Yeah it's a bit of a gamble, Nick at Carbon Chip said the TD1 isn't actually flagged by the car but by the dealer if they think anything is wrong...
Flash counter does increment by one every time you plug a VCDS or software in, think I will map it, now just need to find insurance company that will allow modifications as I called AXA last night and they don't insure cars with modifications.
Well no according to Rappy, Carbon chip does like a bluefin/shark hand set so you can pop the cars standard map back on prior to the service. And according to Nick at carbon VCDS actually increases the flash counter x1 if you've scanned the car.
If they query it say someone did an autoscan on the car?
I know i hit a fox and it knocked my radar sensor off and i was getting a message up on the mfd. I did several autoscans and reset the fault code....flash counter must be at least x8
I am in our US office so I honestly don't know who this person is, really don't care who this person is and nothing I'm about to say has anything to do with them possibly being a competitor (I use that loosely).
There is a lot of really dumb stuff being said by this Nick person, if they believe some of the things they are saying they should not be touching your vehicles, it is actually kind of scary.
TD1 can be flagged several ways.
The main and most common way unless you have some really bent out of shape dealer and you slept with the techs sister or something is the system will automatically detect that non stock software is in the vehicle. The dealer has no way to control this at all, they are not manually setting it simply connecting to the diagnostic computer at the dealer checks the file in the ecu and if it does not match flags the car. Allegedly but not confirmed (by me personally) even having factory software but a different revision could flag your car. This flag CAN be removed by having the dealer flash the car to stock and rescanning it, it will pop up not flagged when they recheck the system. The main reason for this is if they had no way to remove the flag they couldn't certify used cars anymore
. This has been in the documentation from VW since before the system was even turned on.
If your dealer thinks you have software they are not supposed to flag the car since the system did not detect it (some don't auto detect those they can), if you have other modifications to the drive train such as an intake or exhaust, this is when they can manually set the flag. This flag can be harder to have cleared because you dealt with a crappy dealer who felt this was something that should be done and you now have to convince them to undo it. This is pretty rare.
TD1 DOES NOT VOID YOUR WARRANTY!!. While it may result in warranty denial it does not void it. The TD1 flag is meant to inform a dealer that modifications are present. Two parts here, first being to alert them that things might be different and the diagnostic process may require a different approach. The second is that it means that Vw/Audi now know that this car might have parts not covered so they are telling the dealer a head of time that their warranty claim if they put one through better be solid and documented that the part was actually faulty. You CAN have parts related to the powertrain on a TD1 flagged car warrantied. Most denials I have seen are actually dealers afraid of being audited and having to pay Vw/Audi back for the warranty claim. They skipped the actual diagnostic process and simply denied the work, warranty was not void. The exception being Audi of Canada, when TD1 came about they went full stupid with TD1 and refused to work on vehicles flagged. Honestly it was appalling and had I lived in Canada would have tried to do a class action against them for the crap they pulled and I HATE law suits especially class actions.
Now for this VCDS crap I read several times. There is a very very very very key word in flash counter, that is FLASH. VCDS scans can not, do not and will not EVER increase your flash counters. It is accessing modules in 100% the same way that the dealer tool does. I am astonished that a "tuner" is the source of this misinformation.
Unless of course the x1 is just a math equation here and you mean that the counter was 2 and it increases by x1 which would come out to 2
+1 I can assure you does not occur.