savefatkids

lol you guys are confusing me now. does anyone know how much utec would cost me? how much is the install and the tune?

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

It's not confusing.

Simple fact of the matter is that for what you have, the UTEC is too much and too expensive (unless you have deep pockets and don't care).

A Greddy Blue or preferrably a Greddy Ultimate will do you just perfect and if you ever decide to go FI, the EU will do great at that as well ( it did for me )

led

iTrader: (6)

But if he never decides to go FI, then what would you suggest?

I have a few breather mods and within the next couple of months I was going to install headers. Unless I hit the jackpot, I don't think that I'll put on any other mods and I don't plan on going FI anytime soon. The reason I was considering a technosquare reflash is because I know nothing about tuning and I figured that if I drop it off they'll know what they are doing. But, you are somewhat convincing me to go for the Greddy Ultimate instead.

If I did opt to get the Greddy Ultimate, how would I go about tuning it, considering that I know nothing about tuning? Is there a learning curve to it? Would I have someone do it for me? Again, I know nothing about tuning.

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

To reiterate, if you are going to go with an FI system the Greddy EU will do just fine as it was a unit that was originally intended for FI applications.

Again, I have it on my car when it was boosted and I will use it again when the turbo goes back on in about a week or so. The Greddy EU is a great, tried and true machine that costs much less than the UTEC. In the UTEC's defence (as if it needs one) it is also a great piece of equipment and is very popular but for the most part, for lower boost levels, the Greddy EU will suffice.

One of the things that attracted me to the Greddy EU is that is has the same (or close to the same) resolution level of that as the FCON which IIRC is 32x32. This means it can take into account many more factors going on with your car and tue accordingly such as boost, fuel, air, temp etc etc.

Pros like Shariff would better be able to handle the technicalities of EMSs. I found that my research paid off as I was able to get a excellent tune providing both power and safety.

Lastly, in regards to self-tuning, I highly advise against it as the professionals have often gone through training from the vendors themselves and get qualifications and certs.

For people like you and me that let others do their work on their car, tuning a car is on the level of brain surgery because in essence, that is what tuning is.

Do you feel confident opening-up someone's head and tinkering with their synapses and gray matter?

Havok_RLS2

iTrader: (9)

^^ For the guy that assumes he knows everything. ^^

MY Current list of mods:

* Turbonetics Turbo kit (Purchased from Function Tuning) ** https://my350z.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250827
* AAM 3" Dual Exhaust (Custom for the TN kit)
* AAM Oil Pan Spacer kit
* Motordyne 5/16" Iso Thermal plenum spacer (with all Iso Thermal components, Aramid gasket and CCV)
* 440 RC Injectors (Kit came with 380cc junk)
* ACT Street Clutch and ProLite Flywheel
* UTEC = FTW! ( My TN kit came with a pre-tuned Greddy E-manage that found it’s way in the TRASH = FACT)
* SARD Trigger Boost Controller
* Greddy Type RS BOV
* Complete set of 52mm PLX gauges (AFR, EGT, and Boost)
* Full Blown Micro ATX Car-puter built by ME with touchscreen.
* UpRev Cipher diagnostic tool (Purchased from AAM)
* 19” Volt racing GT-7 – Gunmetal
* Buddy Club racing spec Coilovers
* Battle Version rear suspension tie rods - Complete.

** All exhaust piping is being sent off to JetHot coating to receive their JET-HOT 2000 coating process.

BTW... I have receipt and or photos for everything I own in this current list. I would waste my time and yours BS-ing some sorta “wish list” of lies. I don’t have to do that.

Future Mod:

Synapse Engineering Synchronic Wastegate (The NEW ****)
AAM stage 1 fuel return system

Can I "Holler" at ya now Dummy? (Snicker - Snicker)


And with that statment ladies and gents, this A$$-Hat has confirmed what we all feared was true from the get go.... You don't know what the Hell you're talking about and should keep your **** Cutter shut.









Mama always said.... "Only a FOOL argues with an IDIOT."
Oh Well... I never listen to Mom much anyway.

venommaxr33

iTrader: (2)

Blu Blur is right, do not try to tune yourself...VERY VERY bad idea unless you know what your doing. Don't go with a re-flash of you stock ECU...after you do it once it don't work that well if you try to re-flash again. the Greddy EMU will work fine...i would have used it but i'm going FI and want more tuneability and for me, short of the FCON its the best out there.

venommaxr33

iTrader: (2)

if you really want one, check out THMotorsports, since your not FI you won't need the map sensor. you can get the UTEC for i think $780 shipped(give or take) you can install it yourself its really that easy. it's really plug and play. if you want someone else to install they shouldn't charge anymore than $50 for install...however tuning is a diff story. let me re-interate...if you go with the utec make sure you take it to a qualified tuner, its an MS-DOS based system so everyone don't know what they're doing. good luck whatever route you decide, hope we didn't confuse you to much!!!

