I'm hoping to tap into your expertise on the Grand Vitara V6 ECU family. I have a water-damaged unit from an Australian-delivered 2003 Grand Vitara and I'm trying to work out my donor options before I spend money on the wrong part.
**My ECU (dead — water damage through windscreen seal):**
- Suzuki P/N: 33920-52J50
- Hitachi P/N: PCMSB-880
- PCB marking: GE222848-A
- Sticker code: 2.5 E24 4AT 03MY
- Vehicle: 2003 Grand Vitara FTD62V, H25A V6 2.5L, 4-speed auto, RHD, Australia (E24)
**Donor options I'm considering (much easier to source):**
My local auto sparky is comfortable doing a chip swap / BDM read-and-write from the damaged board onto a donor, provided the hardware platform is the same. So my questions for you:
1. Do the PCMSB-880 (E24) and PCMSB-825 / 825A (E33) share the same base PCB and main processor, or are they different hardware generations?
2. If the PCB is shared, is the difference between markets handled mainly in software plus a few extra components (extra O2 sensor inputs, EVAP drivers etc. for the US OBD2 model), as you've described for the 67D43 vs 67D60 family?
3. For someone going the chip-swap route, would you recommend transferring just the EEPROM (immo + adaptations) onto a 825/825A donor, or a full BDM dump of the 880 firmware? Any known gotchas with mixing E24 firmware on E33 hardware (extra drivers floating, missing inputs, etc.)?
4. Have you seen a 33920-52J5x (E24 AT V6) on your bench, or do you have any photos of the PCMSB-880 PCB to compare against a 825/825A?
Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Sourcing an exact E24 match locally is proving very hard, so any guidance on safe cross-market donors would save me a lot of guesswork.
Thanks in advance — your archive has already saved me from a couple of bad decisions.
