ecu tuning

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Nikku
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Joined: Sun Oct 08, 2006 1:50 pm
Car: 1999 Sentra GXE, 69k miles

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ok, i want to remove the speed limiter and rpm limiter from my 99 nissan sentra. But i dont want to pay $500 for a JWT. What is the best way to do it? if i have a odb2 to usb cable can i use a program? or do i need some special chip/flasher? any help is greatly appriciated.



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lofapoo
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Not sure about Sentras, but on S13s you just clip the wires to the sensors/governors and viola.

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Nikku
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clip what wires?

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crackler
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He has an s13, not a sentra, he is refering to the speed sensor wires on the transmission. I believe it is the 4th and 5th gear sensors, but I'm not 100% on that.

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crackler
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Why would you want to remove the rev limiter anyways? I use mine, when autoXing, Id rather cut power than gerenade my top end.

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Nikku
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im sry i meant rpm limiter

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surfwax95
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Nikku wrote:im sry i meant rpm limiter
*ahem*

I think they're the same thing...

Revs, short for revolutions...

RPM stands for Revolutions Per Minute...

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Nikku
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Car: 1999 Sentra GXE, 69k miles

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yep, my bad, you learn something new everyday. anyways has anyone tuned a ecu or flashed it?

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crackler
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You might try asking here.zeroforum/53

I'm still wondering why you would want to cut the rev limiter?Or are you wanting to raise it?If you raise it any significent amount, you normally have to start changing valve springs, and retainers, and if I'm not mistaken balancing work on the whole rotating mass (pistons, rods, crank).

What is your goal with all this? Maybe there is a better way to go about obtaining your goal.

What motor does your sentra have? Auto or 5 spd?

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Nikku
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Car: 1999 Sentra GXE, 69k miles

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wouldnt removing the rev limiter allow me to reach higher rpm in 5th to go faster? i have a GA16DE 5spd

i have a CAI and getting ready to buy headers & catback.

i want to increase the hp and performance as much as possible without engine swap. thats my goal.

any ideas?

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ka24boos13t
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Car: 91 300zx tt

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Sounds to me like someones just looking to go faaast and the speed limiter and rpm limiter are in his way.

Cant say I know how to do it on a Sentra if its different from an s13.

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crackler
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I would just be carful raising or eliminating the revlimeter. One mis-shift and BOOM goes your motor. and I dont know short of a JWT ECU way to raise it. And even if you do raise it you would be smart to be VERY conservitive in how much you raise it. The speed limit is no bid deal in my opnion, But again short of a reflash on your ecu I dont know. RPM limiters are there for a good reason, unlike the speed limiter.

For substantial power gains I would go with either; N2O, turbo or Supercharger. Those are about the only way to make substantially more power. But if you do go that route, you need to do ALOT of research before you do it. You'll have to figure out what size injectors, fuel controllers, fuel pumps, air meteing and a whole lot of other things. Google will be your friend. You can get more power going just N/A, but you wont see the same power as F/I will get you, and you will probably spend more money to make less power.

Just my .02
Modified by cracker at 1:08 PM 10/26/2006

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dickie
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youre not going to see any kind of decent performance gains out of the type of tuning you are talking about. dont remove the rev-limiter, it wont make your car any faster. i cant say much about the ga-16, but i doubt theres any usable power left in the motor past the redline anyways.

intake header exhaust will make a difference to you only because you will be fooling yourself into thinking youre "feeling" it because of the increase in volume. in reality that 5-10 whp (maybe, but doubtful) isnt worth the money youll probably end up paying to get it.


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crackler
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d!ck wrote:youre not going to see any kind of decent performance gains out of the type of tuning you are talking about. dont remove the rev-limiter, it wont make your car any faster. i cant say much about the ga-16, but i doubt theres any usable power left in the motor past the redline anyways.

intake header exhaust will make a difference to you only because you will be fooling yourself into thinking youre "feeling" it because of the increase in volume. in reality that 5-10 whp (maybe, but doubtful) isnt worth the money youll probably end up paying to get it.
+1 to everything d!ck just said

nametakennow
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Ugh... there's a thread on the exact same subject in Sentra Gen. Now this AND a repost of this in Sentra Gen.