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

You would think you would atleast mention that you have a turbo kit in your sig but you didn't. As far as I can tell, you are all N/A. Pictures prove nothing in this day and age so F that.

What matters is that you still didn't challenge any of my counterpoints and the reason being is beacsue I left you no room to counter.

The fact of the matter is that a Greddy EU is a fine piece of equipment that is not overkill and will suit the OP just fine.

Now go ride in your imaginary boosted car.

Havok_RLS2

iTrader: (9)

Yes dear.

* I used the word "Dear" because you sound like a little girl.

RudeG_v2.0

iTrader: (1)

To the OP...

My vote is for the Technosquare reflash. Since you're so close to them, I highly recommend going there and paying for the optional before/after dyno.

Unlike some of the guys here, I think the Technosquare reflash is still a good investment even if you're going FI, just for the sole reason that I've been told (correct me if I'm wrong about this guys) that the Technosquare reflash is the only one that corrects the issue of the throttle-by-wire control partially closing the throttlebody at the upper revs. This was my understanding from a discussion with a well known tuner/shop owner (who shall remain anonymous at this point). Does anybody know differently about this issue?

Sam at GTM... Can you verify this or weigh in on this argument about what you would recommend for an NA tune?

Ziggyrama

iTrader: (15)

That's bad advice. I am not sure why you guys put so much faith in the professional tuners. These guys aren't rocket scientists. Tuning isn't really that difficult as long as you understand some basic engine design principals and use a lot of common sense, especially in NA. Heck, you don't even need a dyno to tune for max power with NA car on pump gas. Set fueling to optimal torque AFR and push the timing to the detonation threshold. That's the secret If you're FI, it gets a bit more complicated since you need to understand the compressor efficiency and when you can go past the optimal point. Even then you can get around without a dyno but it definitely helps to have one to make things easier.

Here's one for the books. I used to own a WRX. Cobb is king in Subaru world when it comes to reflashes and staged maps. I bought the map, used it and it worked fairly well....or so I thought (BTW, Cobb is coming to Nissan with Accessport soon supposedly).

One day I got wise and decided to tune the car myself. I ditched Cobb and went with open source solution. With the money I got back from Cobb's Accessport sale, I bought monitoring devices so I could tune safely, EGT gauge, WBO2 and tactrix cable. As an added bonus, part of the open source solution was the power to download the ROM at will. So I downloaded Cobb's super-duper secret map and I looked inside to see what their tune was all about. I was shocked to see how little was actually changed. Cobb obviously never anticipated that anybody would have the power to actualyl look at what they did in the map. Oops. Some portions were just bad tuning. Others were unsafe for a modified car. Other parts like knock detection thresholds, ingition and fueling maps were scaled inadequately to account for the power levels a stage 2 WRX would make. This is from a "professional" tuner that has supposedly great reputation. Garbage. The problem is that people had no way of validating their work before and just did not know any better. Now, in the open source community, it's widely known that Cobb map is poor tune on a WRX because people didn't just take their word for it. There's a lot more to ECU than just dyno plots. So, anybody can complain but not everybody can do better, right? So I tried to tune it better myself. My map produced extra 20whp and 30 ft. lbs. of torque on the same hardware. Apparently I am a genius.....not really. I just tried harder. And I had no formal training and no formal certification. I am just an enthusiast that one day decided to take up tuning on my spare time, learned a ton about tuning from reading and studying my logs and managed to blow away that map that has been running on WRXs for years now and was done by these professionals. I posted my map on osecuroms.org and let anybody take a look at it. I added notes so people can learn what I did, what worked and what did not. As of today, there's several people running my map right now and another person adopted it for 91oct for CA people. Pretty sweet.

