Nope but just remember, you get what you pay for. I have a 96 Auto ECU tuned by Technosquare for sale for $300 plus shipping.

EDIT: Max sig image size is 600x200. Thanks

R.I.P Dhione Loyola Watkins

Quote, originally posted by allensteiner »

$300 is a good deal but that would eat my blower money $75 is something i could live with...i guess i'll call them and ask questions till they hate me

Why would you want a chip if you're planning on going FI? You would want something like an EU with a wideband or a UTEC (would require alot more work but it's possible).

Ah, the good ol' butt dyno. Careful of the placebo effect.

Looked at the link and it's a bogus product...identical to the "performance chips" sold on ebay. It's a set of resistors and nothing more. You could get the same at Radio Shack for about $3.49 plus tax and it won't do anything. To actually make a difference, you need to adjust the a/f or ignition timing...I guarantee that this resistor does neither. Doing so requires that a daughterboard be installed in the ECU with the new maps. And even then, these only take effect at WOT since in any other throttle position, our cars are in open loop and use the data from the o2 sensors to adjust a/f on the fly.

For awhile, JET actually produced crap too for the 4th gen. Maybe they've turned things around, I haven't kept up with them since I stopped modding my Maxima. When I bought my Technosquare upgrade, there were only two good sources: TS and JWT. If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn't have bought either and gone straight to an Emanage Ultimate with an LC1 wideband. You can re-tune your car after every new mod rather than apply a cookie-cutter, generic tune that won't optimize your power...you just have to be willing to part with a grand up front. But this is a "pay to play" hobby/sport and too many people try to shortcut or costcut their way to success only to fail and be poorer for it.

"Hello Jerzy, All the "performance chips and gas savers" on ebay are all
scams. They send you a .5cent part that does not do anything for you. What
you have been looking at on our site is a vehicle performance chip. The SLR
chip is a custom programmed chip made specifically for each vehicle. Our
chip works by adjusting your Air/Fuel ratio to make your vehicle consume
less fuel and to produce its MAX potential horsepower. The chip is simple to
install and takes less than 10 minutes to fully install. We include step by
step installation instructions. The SLR chip connects into your IAT/AIT
sensor plug. Our chips are also safe and will not harm your vehicle in any
way. The SLR chip does not void your vehicle’s warranty either. If you have
any more questions please feel free to ask."

i'm not going to ask them any more questions because...that's where the ebay "chips" plug in...and i was hoping it was legit. you were right THT and i thought it might've been crap but was still hoping.

as for going FI that's gonna be completed next spring/summer so i was looking for something cheap/chip for the time being. i guess when i'm ready to install the turbo i'll give jwt a call and see what they'll have for me. expensive though my blower setup will be cheaper than their ecu.

btw the ebay resistor chips do work...i put a resistor in the iat plug on my old corolla and it cut my mileage in half - but i had it chipped

Honestly, you'd be much better off with a piggback engine management unit such as an eManage Ultimate. With the dyno and LC1 wideband o2 sensor, you're looking at about a grand or a little less if you street tune. At any rate, you'll have the flexibility to reprogram as you see fit plus you will optimize the car's performance as the program will be car-specific rather than a generic program from JWT.

I really wish we had reprogrammable ECUs like the GM guys have.

Life is better with an LS engine

So what ever happened with this performance chip? Did you ever receive it and was it "worth anything?"

I'm curious to know because I've visited this website as well as some other similar items on eBay such as the following:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors...l1116

Has anyone heard anything about Volo Performance chips?

Read the thread and you'll see that he came to the same conclusion that I was telling him: they're worthless.

As for what you posted, our ECUs use read-only memory and require a daughterboard be installed. Stay away from anything that claims gains by "flashing" your ECU with a new program.

As for our ECU being read-only memory, the item I listed supposedly communicates with the EEPROM which is Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory. The following website has more details:

http://www.voloperformance.com/products.html

Do you still think it's BS ?

Yes. You get what you pay for in this hobby.

And in your opinion for an individual not looking at any other mods other than cai/wai and minor suspension mods for daily driving that the best option is still the $1k programmer?

