Consult with Ecutalk- weird things happened

[madkiwi]

So I purchased one of those Consult USB adapters on Ebay labelled "Nissan-14", downloaded VCP drivers for it from FTDIchip.com. Downloaded ECUtalk 1.3.5. All seemed to work on my Windows 7 laptop, and was able to plug in to the 300zx TT. Connected ok (COM 9) and went through all the steps of choosing gauges to display.

Everything seemed fine- except for one anomaly. It would not show the speed. I tried both imperial and metric (mph and km/h). My speedometer is working perfectly.

Once I started driving with the laptop plugged in, about a mile from my home the power steering suddenly stopped working, and within a minute the HICAS light came on. I pulled codes, it said I had a code 14- vehicle speed sensor circuit error.

After a shutdown, everything seemed normal. Drove a couple blocks, HICAS light came on and the power steering went off again.

Unplugged the consult box, shut down, restarted and drove 4 miles, made a few stops, came home- no problem at all. No more HICAS light, and power steering worked fine.

Now I am a little nervous about doing a full boost run with the laptop plugged in trying to find out what causes it to go into safety boost when I hit 11 psi. If I am going to lose my power steering every time I have this running... that doesn't inspire me to try 90+ mph runs.

One thing I did find was that the MAF is definitely sending bad signals in the ON position (engine not running). My logs show it was 0.08 volts- supposed to be 0.8.

Anyone know what might cause the speed sensor to have issues when a consult plug is connected to a laptop while the car is running?

[madkiwi]

Weirder and weirder- today I was driving with the consult plug and the same thing. I tried disconnecting it from my laptop, still causing speed sensor errors. I had to unplug the adapter from my consult connection to get the car to go back into "normal" mode.

The power steering does not go away completely, a little Googling tells me that is an effect of the speed sensor error, it basically goes into high speed mode, so little movements don''t translate into a car moving erratically on the road.

I am going to go with "internal short/problem with the adapter" and ask the seller for a replacement.

Also a high speed run at full throttle resulted in no safety boost today, because the highest the boost got was .75 bars (10.88 psi) and my car only seems to go into safety boost when I hit 11 psi. I don't know why it would not go any higher, I can't have acquired new boost leaks since last week. Maybe the stupid consult adapter was tweaking things.

At full boost (10.5 or so psi) and 6,000 rpm throttle at 3.26 v, Air flow was 4.16 v, timing 19 degrees BTDC, injectors at 15.34 ms and 77% duty cycle. Coolant was at 189 degrees. Maximum airflow I saw was 4.16 v. Maximum temp 194.

All looks normal, although I would have thought the timing would have a little more advance than that. What is the most advance on timing has anyone seen? Mine went as high as 46 degrees BTDC today.

Will post video of the gauges tomorrow.

Mark

[ThisIsSparTTa]

Hey Mark, I had this exact same problem with my Consult adapter and the speed reading and power steering. For some reason it kills the speed reading, which freaks the HICAS out and it goes into a fail-safe where it completely disables PS. Not sure why. For everything else it should perform fine and be accurate. I'm really not that worried about it for a $30 solution.

Can't comment on the rest of your readings.