Long story short, he's our second "what can I do to defeat my limiter" customer in just a couple of days. No one's been able to actually pull this off in a Sentra so far as we know.

Additionally, there's the absolute ridiculousness of it. The GA16 would need a huge stretch of straight road to get past the 110mph limit, so at the very least this is reckless driving unless someone has a giant runway available. Furthermore, cutting the rev limiter is a horribly stupid idea anyway, not only because you pass the powerband, but for the more straight-forward reason that Nissan put the limiter there to prevent you from sending your camshafts into orbit.

KDashy
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cracker wrote:I would just be carful raising or eliminating the revlimeter. One mis-shift and BOOM goes your motor.
A rev limiter does not protect you from a misshift. A lack of rev limiter will not give you more power on a car with an intake as its only mod. You will blow up your engine.

That is all.

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bcar240
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Nikku wrote:wouldnt removing the rev limiter allow me to reach higher rpm in 5th to go faster? i have a GA16DE 5spd
If there is some sort of a limit say at like 4500 rpm in 5th gear then disabling the rev limiter for that gear might get you going a bit faster. But if your talking about the redline limiter, there is no point. Your engine won't have the power to rev that fast in 5th gear anyway.

M3Racer
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A Sentra in the triple digits driving next to me would be a very scary thought. Something tells me that those cars really don't handle that well with a stock setup at those speeds.

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Nikku
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Car: 1999 Sentra GXE, 69k miles

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ok, for one thing there are ways of removing the speed limiter. it requires getting a new ecu 96-97 and a daughterboard w/ on board consult. then you can tune it to your liking. kk so i dont want to remove the rev limiter i want to RAISE it.

People tell me why everyone hates on the GA16? I mean why would you spend about $2K for a SR20 swap?

GA16 = 115hpSR20 = 140hp

wow 25hp i mean if your gana spend that kind of money get a turbo for GA16 instead of swap or swap for SR20DET.

The GA16DE with T25 turbo under right psi = around 190hp, and for around the same price as SR20 with 140hp. so WTF?

So somebody tell why 25hp is worth 2K?

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dickie
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youre being a little narrow-minded here, youre looking at the engines as unmodified in stock form only. if you look at their repective potentials instead, you will realize that the sr20 ends up being a better value for you because its been proven to reliably make more from modifications than a ga can.

furthermore, the sr has HUGE aftermarket support whereas the ga is more limited, meaning after the initial cost of the engine, higher levels of power are cheaper and easier to reach than with the stock ga.

any motor can be built to be a "screamer," but in some cases it would take more work and money than would be practical.

also, there's a limit to how much you can crank out of a fwd car before it becomes useless except for purpose-built applications.

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Nikku
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if im not mistaken, most sr20's are fwd. Plus i mean its only a 2.0L 140hp engine. you talk as if its the "greatest engine" ever. there will always be a better engine/car.

So if you have the money for an engine swap then more power to ya (25 hp) LMAO, ok but for me i'd rather put 2K toward a new better car. than to put 2k + time and effort for a new engine. I mean if it was a 200hp engine i could understand. Plus Honda's SI series cars have better output stock then an sr20

After headers and ecu, i dont plan to put anything new on it. besides new rims/tires. and in 3 years if i still have this car ( 50% chance ) i will probibly put a Garret t25 BB turbo in it.

But for real. im just sick of everyone treatin me like im stupid for putting performance parts on my GA16 instead of a SR20. When in the long run all i can see different is 25hp.

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dickie
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i think you misunderstood me, or didnt read my post at all.