Please excuse my ignorance, I am a domestic guy that had apparently more options from reputable sources. But the main thing that I learned is the best way to tune is on a dyno or "real time" tuning with wide band (so i do tend to agree, especially if you are constantly changing up things). Even the "off the shelf" tune I recieved from the "big dog" in Lightning tuning gave me a junk program that almost cost me my engine.

btw the resisor advances timing by 15* and that's max.

Technosquare was legit when they still worked on the A32. They installed a daughterboard in the ECU...I had pics of mine until I sold it to a guy in Australia. If you're looking for bang for your buck in a 95-99, get a downpipe followed by a variable intake manifold from a VQ30DEK in a junkyard. After that, get a piggyback engine management solution like an eManage Ultimate and you'll be over 200fwhp with an optimized powerband. Stuff like intakes and catbacks really aren't worth it from a $/hp standpoint. I got my intake when Place Racing exited the market for $120 and that includes a $70 silicon-based reusable filter...that's the only reason why I have it. My catback I got back in my ricer days...

*edit: I see you have an A33. Your best bet would be a set of junkyard VQ30 headers because it's not worth paying hundreds of dollars for a Cattman or other aftermarket set of manifolds when the VQ30 ones will provide you with more or less the same results. When I had the 3.5 out and waiting to install in my A32, I slapped the 103K mile VQ30 headers on and saved myself some money but got 98% of what I would have paid for (the remaining 2% is sound and bragging rights). After the headers, I'd pick up a set of NWP intake spacers and then maybe tune it.

Dumb follow up questions though,

What is the benefit from the stock exhaust manifolds on my 03' and the "headers" off of 3.0 liter? Are they more like true headers? I assume you mean these are OEM parts. Do this require any additional exhaust modification? Any approximated hp gains?

Side note, My Lightning had a 4 cats (2 inline), so my last mods were to install Bassani shorty headers, delete the fwd cats install mid-pipes, and replace remaining cats with off-road high flows to my cat-back. About $1400 for ~20 rwhp this was also combined with other intake side mods, that's why I did the "cat-fwd" mods last. I really don't want to go this far with this car.

Has anyone dyno'd hp gains to prove which exhaust mods are the most efficient, if any?

Lastly, where could I get these intake spacers?

You have pre-cats in your headers while VQ30 headers do not (pre-cats are in the downpipe). Now that I think of it, you may need a VQ30 downpipe to go with the headers...in that case, pick up a Warpspeed or Budget downpipe for about $200...all told, it should run you maybe $300 in parts. Don't spend $600+ for a shiny Cattman. You'll get maybe 2% more power but that's in the realm of dyno error. You should see something on the order of 20-30whp from this.

As for the spacers, Aaron at NWP has posted the before and after dynos of his spacers on his site. He does make them for the VQ35 and I believe it's something like $225 for 10-12whp/wtq in the midrange of the powerband...not too shabby if you ask me. http://www.nwpengineering.com/....html

best thread i saw on the org - mods you regret doing

btw velocity will not be increased in a na motor. the rule is that the longer the path something has to travel the more loss in velocity - unless free falling from a roof top - or something like that. the only way to speed air up is to go fi.

8whp for a VQ30. He's got an A33 so VQ35, therefore 10-12whp. Better than a CAI or catback from a $/hp stance.

But I've really got to take serious exception to your comments about Cattman headers. You could not be more wrong, and there is plenty of dyno data and track results that back that up. I don't post much on this forum, but I cannot stand by when this kind of misinformation is casually passed off as fact.

First, replacing VQ35DE stock manifolds with VQ30DE manifolds has little effect. The only difference between them is eliminating the precats, and that's only good for 4-5whp. Suggesting that someone can actually make 20-30whp by cobbling together VQ30DE stock manifolds with a cheap VQ30DE y-pipe for a VQ35DE motor is rediculous. That combination will - at best - make about the same power as putting a y-pipe on (and taking the precats off) a VQ30DE motor. The gain might be a bit less since the stock y-pipe on the VQ35DE motor flows more efficiently than the stock y-pipe on a VQ30DE. Keep in mind that replacing manifolds and y-pipe will take the typical mechanic 5-6 hours to install (same as headers).

