PCM and BCM transplant?

[BigChief]

Hey all,

I'm looking for a bit of information or experience in swapping a high trim level PCM and BCM into a tradesman/slt or whatever. I had the thought of grabbing a '14 sport pair of modules and swapping them into my '22 warlock (slt). The reason being is like to add the options I enjoyed in my previous sport into my slt warlock without the reprogramming of the various systems. I'm looking to add the inverter, heated seats, wheel, and 44-45 w/switch.

Any advice?

 

[Ken226]

The PCM and BCM have to be programmed with the VIN of the car they will be installed into anyway, so you won't get away without any programming. They aren't plug-n-play.

Also, even within a specific trim package, there are different options. For example, a Ram Sport came with some things standard, and many other things were options. You could go look at 100 different "Sport" trucks and likely find about 100 different combinations of heated seats, cooled seats, push button start, backup cam, trailer brake controller, etc, etc, etc, etc......... Every single one of those options will be a BCM configuration that needs changed.

The idea that you can add the options you want to your truck, then manage to find a used BCM from a truck that happened to have exactly the same combination of options as your trucks post modification configuration is very unlikely. Even then, you'd still have to program the VIN to the module.

Alfa OBD, and OBD Link MX+ and lots n lots of searching and reading are pretty much your only option. It's not that bad though, most of the things you'd want to do have been done and documented on this forum.

 

[SitKneelBend]

Hey all,

I'm looking for a bit of information or experience in swapping a high trim level PCM and BCM into a tradesman/slt or whatever. I had the thought of grabbing a '14 sport pair of modules and swapping them into my '22 warlock (slt). The reason being is like to add the options I enjoyed in my previous sport into my slt warlock without the reprogramming of the various systems. I'm looking to add the inverter, heated seats, wheel, and 44-45 w/switch.

Any advice?

Good news, your 22 BCM has the settings for all trims already. You can set them with AlfaOBD. I highly advise against an older BCM. Options will be removed from your later model BCM as the options weren't an offering. You also have options for many other CDJR brands not relevant to your vehicle in your BCM (like third row entertainment packages).

 

[BigChief]

Thank you both, I'll be going down the alfaobd rabbit hole then.

 

[SitKneelBend]

Thank you both, I'll be going down the alfaobd rabbit hole then.

One word of caution with AlfaOBD...MAKE A BACKUP FIRST!

You can get into some "scary" situations that are easily corrected if you have a known good factory config backed up.

If you're having trouble passing the AlfaOBD thread, feel free to ask questions here and I'll answer.

 

[RamDiver]

One word of caution with AlfaOBD...MAKE A BACKUP FIRST!

You can get into some "scary" situations that are easily corrected if you have a known good factory config backed up.

If you're having trouble passing the AlfaOBD thread, feel free to ask questions here and I'll answer.

Most situations are easily corrected with a backup config file, except when a module goes bonkers and floods the CAN bus with erroneous garbage data.

After a few tweaks, I lost the EPS, ABS and the entire EVIC, including the speedo.
Multiple attempts at restoring to the original state produced no improvements.

The final solution was reinitializing the ABS module. One of the procedures I performed had warned about potentially having to reinitialize the ABS module, and I chose to ignore it because I had already completed these same tweaks many times, without any grief.

Be sure to read all the advisories provided in AlfaOBD. I'm more careful now.

.

 

[SitKneelBend]

Most situations are easily corrected with a backup config file, except when a module goes bonkers and floods the CAN bus with erroneous garbage data.

After a few tweaks, I lost the EPS, ABS and the entire EVIC, including the speedo.
Multiple attempts at restoring to the original state produced no improvements.

The final solution was reinitializing the ABS module. One of the procedures I performed had warned about potentially having to reinitialize the ABS module, and I chose to ignore it because I had already completed these same tweaks many times, without any grief.

Be sure to read all the advisories provided in AlfaOBD. I'm more careful now.

.

I think we've all been there! I'll pile on again and add patience as the number 2 most important thing. Many people make additional changes after the first didn't appear to work. Some settings take time to settle in ...