"tuning" your current motor with intake and exhaust isnt going to produce any real power gains. if you want to work on the ga, consider including a header and having some work done to the head to increase the flow instead of just putting some pipes on the car and leaving the real restrictions to more top-end power in place.

you never really made your goals apparent until you said you just wanted the i/e and "rims," but now that you say that i can see that youre more interested with how the car looks like it will perform than actually doing anything constructive. thats cool, but dont get bent out of shape for asking for opinions and suggestions and getting some that werent exactly what you wanted to hear.

if you want a honda "SI" go sell your car and buy one. if you measure a car's performance by what the peak hp is on paper, you need to do some more learning.
nikku wrote:you talk as if its the "greatest engine" ever. there will always be a better engine/car.
i never said that the sr20 was the greatest motor ever. in fact i stated the opposite.

the availability of the sr20 and parts make it economical. the availability of aftermarket and performance parts for the ga are harder to find and more expensive.
nikku wrote:'d rather put 2K toward a new better car
are you serious? $2k for an fwd sr20? i guess that sounds right if youre paying someone else to install it for you...
nikku wrote:When in the long run all i can see different is 25hp.
youre still looking at the motors in terms of what they put out stock. lets say you have $5000 to spend. im betting for that money you can have an sr that is reliably putting down more power than the ga would.

so to reiterate: ANY engine can be made to go fast. the ga would take more work, time, and money in the long run to reach the power level an sr would with the same amount of money. this all assumes that you want a car that can actually perform instead of just looking like .

i remember being 16 and thinking that my integra was fast after intake and exhaust too. start changing the way you think now or youre in for a rude awakening.


nametakennow
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A USDM SR20DE should be found for well under $1k. JDM ones with higher compression or turbo motors can be found for less than $2k, and given that we have a GA-SR install guide here on NICO, it should be something you can do on your own.

That said, the statements relating the GA and the SR are ridiculous. As said before, the GA doesn't have practically any aftermarket support. Why? Because it takes a lot more work to irk much power out of one, and the majority of people who do anything with FWD Nissans start with an SR.

Now, you said that you just want to do ECU and I/H/E. You also complain that people think you're stupid for following that pattern.

Well, for quality I/H/E and this daughterboard deal you're talking about you're going to spend a good $1k or so, which would be half-way (according to you) toward a turbo setup or SR swap. Why spend half the cash for less than half the results? I/H/E will net you around 15whp, and the ECU another 2 at most, seeing as the car is NA and thus a new ECU isn't going to do squat except arbitrarily raise the rev limiter so you can "go faster" in spite of the fact that you never have a need to go that speed and, more importantly, you'll be taking the car to higher revs than were originally intended, increasing the possibility of accidental damage. I, personally, have never read anything on a GA at higher revs, but I'd be willing to bet that you'll have trouble getting power higher than the stock limiter allows, and that the motor won't enjoy those higher revs much, either.

So, you'll have almost the power of an SR for around the same cost as a swap, and your capacity for more power will be pretty much shot short of a turbo.

By the way, do you know how many GA16DE+Ts exist? I've heard of one that runs, and it put out around 200whp. I like a unique car, but it sounds like that's more trouble than it's worth.

You said, specifically, using a T25 setup would get you 190whp.

From personal experience I can say that a T25 at 10 psi on an SR will get you 230whp, and you'd still have 5 more psi to push before needing internal work (though only 2 more psi for B15 motors).

Now, for what you spend on a turbo kit for your GA you could have a Bluebird or Avenir SR20DET at 200whp before any mods. Or you could save up for a "better car."

As for your Honda comparison, realize that those Honda motors putting down 200whp with 1.8 or 2 liters have practically no torque (roughly the same numbers as your GA), while the SR puts out 135-140lb/ft, which, while not spectacular, means that on launch the SR-powered car will get the jump.

I'm not an SR fanboy, the motor is often overrated and has some notable flaws, but your ideas are ridiculous.


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