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NisTune Is HERE!!!


MY1PATH
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Nistune
Nistune is now supporting 90-95 v6 pathfinders (and pickups). The owner of a 1995 reached out to me with the good news! He's running a VG33 and his 1995 Nistune'd ECU has been tuned to run the vg33er (supercharged xterra/frontier) MAF and injectors. I immediately bugged Matt (from down under) at Nistune and he said yes my 1993 is now supported (90-95). I ordered my board from Past Power Innovations (previously ASCO) and I should begin install this week.

Disclaimer
DIY ECU socketing is NOT recommended for the average hobbyist, mistakes can set you back hundreds of dollars and weeks in international shipping. Typical installers might charge $80-$100 on top of the board itself ($240) which is cheap insurance if you have any doubts about your own skills or equipment.
Still wanna DIY?

If you've never done anything like this before I suggest you Grab a cheap spare ECU from the junk yard, make sure it works and drives properly with no codes. De-solder the ECU chip, remove it, put it back in and re-solder it. Does it still work and drive properly with no codes? You will either fly or fail and then you can make a more educated decision.
Helpful tip: Read the Nistune Soldering Guide and use 63/37 Tin/Lead Rosin Core solder 0.030" if you can get in your country. (USA can) (60/40 Tin/Lead also works very well but avoid the lead-free stuff if you can)

What does it do?
This is most beneficial to those boosting or making over 200HP. Stock ECU/MAF/injectors will take you to 200HP without modification.

The main purpose is to give you complete control over fuel and timing. It will also allow you to make injector size changes and MAF changes. (Like my favorite combo: 344cc injectors and Z32 MAF) Beyond that, there are lots of other parameters that vary by ECU model and what's been "decoded" for that model. Some examples are:
 

-electronic idle speed control

-the ability to add timing-based Idle stabilization

-rev limits

-safety rev limits (neutral/park)

-AFR's during warm up

 

Nistune Type 1.jpg

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I got all the conformal coating (clear insulation) cleaned up around the working locations on the ECU. It looks like Nissan put it on twice as thick on the pathfinder ECU's.
Amazon Prime has me waiting 1-2 weeks for the things I need to go any farther. I placed the order last week and it said get it by the 12-13th... Now it says expected the 16th and Friday it will probably say arriving Monday... ANYWAY stay tuned, and I will update when I get to make progress again!

 

2 hours ago, Slartibartfast said:

Nice! Looking forward to seeing this in action. I'm curious how much Nissan left on the table when they tuned these things.

I can tell you from the Nistune'd M30 ecu I had in my '89 that Nissan likes to error on the side of caution.

Timing was good under light load but a little more conservative under heavy load. I'm fine with this, esp for towing.
Fuel under acceleration was richer than 11.8:1 which is too much, it won't hurt anything but it leaves some power on the table for the N/A tune.
Reducing fuel to 12:1~12.5:1 provided noticeable improvement. This improvement was measured using an RPM triggered stop watch built into the software.

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No, VG33 ECU's are completely different.
Getting support for an unsupported ECU involves talking Matt into supporting vg33 ECU's while he still has MANY other supported models on more popular tuning platforms and thoes take priority. Getting support for 90-95 pathfinder took decades... And after having a look at the bin files, it still needs development...

My solution, before this, was to run a supported ECU like the M30. This requires a rewire but i was converting an 89 to fuel injection so I was doing a complete re-wire anyway. Re-wiring for a 90-95 ecu will let you ditch annoying things like EVAP sensors and other extra crap they added to the vg33 but it might also effect tach/speedo function if they were tied to the ECU.

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UPDATE: I completed install on Friday but there was a communication hiccup and this daughter board will not connect to PC.
There are a few vehicles that need "Special Order Boards" modified in-house by Nistune Developments, Australia The pathfinder is one of those vehicles. More info here: NISTune Tech Bulletin: Special Order Boards
Looking like a week and some change for the Special Order Board to arrive.

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Interesting..So to special order a board I would have to talk direct to Nistune? I'm going to be swapping a VG33ER here soon and was looking at doing a diy Megasquirt later down the road but this catches my interest to get it running up sooner than later.

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You you can order directly from Nistune website or you can talk to a more local Nistune vendor but they will need to source a special order board directly from Nistune Australia and make sure they know that.

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Its Working.
Quick shot of some consult gauges and a very useful RPM triggered stopwatch.
Without a dyno, repeated runs on a flat road with this stopwatch will tell you if your actually getting faster or not.
Nistune_timer.jpg

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Matt from Nistune is helping me iron out a few kinks since the d21 ECU is not something that's had a lot of attention before.

 

  • Idle speed can now be adjusted based on engine temperature.
    - It did not take long for Matt to find this feature and make it available for tuning.
    - 900 idle yields better cleaner smog test results without exceeding maximum allowed idle speed
    - Really wild cams some times need up to 1100 idle for the engine to run smoothly 
  • Main Fuel maps and Main Timing maps do everything they need to.
    - This is the most important part, everything else is secondary I checked this first and everything for the main maps was good to go!
  • We are troubleshooting idle timing adjustment. This may or may not get solved, most people will never need to touch it.
    - Stock idle timing of 15 degrees works fine for N/A vg30/33/34 or N/A engines with boost added.
    - Engines with compression ratios below 9:1 (for higher boost) need more idle timing to idle better.
  • Unfortunately fuel trims cannot be reported with this ECU, nor can they be quickly reset.
    -For now, there's a % in the fuel trim boxes but they are not actual trims
    -Fuel trim reporting is mostly useful when swapping MAF or resizing injectors. It can be done without it just not as easy.
  • There are countless other things that can be adjusted.
    -Most of them don't need to be touched and I'm not gong to bother listing them.
    -But if you are curious ask away! ...yes rev limits can be changed but I wouldn't take a vg above 6500rpm!
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On 11/9/2020 at 11:29 PM, MY1PATH said:
  • We are troubleshooting idle timing adjustment. This may or may not get solved, most people will never need to touch it.
    - Stock idle timing of 15 degrees works fine for N/A vg30/33/34 or N/A engines with boost added.
    - Engines with compression ratios below 9:1 (for higher boost) need more idle timing to idle better.

Idle timing adjustment now works properly. I have not tested it in "neutral" because I may have a bad neutral switch but I can bypass that to generate test results this weekend. 

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There may be some small gains to be had on an N/A engine but the real benefit is for heavily modified engines that require larger MAF and injectors than stock.

  • Stock injectors can take you up to 200HP
  • WD21 MAF appears restrictive BUT I have not measured any significant restriction on my cam'd 3.0. I have not tested a wd21 MAF on anything larger (yet)
  • If you have a 3.3 swap and your vacuum gauge 0-3 HG under wide open throttle. 
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  • 1 year later...

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