itsgr8
Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2026
- Threads
- 7
- Messages
- 43
- Reaction score
- 47
- Location
- SF Bay Area - Mid-Pen
- Car(s)
- 2025 Integra Type S
- Thread starter
- #1
Recently got my ECU cloned and jailbroken, remotely, by Phearable, and also flashed their Stage-2 Tune (all stock, no bolt-ons). Want to share my experience with the community.
A few things upfront:
1. What is "remote" jailbreak?
With normal jailbreak service, you need to take the ECU out of the car, ship it, have someone jail break for you then ship back. At minimum 2-3 days of downtime in the process during which you can't drive your car, even assuming you do overnight shipping both ways.
With remote jail break:
- Phearable ships the jailbreak hardware & laptop to you.
- You set up an appointment with them.
- During an appointment, you connect the hardware to your ECU (no need to take it out), get on a phone call with Phearable, then they'll remotely login the laptop to do the jailbreak.
- The whole process should take less 1 hour.
- Afterward you ship the hardware back to Phearable (obviously).
If your car is your daily driver, the difference between 2-3 days of downtime vs 1 hr is quite appealing.
2. What's ECU clone?
To avoid jailbreaking your factory ECU and void your warranty, you can purchase a "donor" ECU (2025 ITS part num: 37820-6PV-A06). Phearable can clone the factory ECU into the donor ECU and jailbreak the donor ECU only. Your factory ECU stay unchanged. When it's time for a trip to the dealer for recall/etc, just swap-in the factory ECU and you should be golden.
My Timeline (PST)
- 1/19: order placed for ECU clone+jailbreak+Hondata flashpro+stage2 tune
- I was 3rd inline for the service since they have limited hardware. I was also out-of-town for a few days in Feb
- 2/23: hardware received, set up appointment for 2/24 noon, got a few instructions on jailbreak prep
- 2/24:
- 11:30: took factory ECU out of the car, have the laptop/connection ready
- 12:00p: got on a call with John Vega from Phearable, first did the clone, went smoothly.
- When we flash stage2 tune, however, we ran into a problem with Hondata. I was still able to drive the car around with the donor ECU, just without the tune.
- John spent a few hours working with Hondata to resolve it.
- We tried again around 4pm, and we re-did the clone and were able to flash the tune. A bit shoutout for John for working on this issue in late eastern hours.
- 2/25: shipped the hardware back
The Phearable Stage-2 Tune
My car situation:
- no performance mods
- daily driver, mostly commute and drive kids around
- I mostly drive in Individual mode: engine = sport, suspension&steering=comfort.
- I almost never put engine in Sport+ mode due to the pop&bang noise (also got pulled over for it once)
- I do not have access to #93 near my area.
With the stage 2 tune and #91 gas, the car feels a bit more powerful then factory (in sport mode), but the difference is quite subtle and I was not blown away.
However, the car did feel more peppy in Sport+ mode, and the difference is quite noticeable.
I asked John about the tuning. What happened was:
- the wide-open-throttle performance between sport and sport+ is the same
- however the partial-throttle performance is more aggressive in sport+ mode.
John was kind enough to revise the tune for me (with no charge, as a courtesy due to the Hondata glitch), such that:
- sport mode has the exact same power curve and throttle response with sport+
- pops&bangs only enabled in sport+ mode.
Effectively the only difference between sport and sport+ mode is just the pops&bangs.
With this setup, I am pretty happy with the tune. The car feels noticeably more peppy and eager to rev.
Hope you find this experience useful!
A few things upfront:
1. What is "remote" jailbreak?
With normal jailbreak service, you need to take the ECU out of the car, ship it, have someone jail break for you then ship back. At minimum 2-3 days of downtime in the process during which you can't drive your car, even assuming you do overnight shipping both ways.
With remote jail break:
- Phearable ships the jailbreak hardware & laptop to you.
- You set up an appointment with them.
- During an appointment, you connect the hardware to your ECU (no need to take it out), get on a phone call with Phearable, then they'll remotely login the laptop to do the jailbreak.
- The whole process should take less 1 hour.
- Afterward you ship the hardware back to Phearable (obviously).
If your car is your daily driver, the difference between 2-3 days of downtime vs 1 hr is quite appealing.
2. What's ECU clone?
To avoid jailbreaking your factory ECU and void your warranty, you can purchase a "donor" ECU (2025 ITS part num: 37820-6PV-A06). Phearable can clone the factory ECU into the donor ECU and jailbreak the donor ECU only. Your factory ECU stay unchanged. When it's time for a trip to the dealer for recall/etc, just swap-in the factory ECU and you should be golden.
My Timeline (PST)
- 1/19: order placed for ECU clone+jailbreak+Hondata flashpro+stage2 tune
- I was 3rd inline for the service since they have limited hardware. I was also out-of-town for a few days in Feb
- 2/23: hardware received, set up appointment for 2/24 noon, got a few instructions on jailbreak prep
- 2/24:
- 11:30: took factory ECU out of the car, have the laptop/connection ready
- 12:00p: got on a call with John Vega from Phearable, first did the clone, went smoothly.
- When we flash stage2 tune, however, we ran into a problem with Hondata. I was still able to drive the car around with the donor ECU, just without the tune.
- John spent a few hours working with Hondata to resolve it.
- We tried again around 4pm, and we re-did the clone and were able to flash the tune. A bit shoutout for John for working on this issue in late eastern hours.
- 2/25: shipped the hardware back
The Phearable Stage-2 Tune
My car situation:
- no performance mods
- daily driver, mostly commute and drive kids around
- I mostly drive in Individual mode: engine = sport, suspension&steering=comfort.
- I almost never put engine in Sport+ mode due to the pop&bang noise (also got pulled over for it once)
- I do not have access to #93 near my area.
With the stage 2 tune and #91 gas, the car feels a bit more powerful then factory (in sport mode), but the difference is quite subtle and I was not blown away.
However, the car did feel more peppy in Sport+ mode, and the difference is quite noticeable.
I asked John about the tuning. What happened was:
- the wide-open-throttle performance between sport and sport+ is the same
- however the partial-throttle performance is more aggressive in sport+ mode.
John was kind enough to revise the tune for me (with no charge, as a courtesy due to the Hondata glitch), such that:
- sport mode has the exact same power curve and throttle response with sport+
- pops&bangs only enabled in sport+ mode.
Effectively the only difference between sport and sport+ mode is just the pops&bangs.
With this setup, I am pretty happy with the tune. The car feels noticeably more peppy and eager to rev.
Hope you find this experience useful!
Sponsored
