alright guys this is the last of these
videos I'm putting together with this
bench top harness I did you know we
showed the XM stereo receiver and how to
unlock that we showed a little bit on
the body control module the powertrain
control module I'm going to end it with
the radio so again this is a working set
up I linked up at the top how you can
build a bench harness like this but it's
powered off my bench power supply and
I've got a switch here that simulates
putting the ignition switch in the run
position and we can come over here and
we show the radio is working just fine
both FM channels AM and XM is running on
the preview so I'm gonna go back here
shut it off and what I'm going to do is
I'm gonna shut this off just as if you
turn the key off we're not gonna shut
the power off to it because it's just
like leaving your battery connected and
then what I'm going to do is I'm going
to slip this XM receiver thus to shil
radio receiver aside and I'm gonna pull
out this little surrogate antenna and
I'm gonna pull out the connections in
the back of the radio that you would
normally disconnect in the vehicle what
we're going to do is going to simulate
what happens if I needed to replace this
radio for whatever reason and I go to a
salvage yard and I bring a new radio
from a different vehicle and just to
keep track of these I'm gonna put a
little one here for original and a
little R over here for replacement and
what if I brought this home and I put it
in my vehicle and I wanted to get it
going what you're gonna see of course is
it's going to be locked and I'm gonna
show you how you would normally take
care of that without having to damage or
mess up the the radio itself so now if I
turn the power back on I get this locked
message right so if I go down here and
try to change the Bands I'm not able to
do anything even though technically the
XM receiver is not locked the head units
lock so I can't change the band's or do
anything there so what would you
normally do well normally what you would
do with the dealer with this kind of
situation is you'd fire up your tech -
and I'll show you how you're supposed to
do this without tearing apart the radio
and damaging anything or modifying it
if you had a tech - and I'm gonna show
you a second way to do this afterwards
if you don't have a tattoo but I'm going
to go ahead and build the vehicle this
particular bench top harness is meant to
replicate a 2004 Chevrolet J car
Cavalier and I'm gonna go into the body
it's gonna complain about there's no
OnStar system that's normal and I'm
gonna come down to the radio and then
I'll come down to special functions and
radio setup so again you know - you know
we're not cutting this a clip you know
if I span over here the radio is still
locked all I'm gonna do is I'm going to
run this radio setup it's very similar
to what you do if you had a calibration
err on the radio and I'll link a video I
did previously with correcting a
calibration error but I'm gonna run this
setup program and one of the things this
guy is gonna ask me is what kind of
radio is this so you'll need to know
what kind of radio this is by the
regular production option sticker that's
back in the trunk and in the case of
this vehicle other vehicles that may be
in the glovebox
this happens to be a US eight radio and
there's probably some other options here
I'm just going to check nope okay so
we're just gonna check take the US eight
option now this is important for getting
the right amplification for the stereo
speakers that may have been installed in
the vehicle as well as activating
whether or not an extra amplifier might
have been in the vehicle then you
specify the region it was three it was
sold in with the vehicle and it goes
ahead and does its thing so it's gonna
run some tests and while it's running if
we take a look at the radio we see that
it has already cleared the lock message
we're gonna wait for it to finish though
before we actually power it up so it's
still doing its thing it's copying over
the VIN information from the body
control module and it has run a test to
make sure that's all okay and if we pan
over here again and we turn this guy on
we lost our particular arm station but
if I manually go or the one that I get
really well here in the garage ah hold
on a second I did forget something I did
not hook aren't
back off that is why we got some static
sorry about that
and how if I turn to a station it comes
in good and clear in this area works
just fine so that's how you would unlock
a radio normally and you see a lot of
times on eBay they'll tell you how you
have to go the dealer and get it
programmed that's what they're talking
about they're talking about running this
setup either with a physical tech 2 or
you can use an MDI unit and and run
check to win so if you have a setup like
this with the MDI right you can also use
one of these and you would just use on
these older vehicles you use the tech to
win emulator on Windows to do the exact
same thing so what if you don't have any
of these tools what can you do well what
I'm going to show you also is how you
can open up the unit and and we'll use
this one we already swapped out because
they're they're both unlock now and
they're both basically clones of each
other at this point with the same thing
and I'm going to open this unit up and
what we're gonna do is we're gonna
without touching the without damaging
the board and without removing the
EEPROM and then no lifting legs and all
these other kind of hacks you see on
these other videos if you if you if you
want to do this without damaging
everything I'm gonna show you how to
reprogram the EEPROM there's the same
thing that the tech 2 does will do
manually so let me get set up with that
and get the tech 2 out of the way and
we'll come back and do that all right
guys I've got the original radio that we
did this that we started with and your
radio may look different when I get this
apart because obviously this is the one
with a CD player and no cassette this
radio was available in o3o 405 very
similar to radios and OH - and o6 but