Think about it. Y-pipes eliminate both precats on 95-99 Maximas and one of two on 99-01 Maximas (and make 11-13whp), so why would installing a y-pipe and removing the precats on an 02/03 Maxima make 2-2.5x as much power? Doesn't happen, can't happen.

Just so we drive a stake into the heart of any related misinformation, claims of any y-pipe making over about 14whp are without basis. We've seen Cattman y-pipes dyno that high on a few strong motors, but since Cattman y-pipes consistenly outperform other brands by 2-3whp no one else has done better. [Yes, I've seen the several-year-old dyno shot showing a y-pipe making 20whp. Anyone who knows squat about how Maximas dyno can see that the before run is bogus, held down about 10whp, and the after run is only average for a Max w/ y-pipe.]

Much worse is your claim that the Cattman header/y-pipe system only increases power by 2% on a VQ35DE motor. 2% of 220whp is just 4.4whp... Do you really believe that hundreds of the most serious Maxima enthusiasts out there have installed our system and fooled themselves when it doesn't even make 5whp? There is dyno after dyno, time slip after time slip, and street race after street race that says what you claim is wrong.

Pure and simple, our header/y-pipe system will easily dyno at 25whp on a manual tranny 02/03 Maxima with typical bolt-ons, and it will make 22-23whp on the same car with an auto tranny. On a 00-01 VQ30DE subtract 2-3whp, and on a 95-99 VQ30DE subtract 3-4whp.

That's not blowing smoke, that's a fact. We manage our dyno testing very carefully during product development, there's no BS, no cherry picking of low and high runs, etc. We do the before and after tests within 24 hours, on the same equipment, same technician, same tank of gas. You can accuse us of fixing the dyno results if you like, but you would be wrong again.

Because of where Cattman exhaust parts are positioned in the market, we often run into the attitude that if our parts are more than someone wants to spend, then we're obviously screwing them (charging too much and/or the parts don't do what we claim they do), and that seems to be the case here.

Our parts aren't cheap, but customers that know how our US-made exhaust parts perform, how easily they install, and how long they last, know they're the best value out there. Customers that know us REALLY well also know that the parts are expensive simply because they cost a lot to produce to our standards, our profit margins are a joke.

We don't make any compromises in the way Cattman exhaust parts are designed, the way they're fabricated (TIG-welded), or in the materials and components we use, and this applies to all of the Cattman exhaust parts we sell. Cheaper is very seldom better, and in the case of our parts you really do get what you pay for.

I don't want to get going at length on the NWP phenolic spacer kit - although we sell them I don't really have a dog in that fight - but I'll toss out that based on track and dyno feedback from our customers it does pretty much what it claims to do (within a hp or two, anyway). Given the price of high-grade phenolic material, the CNC requirements for milling it exactly, and the outstanding integration of the kit that Aaron prepares (this guy takes "detail oriented" to a whole new level), I can't agree that its overpriced. I'm prompted to wonder how people can publicly claim something's overpriced when they haven't a clue about the direct and indirect costs of production, and of course this applies to our parts as well.

A good CAI will also help lower the temp of incoming air, but the NWP spacer kit does the same thing in a different way. Cooler air = more O2 = more hp, that's elemental physics, you can't get too much of it. Its not the first mod I'd suggest putting on a car, but once you've done all the obvious stuff and you're picking up the bits and pieces left on the table, the NWP kit makes perfect sense.

That's it. Please accept that its not my intent to piss anybody off - it never serves a business well to get into a pissing match on a forum - but when I run across false information about one of our most popular and successful parts, I've just gotta set the record straight. This isn't a difference of opinion, its the difference between correct and incorrect.

Brian C Catts
Cattman Performance

i agree on everything especially on the .org members thats why i stick to nico and i looked into the velocity thing and your right but mainly the cost it not worth the outcome on nwp spacers

p.s. .org members are a bunch of idea bashers and modders anyway not real techs but i do give it to that are

Brian,

I can respect your position, I have posted on my former enthusiast websites in the same manner when needed.

I would love to see a cost work up on a full exhaust.

Brian

Modified by Cattman at 6:43 PM 9/9/2008