My brother has a 90 Maxima. Over a period of a month he complained of it running more and more poorly. Eventually it just quit running when his gf was driving it. We checked his ignition, made sure his timing belt hadn't broken and so on and turned up with nothing. We tow it to the Nissan to run the codes and diagnose, the results are a bad ecu. They quoted him like $900 for the chip, which sounds a little high. Can he find the stock chip for less? I assume it is pretty easy to install as I usually see them installed in the ash tray area of the dash. Part of that may have been labor, but generally it's a 15 min. job at best. I am not too familiar with his Maxima though. I was thinking he might be able to go aftermarket for cheaper than OEM, but most aftermarket guys I know of re-work your chip or exchange for your chip. Also most aftermarket chips are put in with performance upgrades which he doesn't have, any issues with this and his Maxima? What are his options, as he is low on cash, new baby and so on... I apologize for being a leech, but I know more about my Mazda, but want to help him out... On a side note, what type of diagnostic system does his car have? If it is OBD-I or something else is there a procedure to pull the codes, via shorting some test pins or something like that?

 

You could try to get an used ecu from a bone yard. 3-gens are pre-obd I believe. The factory fsm has the procedure to read codes w/o the nissan equipment. It's just a matter of turning the screw on the ecu. do a search on it.