when I get it open it might be a little
bit different but this technique I'm
gonna show applies to them all so on
you're gonna have to first flip it over
because obviously on this piece on the
top cover we've got the CD player drive
mechanism and so we want to flip this
guy over and you can just take a small
flathead there are some slots in the
back on this lid that you can use the
screwdriver to kind of help you get this
started just kind of give it a twist and
it'll get this guy started to the point
where you get it off enough where you
can use your fingers to get it the rest
of the way and get it up a little bit
more just want to get one of these
corners up enough to do that
I think it might be enough it's enough
on this side quite enough on this side
it's got to be slow and patient with it
there it is once it pops off you can
reveal the circuit board that is inside
and let me turn a light on here it might
make it a little better no probably not
we'll go with the flashlight route the
chip we're after is one of the two that
is obscured by this tuning knob so we're
actually going to have to do some
further disassembly in order to get at
it to the point where we can use one of
these test clips to reprogram the EEPROM
so what you have to do to do that is to
remove the front plate off of this guy
and so to start that disassembly what
I'm going to do is remove these knobs so
these two will come off together there's
two pieces to them to kind of keep them
together if you can at the very base
there might be sometimes falls out but
there's a little felt piece in here if
you see those just keep keep an eye on
them and I'm also gonna remove this guy
which I see there you can see that felt
piece there it's kind of sitting in
there so when we take this off we just
want to make sure we don't lose those
they're just a little insulation pieces
and then the next thing we're going to
need to do is loosen up one of these
bolts it's holding this guy but we'll be
able to take this off before we do that
so getting this off got a series of
these little clips you're just gonna
have to work your look work off and this
part here can be a challenge to your
patience right because as you get one
off and variably they're going to want
to try to go back on
but if you can get a pair of them to
stay off for a moment and you can get
one side off and usually I'll start
winning the one in the progress with
this process what I might do just
because I'm trying to show you this in
film it might get a couple of little
studies to stick under here I let show
me a little um shims to stick under here
to keep it from snapping back let me go
grab a couple of those right I'm back
guys I just wanted to find I've got some
of these little guitar pick looking
tools use them when I'm working on a
smartphone an iPhone or an Android phone
to get the screen glass off the back or
the front screen but they'll work nicely
to keep these guys from snapping back in
on us so I'm going to start on the other
side because the tabs on the on the
other side are smaller than these tabs
but before I flip it I didn't show
pulling these wires out these harness
connections out so I want to do that now
these are just the two that connect to
the front control panel you don't need
to do this one that goes into this tuner
knob button here on this little board
just these two
alright so flip it back around put this
guy into position and take a little
sponging tool or even a small flat-head
screwdriver something you can use to
slide them in like that and then with
those guys keeping that from snapping
back in will be able to work these guys
off the side nice times we let this one
go we'll probably have those clips fall
yep there they go okay and then the last
one it's gonna be this guy it's not one
and you just want to be really patient
with these tabs because you know they're
plastic and they're they've got a lot of
miles on them at this stage this one
here I kind of bent a little bit but I
can fix that all right then we're just
gonna fold this down so we don't damage
this connection here what I can do on
this guy is I can just put a little hot
air on him from a blow dryer or
something he'll stick back his original
position okay let's keep going
next thing we want to do is take this
nut off so we can move this little board
out of the way
it's super super-thin but eventually
you'll get a bite on it and you can spin
this off and that's the only thing
that's holding this little board that's
obstructing our view in the way so get
this guy off and now with this moved out
of the way we could finally get access
to the chips we were talking about down
here
so when you look all the way down here
and you zoom in on these chips the guy
we're interested in is the one closest
to the metal frame to the left in the
view here it's got a house part number
on it adèle fie house part number but
it's actually a typical 24 co8 EEPROM
and that's the way we'll be able to read
it so let me go ahead and hook up the
test clip to that and then we'll come
over to the EEPROM software and read it
in and fortunately these radios the way
they're wired up you can typically read
these chips in circuit it's just a
matter of getting a good grip on it with
the test clip I think I got it there
we'll see if we've got to read over here
so I've set the IC in the particular
software I'm using as a 24 co8 that's if
we got it in the right position nope
it's missing contact with one of the
pins let me just uh Reese Wizzle that
while you can't save a lot of time not
having to remove these from the board it
does sometimes take a couple of tries to
get them into the right all right we
finally got a good read on this sorry
about the delay with the test clip so
let me tell you some of the information
that you're seeing in here so there's
two pieces of information that are
recognizable this value that you'll see
is the serial number of the radio you
can find this on the the Delco
electronics sticker that you'll see on
the side of the radio itself
and then what's tying up something this
you're not going to touch this is just
