What do think of the so called performance chip (carbon resistor) across air temp sensor plug for 15-20 hp increase ? Any risk of damage ? Does it work ?
I bought it, but have not put it on yet.

 

Some additional questions: who is claiming such additional performance, and what is their evidence? Can you take it back if you don't get the advertized results? Do you think you really could detect such a small addtional increase in performance? Bring your stopwatch.

 

Like they say, you get what you pay for... Its kinda like the 9.99$ front strut tower bar on ebay. Why is stillen selling this part for hundreds of dollars? Quality. Be careful, I dont see nissan warranting a 12 dollar add on.

 

I have heard of this so called "Piggy back" chip. I don't know if it works however I can tell you guys that you can even feel a measly 5HP gain from the CAI. If you were to go with a CAI, modified exhaust and this chip, you would be flying especially if you were to pass a car doing forty five to fifty miles per hour on the highway....in the SE with the 5 speed by the time you come to your senses and look down at your guages you'd be doing 85 MPH! It's all the Aluminum....the car is lighter than the new Mustang! The new Maximas have all aluminum suspensions, aluminum engine, aluminum hood and trunk, Rubber and almuminum panels and bumpers and aluminum and stainless steal exhaust and titanium trannny. Just the frame is Steel and yet the car scored one of the highest (5 stars) on the NHTSA and IHS tests!

Just like the old 300 ZX if you don't change lanes first and then floor it, the car is so fast at passing speeds on the highway that you will rear end the slow car in front of you!

 

So here's a thought - if a $12 chip that probably cost $3 to make could add 15-20 horsepower, why wouldn't Nissan have added it to the car itself? You don't think that for $3 a car, they'd love to be able to say it has 280hp?

No way, man. Either it's just not going to work, or it'll work, but do something that'll damage the car over the long run.

-Nate

 

This product sounds similar to The Juice Box that was in another thread. I purchased it and tested it out. It doesn't do squat. I returned the product under my 30 day money back guarantee. From what I could determine all it is a 4.6K ohm resistor.

Here's the premise of how this is supposed to work-
When you install this "chip" it runs in parallel with the air intake sensor. What the "chip" does is that it "tricks" the ECU into thinking that the car is running cold. What this does then is the ECU runs off a set of lookup tables that the Nissan engineers came up with so the car runs at or near optimum efficiency. However the chip is
~4.6K ohms, doing the math for resistors in parallel it turns out that this "chip" will make the ECU think the air intake is warmer rather than colder air. This is the opposite of what you want accomplished.

For those who understand more about the ECU- does this theory jive?

IMO the only way to really get the performance gains would be to tweak the ECU settings. Here a few posts on that topic
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=353541
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=353436