This isn't the only case of reputable shop tunes gone bad. I read posts from NASIOC members all the time complaining how their great tunes 6 months ago can't stand up to the test of 4 seasons. No one seems to get the idea of tuning for the seaons and the changes that come with them

So, you may ask" "Why Zig, why did you just tell us all that? You did Subarus, this is Nissan. It must be different." The moral of the story is that these professional tuners aren't always as great as you think. Subaru, Nissan, Honda, the paradigm is the same. Don't just follow blindly and assume that they're the best at it and you can't do better. Tuners want you to believe it's black magic or art. It pads their pockets. It's not. I really do nt like when people refer to tuning as art. It's a discrete science that requires analytical skills and good judgment.

So, you need to decide what you want to do. Do you want to tune yourself which will be extremely rewarding, I promise, or do you want to pay to get it done? Both angles offer advantages and disadvantages. Tuning yourself forces you to learn the platform inside out. Otherwise, you won't be very good at it. That means you'll really learn how the car works and what it likes to do. The down side is time you will spend doing it and the idea that you will have to rely on yourself and the answers you may get on the board. If you're comfortable with that, go for it.
If you don't trust yourself or you have no time to do the tuning, your option is to pay someone else to do it. The advantge is you get to pay and enjoy. The downside is usually cost and the "trust" you are putting into the person that will tune your car. Don't assume that just because the place can tune, it does it well.

Once you decide which route you want to go with, THEN I think you can think about the tool you want to use. If you're going to do it yourself, research the things you'll be working with and explore the features of the tool. How can you know what tool to choose if you don't know how you'll be using it? I am sure each one does certain things better than the other. If you pick the wrong one and hate it, it's an expensive mistake so do your homework.
If you're going with a shop, find out which tool they prefer. Having the tuner use the tool of their choice will really maximize your chance of success.

Good luck. DIY tuning is a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.

EDIT: I really need to stop writing these long posts I am just so bored at work.

Ziggyrama

iTrader: (15)

As a follow up, stock ECUs are usually a lot more powerful than most aftermarket EMs. I said it before: there's a lot more to ECU than just timing and fueling. Stock ECU is usually an incredibly adaptive piece of machinery that can alter lots of paramters like timing and fueling to compensate for things like intake air temps and atmospheric pressure. It also has lots of preventive measures to gaurd against detonation. Don't be very hasty to abandon it's power. Seems like I am suggesting reflash But then UTEC can utilize a lot of stock ECU's power for what it's extremely good at and add onto it. I think there're a few variables here and you need to consider all of them: future plans, reliability and effectiveness, easy of use, cost. Weigh them all in and decide. What works for some may not be the right solution for you.

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

The OP sounds like a rookie when it comes to tuning and he is obviously a complete noob when it comes to tuning the actual programs. Anyone such as him in their right mind would NEVER attemtp to tune their car. I understand wher you are coming from but unfortunately, the Z just doesn't have plug and play chips and programs like the Subys do. When you are messing with such an expensive car, why not just shell out $500 or less dollars to get it tuned corectly by tried and true professionals like Sam at GT motorsports?

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

I live 10 minutes away from Technosquare and they are the ones who in fact installed my TN system. They admitted that they have never installed any single turbo systems as they are ultimately familiar with the Greddy and the Power Ent system but they did a fantastic job on the install. I knew I was in the right hands when I came into check on my car and there was Richie and his associate prodding my car, revving the engine and listening to certain parts of my car with stethoscopes checking for leaks and what not. Everyone in their crew is actually over 50 years old with the exception of Tadashi and the receptionist girl who is into amateur drifting. They are a top notch crew. I actually rode with Tadashi as he hooked up an manual boost gauge to check the boost because I was detonating. As he floored it, you could hear the crackle and he asked me what kind of plugs I had, I told him ‘Iridium’ and he winced and said, ‘Iridium no good for turbo, too hot. Regular Nissan plus better. Maybe one step colder’.

Anyways, despite the shops overall skill and ingenuity, the reflash is nowhere near as competent as a good EMS. The biggest factor is that since Nissan designed the car to only be N/A, the ECU has no ability to read certain parameters such as boost. In addition, the sensors can’t read air pressure above a certain PSI. This I found out the hard way when I challenged a Cobra on the 110 freeway. I was catching up to him easily and all of a sudden, the car just shut down violently and made my head snap forward. All the gauges and lights came on like a Christmas tree. I was literally without power going 120 mph!!! Thank God I was on a straight section of freeway late at night. I put the car in neutral and restarted at about 115 mph and then put the car in 6th gear in an attempt to rev-match. To my horror, the car would not rev over 2,500 rpm or so no matter HOW HARD I pressed the gas. Luckily I had done some research and I knew what was going on: the car was in limp mode. I exited off the freeway and asked my buddy, whose SB is Vkzawa, on this site to escort me home. I waited 10 minutes in a k-mart parking lot with the engine idling like crazy. I turned it off, waited a few more minutes and turned the car back on. Everything was back to normal and I could rev to redline. The next day at work, I started doing research on EMS systems when I ran across a former Z member whose SN is Peruvian Z. He was selling his Greddy EU with a map sensor for $400!!! Turns out he was going FCON from what I remember. I bought it off of him in cash in person and about 2 weeks later, Sam at GT installed and tuned the car himself.