so you can kind of recognize what you're
looking at your your preset information
will be stored in here in a kind of
obfuscated way but then what's really of
use to the video here is this this value
starting at this location to here is the
last six digits of the VIN number and
and this is what we would need to unlock
now I have a version of the EEPROM in
here that I have written to this right
before we start this clip I mean
basically all I did is I came over here
and I loaded this VIN that has been pre
saved and I rewrote this chip so that we
would have that value because if you
guys are called this was a radio that
was already unlocked right so we did we
don't have a problem here with it
already being unlocked if the radios
unlocked paradoxically if you go in here
and mess with the VIN number the BCM
will go correct it and the reason is
because it recognizes the serial number
of the radio already and for whatever
reason the firmware deals with that kind
of situation so I have to get this into
a state where it's unlocked to begin
with and then I'll show you how we
unlock it manually now let me just prove
to you that we're in that kind of a
state right so we wrote this chip and we
got it sitting at this different VIN
number down here to five one two eight
four and we've got this M one four oh
six eight seven seven three nine as the
serial number so let's walk over to our
setup I'm going to take the test clip
off of this guy and then I'm just going
to route our cables in here because I do
need to reconnect the front panel so we
actually see the information displayed
on there
gotta get both of these to come through
we go
I'm gonna reconnect the small guy and
then I'm gonna go reconnect the larger
one sometimes just a little bit of slack
that gets caught up if you don't route
it to the exact same little crevice I
went up to high and cut off some of my
slack so I'd blew it down to the lower
one all right and then I want to get
this guy off the board so that he
doesn't cause any kind of shorts or
anything just kind of write them over
here just so he's not sitting on the
board and then I'm just gonna I'm gonna
just kick it just like this I'm not
gonna try to reassemble it any further
and I'm just gonna go in here and
reconnect our radio we still have our
bench supply powered up it's upside down
of course you hear the CD motor going
right there I'm going to flip our switch
on I'm gonna connect up the antenna
because I don't care about getting any
reception but you can see we're locked
right so that's we're in the lock state
again so we put this EEPROM back into a
lock state where the BCM says hey I
don't know what this radio is and it's
the wrong VIN number
so I'm locking it out all right so now
I'm gonna show you how we can unlock it
so I turn the switch off I'm gonna wreak
read iske necked these connections and
then I'm gonna bring it back over here
now before I actually open it up I'm
going to show you these sticker on the
side I was referring to you know here's
where you can see that number that I was
talking about and we could find that
number still left up on the screen from
where we read in the chip previously m14
zero six eight seven seven three nine
that's the serial number of this
particular radio so now let's go unlock
it so I'm gonna go get this guy out of
the way again I'm gonna greet disconnect
our two little connectors for the front
panel and I go ahead and lay this guy
back down horse one of these little
clips on the bottom got stuck there we
go
all right and then we're gonna have to
get our test clip back into position
again which is very the hardest part of
the whole thing and the reason it's so
hard on this one by the way is you've
got this little metal tab here in the
way and it's always going to be kind of
putting pressure on the test clip and
trying to move it to the side so that
that's what are the reasons why this
particular one is so hard to get a good
connection because you've got this guy
pushing against you all right I'm going
to clear this out I probably don't have
it connected yet and if I don't and I
may break this just to get this going so
you guys don't see me taking two or
three tries to get this test clip to
properly get in position
try it one more time before I do that
all right hey got lucky there it is
alright so now I'm going to come down
here and change this VIN and this
particular vehicle to unlock this is one
six zero three zero nine haven't touched
anything else in here I'm just gonna
write this out I'm gonna clear the
buffer and I read it back in to make
sure it took one six zero three zero
nine and now I'm gonna walk over and do
the same thing take the test clip off
now go ahead and route these guys
through the correct hole this time we
connect up our our large cable we
connect up our small cable get our
little tuning knob here out of the way
so it's not shorting anything out come
over here and hook up our two
connections your CD player come on
should I put our little antenna here
this time and this time we're not locked
and the radio is working
so that's how you unlock the radio
manually so I've shown you two different
ways to do this I've shown you how to do
it with a tech two which is how the
dealer would do it and if you don't have
a tech two I've shown you how you can do
what the tattoo would do which is go in
there
read the information about the radio
serial number see what the VIN is and
get the VIN matched and coded to the
body control module as part of the setup
procedure we've done that manually by
programming in the EEPROM manually using
an EEPROM programmer and all I've done
here with this you can use any EEPROM
programmer really you just need one
that's capable of reading in circuit I
just used one of these low of five
dollar jobs on ebay actually modified
this for five volt automotive you so
I'll put a link up in the top if you're
interested so I hope this helps you out
helps you save some money if you got
some comments leave them down below I'll
try to help otherwise please like and
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