normally again.
7. We'll fire off an e-mail asking for payment if additional services were agreed upon in step 4.
8. Once payment is received (or if no additional payment was necessary), we'll pull the ECU off, box it up and ship it out.

So when someone asks “what's the turn around time”, I'm never sure how to respond. The only parts of the process that we actually have any control over are steps 3, 5 and 6. I'll cover each of those below.

UPS always comes in the morning around 10 AM to drop stuff off. They return around 4 PM to pick stuff up. When we get ECUs that early in the day, it's almost certain we'll get the ECU tested that same morning. And often, if the ECU is a simple socket/caps or simple repair we can even have the ECU back out for UPS pick up that same day.

Anything other than UPS is a crap shoot. Sometimes they show up early, but usually they don't get here until late in the afternoon. At that point, it's almost impossible to get any real testing/evaluation/work done on it same day. Expect to hear back the day after we get it if not later that same day.

It's rare for us to be backed up more than a few hours at a time on ECU work. If ECU work is going to take more than a day to complete, we'll usually let you know. It's *really* rare for us to take more than two days to get an ECU done up and ready to go. The exception are cases where the customer has specifically requested an in-car test or the situation/problem description deems that level of testing necessary. In those cases, it could take an extra day or two before we have time to get the ECU reconfigured for our shop car, get it installed and then drive around and reconfigure it back.

So the short answer is…there's no short answer. The time we spend actually working on or testing an ECU would rarely be more than one day. So by far, most of your “turn around” time is going to be in shipping and in the possible e-mail communication back and forth and/or payment time. And how long that other stuff takes is completely out of our control and can vary from a couple days to (in some extreme cases) several weeks!