My two friends drive a honda and an acura and a company called Hondata can upgrade there stock ecu chips to give them around 20 HP gains, by adjusting air flow temp sensors. This is totally legit-the company Hondata is well known for upgrading ecu chips and this mod is not b.s. This company hondata revieves your stock ecu chip in the mail reprograms it using what ever means "computer software" and sends the upgraded chip back to you. OK now...My friends dad has this type of computer software, and claims he can make stock ecu chip upgrades and adjustments, i dont want to recieve replies on the danger or risk of this upgrade i would just like info on if my 95 Nissan Maxima is capable of such an upgrade, and if there are any limits on upgrading. i know all about JET chips and stuff. IN Laymens terms: can i take my ecu chip out send it to my dads friend have him reprogram it, and get more gains out of upgrade. )My friend;s honda prelude is not upgradable just because it is stock programed to the max. He would have to get a whole new EMS.) Thanx

 

i would not trust just anyone with a puter to reprogram an ecu, but if he can interface it with his comp (read: has the cable), it is possible. it is not like you pop in the ecu and windows pops up a purdy window with menus that you can just drag down and select the highest performance option, click save and be done.

you probably have to dump the ROM image in binary, get some software to make sense of the binary, read the FSM and all info given by Nissan on what does what, then change some 0s and 1s and then reburn the WHOLE rom image. Now, the only difficulty assuming you can get the rom image and burn it back, is understanding the ECU code which is assembly language for the processor in the ECU. I betcha your friends dad doesnt know jack **** about nissan machine language, let alone what he should change the values to for the greatest performance. Jim Wolf makes a living out of doing this, and they are the only people i really believe know what they are doing 100%.

btw, i am an electrical and computer engineer. i have written flight software for several spacecraft. I know computer hardware and low level software pretty damn well, and i know what i dont know. i wouldnt let your friend touch your ecu with a 50 foot pole.

 

I've seen dynos on the K20A in the RSX with gains of 10-20whp with the hondata flash. You won't get anywhere near that in the VQ. At best figure 5-9whp, but you'd get around 5-10wtq from 2000-5500rpm average. Next to the Y pipe it is the best power upgrade besides FI/N2O.

 

I would love to get a new ECU from Jim Wolf Technology but i just went to the site and i noticed they only make upgrades 89-94 Maxima. I was suprised also, so I think i might have this guy give it a shot if he really knows what hes doing. And oh yea.i think for my safety ill have him do my friends RSX first.Thanx for the info.

 

actually, JWT does have '95 ecu's. Go to www.cattmanperformance.com for one.

 

Those are pretty damn expensive, do you think they are worth it? for a little WHP gain?

 

this is your engine management software we are talking about, seriously, they are not mass produced. The system software I make usually sells for around $40 million. I am sure Nissan spent much more than that for their engine management software. $500 is a steal. I WOULD NOT TRUST ANYONE TO MESS WITH MY ENGINE SOFTWARE except those who know it (read: maxima software) intimately (read: jwt). you WILL be sorry if your friend's dad works on it. end of story.

 

It's a nice thought, but I don't think your friend's dad will be able to adjust any of the parameters. All that stuff is severely encoded, and so far only 3 companies have been able to crack the code, and some not even fully. JWT is the only one that has been able to figure out how to raise the rev limiter, JET and G-Force have only been able to adjust air/fuel and spark timing.

Also how come you mentioned Hondata? Or were you just using it as an example of chip reprogramming?

 

and i know what you were thinking, this is a maxima forum nota Honda one. Thanx for the feedback

 

Nopi has the JET ECU work for 361.17 + shipping. I don't know exactly the kind of difference it makes, but they send you a box for your ecu, you ship it to them, they do the work on the ecu and send it back to you. Hope that helps...

Mike