Preventive Maintenance Done Should Do An ECU Reset??

[PlatinumM35]

A couple days ago I finally got around to doing some maintenance on my car. Long story short one of the tasks I did was change the belts and the car drives soooooo much smoother and accelerates better. Should I reset the ECU to learn how I drive? Even shifting in manual mode changed......

[agee]

Slightly off topic, but do people generally reset the ECU when they buy one of these cars? I just bought one a few weeks ago and wonder if the car is still adjusting to how I drive it as opposed to using information from the previous owner.

[atlM35]

It wouldn't hurt.

[The00Dustin]

Slightly off topic, but do people generally reset the ECU when they buy one of these cars? I just bought one a few weeks ago and wonder if the car is still adjusting to how I drive it as opposed to using information from the previous owner.

In my experience, the ECU is constantly learning. If you normally drive "normal" and then drive really hard for a day or drive in a long parade with lots of stops, I suspect it'd be at least a couple days before "normal" driving felt normal again. It may be subtle enough that you don't notice if you let someone else drive your car and they drive "normal" as well, but if you're paying close attention, you can notice the shift points and accelerator behavior change with your driving behavior (and they also tend to be different depending on the temperature of each of the following:
the engine
the transmission
the weather).

[splix]

I've had my M for a little over a year now, it came off a 3 year lease from a woman driver. Its always driven the same, honestly not as smooth as I'd like it to be. I'm fairly light on the peddle since I drive a lot of highway. I even did a transmission flush thinking it would help, which it did a little, but I still wasnt satisfied on how smooth it was. I chalked it up to getting spoiled on my mercedes 7 spd. transmission, which is butter smooth.
I just did the ECU reset yesterday and it made a huge difference. The car now drives so much smoother, night and day difference.
Most of the time during slow neighborhood driving, you could feel the car lunge into 2nd gear, thats gone. All other gear changes are hardly noticeable. Drop the hammer and the sudden surge of power is there, not ramping up like before.

[agee]

I just did the ECU reset yesterday and it made a huge difference. The car now drives so much smoother, night and day difference.
Most of the time during slow neighborhood driving, you could feel the car lunge into 2nd gear, thats gone. All other gear changes are hardly noticeable. Drop the hammer and the sudden surge of power is there, not ramping up like before.

That's great news. My previous lease owner was also an older person, based on the Bette Midler CD loaded onto the MusicBox.

I've noticed that the transmission will prematurely shift up a gear with light acceleration and downshift. Usually when I'm being a Sunday driver. I'll post an update after I reset the ECU and go for a drive.

[agee]

I've noticed that the transmission will prematurely shift up a gear with light acceleration and downshift. Usually when I'm being a Sunday driver. I'll post an update after I reset the ECU and go for a drive.

Update for future reference.

I've been driving around post ECU reset for a week or so now. Like splix, I noticed power delivery is more responsive, especially when getting on the highway or overtaking slower cars.

The strage 3rd-4th-3rd gear shuffle is still there, but I'm going to blame it on my bad gas pedal habits i've developed from my '97 altima daily driver/commuter car. I tend to ease up on the gas to let the Altima upshift and then reapply pressure. So I figure its my bad gas pedal habits, they're hard to break.