from the tech section over there..Jim Wolf and Clark Steppler worked with Nissan to develop the special chips for the 300ZX racing program. Nissan has granted them permission to use much of the stock 300ZX code in their power chips. No other chip maker has this permission, so you're stuck with JWT if you want your car to do what his chips do. If not, then buy a Superchip or AutoThority's chip. Because the stock code is not modified, you'll get different performance. Whether you think they charge too much is not relevant. They can charge whatever they want to. You want to play - you pay.
Nissan did do a good job of programming the chip. However, what Superchips did is fraud and theft, pure and simple. They took Nissan code and found where the speed limiter is located and jumped around that code. Since Nissan owns the copyright on that code Superchips is guilty of theft. Since Superchips claims that their ECU mod will increase horsepower, they are guilty of fraud. If I took Microsoft Windows and changed it to Winders, I would have done the same thing Superchips did. Microsoft would sue me into the
next millenium.
Jim Wolf Technology wrote new code for the Nissan ECU to increase performance AND reliability and obtained permission from Nissan to use the portion of Nissan code that remained unchanged. This is the correct way to do it. Superchips method does NOTHING to compensate for the fuel and timing changes needed when additional boost is applied to the engine. This could easily lead to detonation which will cause you to buy a new US$11,000 engine. Do a search here, on the web, or on usenet, and you'll find hundreds of superchips horror stories. a while back, they were simply putting "superchips" stickers on the stock ecu WITHOUT modification. A few people have done dumps of stock ecus versus superchips ecus and found two common "versions" of the chip:
1) the stock and superchips ecus were exactly the same.
2) only the rev limiter was removed. Would you trust your car to a company with this reputation? Jim Wolf is the ONLY tuner that has worked extensively with Nissan to develop more high performance from the engine in all aspects of its operation. He has permission from Nissan to modify their copyrighted programs: Dinan doesn't, Superchips doesn't (and don't anyway) and AutoThority doesn't. There are probably three or four companies that market chip or ECU upgrades to the 300ZX TT. And there are two types of upgrades: the chip tuners like AutoThority, Dinan and Superchips and Jim Wolf. The tuners change the data maps that the ECU uses when it makes its decisions on fuel/air mixture, ignition timing and some other functions. They also change the rev limiter, which Nissan has set conservatively, and some eliminate the top speed governor. When they do this, you may experience different engine characteristics as well: trouble starting when cold or hot, or a rough idle, poor fuel economy, etc. Or you may not get what you think you've paid for: Superchips changes just one thing: they eliminate the rev limiter. Jim Wolf has been involved in modifying Nissan's ECU's for their racing program and has an agreement with Nissan to modify the computer code in the ECU - something the chip tuners can't do. He has the ability to change the programming of every performance-related parameter, so he can adjust the ECU to the car you're driving: your car runs as if it were stock, but takes full advantage of the goodies you've added on. And when you upgrade beyond where you are, such as bigger turbos, bigger injectors or NOS, Jim Wolf can make you an upgraded chip that will recognize those upgrades and still maintain your driveability and engine
reliability. Jim Wolf's ECU's are sold directly by Jim Wolf Technology and also by Stillen. You can get Jim Wolf ECU's from other sources as well, such as SGP and Primespeed. I'm not sure where NOPI gets their upgrades. I have taken a VERY close look at several versions of code from Nissan, JWT, Dinan, and Superchips for the 90+ 300ZX (turbo and NA). Nissan has made trivial changes in the code from 90 - 94 with only minor differences between models to support the associated hardware. JWT has made minor changes to the "housekeeping" sections of the Nissan code and major changes to the fuel and timing maps. They even added additional code to check for unusual conditions in the operation of the engine. Superchips merely changed one byte of code to jump around the speed limiter code. I have called this fraud and stand by my statement. Dinan changed the fuel and timing maps to compensate for the additional boost, but did not make the more extensive changes JWT did.
Dinan is one of the chip makers that uses a mapping approach to altering the performance characteristics of our cars. They change the section of the program where the values for air/fuel, spark advance and rev limits are stored by the program, but they don't change the computer code that uses these values, like Jim Wolf does. Dinan cars have been reported to run rich because of these changes. I've heard that there may be at least one case of a blown TT motor that was running a Dinan chip and was running rich, although I've not personally seen any documentation on it. Remapping the values can be dangerous because it can introduce more fuel to the cylinder at a time when the valves aren't ready for it, which could lead to detonation or at least poor gas mileage and less, not more, power. It's back to 'what do you want to pay for?' Jim Wolf had and still has heavy involvement in racing engines. He worked with Nissan to develop the ECU for the racing engine, and he rewrote sections of its code to do different things with valve timing, air/fuel mix, spark advance and some other functions including turbo wastegate operations. He has Nissan's permission to sell ECU's with altered program code. Dinan, AutoThority and Superchips don't modify the code and only modify the data maps. In the case of Superchips, they
alter only the rev limiter. You get more peace of mind with a JWT ECU, because the program has been redesigned to get more performance out of your engine, rather than just having some changes to the mixture and spark curve made to the data.
S.T.E.A.M.Y.Z.: Synthetic Transforming Entity Assembled for Mathematics and Your Zoology "this aint the car to be picking your nose in"  
The Award Winning SteAmyZ
1st Place Daily Driver at Z2K Vegas
Check out my site-to learn how you can buy new T-top bags BELOW dealer cost....AND custom made shift and ebrake boots.
CLICK on the logo!!!
|
04:59:42 10/04/00