After the tune with the Greddy EU, the detonation was GONE and the unit also over rode the ECU’s inability to read air pressure above 12-13 psi which meant I could put the hammer to the floor and not worry about my engine cutting out on me. I also bought and installed a Zeitronix wideband sensor when I had it installed at Technosquare so I knew the threshold of boost where the stock ECU couldn’t handle the pressure.

Another hazard for the TS reflash is that it is rpm based which is kind of primordial in its way of controlling fuel and timing. A more accurate means of controlling the engine is load based which is what the Unichip, Greddy EU (maybe even the Blue, not sure) UTEC and FCON are based on: Load, not rpm.

So, to sum it all up, the TS Reflash will DEFINETELY not suffice for FI and considering that the reflash is almost as expensive as an EMS, you might as well get an EMS, just not the UTEC.

Ziggyrama

iTrader: (15)

I hear what you're saying. The Subies don't actually have any plug and play chips. The open source solution was purely based on a reflash The ECU on 05 or older WRXs is a Motorola HC16 microprocessor. Some guys got together, learnt how to download the ROM through ODB-2, hooked up a disassembler to the ROM image and disassembled the code. Once you know the instructions and what they access, you can start building maps and best part, altering them. Some other guys wrote a program called Enginuity that puts graphical interface in front of it and bam, you have a full tuning solution. Increadible.

If the OP is a noob at this, he should not attempt it. Bad things can happen if you don't know what you're doing, or worse, you can't tell if you're heading for trouble. I found that that is the biggest danger to newby tuners. They can't spot trouble when it's on the horizon. HOwever, if he feels that he has aptitude for it, I encourage people to try and learn and always exercise caution. Having an experienced friend helps a lot.

As far as I can tell, I think the VQ35 engine is based on a Hitachi microprocessor. Once I can figure out which one, then I can start working on how to get the ROM off it. It can be done for a Z too. Looks like Cobb already did that so I know it can be done. I suspect their Z accessport will be the same paradigm as the Suby one.

Ziggyrama

iTrader: (15)

Excellent point in this post. If you're going FI, the stock ECU is ill equipped to handle a turbo or SC. There are usually safeguards in the programing that are there to prevent damage which a car with stock programming will trip while boosted. One of the nototious ones is the MAF voltage output. Once it reaches certain level, which corresponds to certain air flow, which corresponds to power , ECU usually freaks out and can do various things like going into limp mode.

Going with FI on an NA ECU is a bad, bad idea. It was never meant for that kind of duty.

RudeG_v2.0

iTrader: (1)

Sorry, I guess I should have been more specific in my last post...

I wasn't suggesting not to use another EMS when going FI. In fact, I plan on going with the HKS F-Con VPro myself. My understanding (from the tuner I previously mentioned) is that the operation of the throttle-by-wire control is retained by the stock ECU even when adding the HKS F-Con VPRo to control everything else. He recommended getting the Technosquare L-spec reflash to resolve the issue with the throttle-by-wire. I was just thinking that the Technosquare reflash would be fine for the OP's current NA needs and that he would benefit from the reflashed throttle-by-wire map when/if he decides to go FI in the future with UTEC, F-Con VPro, etc.

Again... Is this true? Does anybody know differently about this specific issue?

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

Exactly- MAF voltage output.

Blu_Blur

iTrader: (1)

Well, the FCON is a super hardcore peice which, I belive, is completely stand alone which means you have to start from scratch on everything. I believe that it takes over all car functionality right down to air conditioning and the sort but I am not entirely sure.

I know there are some people like Sam and Shariff that can better answer that.

Overall, it is a big redundancy to get a reflash THEN get an EMS. There MAY be some benifits to it but unless your primary occupation is a professional race car driver, it ain't gona make much of a difference if any at all.

RudeG_v2.0

iTrader: (1)

Ya, I was hoping Sam (or Sharif) would come on here and give their .