My pal has a 2009 vrs petrol, the engine management light is on, she has taken it to a local VAG specialist and they said it need to go to Skoda for an update on the ecu, Skoda have told her they believe the ecu has a fault but it might be a wiring fault, before terrifying her with the costs, she has had the car from new and it has been well looked after, is there any where that the ecu could be sent to be checked out properly/repaired?
or what is the score with finding a secondhand ecu and plugging that in, or would it need coding to the car?

thanks for looking. 

There are a few ecu repair centres. Some will want to exchange the unit. I've no experience of using any of them i'm afraid. 

 

But if wiring is a possibility, then it won't fix that. It would be an idea to inspect suspect areas first. Possibility at the ecu / connector end. 

Given that 99.9% of the ECU's that are deemed faulty are in reality "No Fault found" it should come as no surprise that the test companies have decided on a "Factory Exchange" business model.

Can the ecu be straight swapped with another with the same part number? i.e. without any programming?

You can't just swap the ECU, it has an immobilizer that has to match with the instrument cluster.

 

Does the engine run?

 

If so, get a diagnostic run on the car with VCDS.

 

That will give you/ us an idea of the problem causing the engine light & probably has nothing to do with the ECU, which is normally a very reliable part.

Right, thank you for that, the car randomly starts running badly then sorts itself ok, it went to an independent VW garage who said they though the ecu needed updating by skoda, skoda said it didn’t and the fault maybe the ecu or maybe the wiring. 

Could just be an intermittent stick coil breaking down causing it to run on 3 cylinders.

 

Get it scanned when next running rough.