Now ya tell me.

I don't want to advance the timing. As I understand it right now, doing so was tripping the anti-knock on my car pretty easily. In fact, they backed off the timing slightly in some spots.

As I think about the Unichip, I am really beginning to stew. Their site claims "realistically" a 5-9% increase in peak power. My baseline run was 219HP, so the Unichip should yield at least 10.95 hp increase. If that were true, the Crawford Plenum would have only yielded about 2 hp increase. This seems extremely unlikely to me (given that increases are not necessarily so linear).

So now, I have 90 days to find another ECU solution that yields more power than the Unichip. If I can find something better, I can get my $1k back. I prefer something that can be programmed locally (Emanage seems like a good possibility). Anyone have dyno's to show increases gained by the ECU uprade, alone?

 

The Unichips claim may be accurate on a car that isn't as finely tuned from the factory as the G35. The VQ35 has been tuned and retuned by Nissan over the years to produce what it does today. Its high compression characteristics make it VERY hard to produce 'real' power.

Look at it this way, Doug Stewart (Crawford Z Cars) has been trying to build a NA 300whp Z for as long as I've known him. Assuming a baseline dyno of 230 hp this is only a 35% increase in HP.

He has a plenum, headers, high flow cats, cams, and I'm sure a few other things.

On top of that, he has been working closely with TS for a 'perfect' tune. As of the 2nd to last time I talked to him he was still about 20hp shy of his goal.

What I'm getting at, is that he has over $5000 in NA mods and MONTHS of work and has only squeezed 22% increase over the stock car.

Do you really think the Unichip is going to produce a 9% gain by itself? The only chance it has is by advancing the timing, and like we've already agreed on that is WAY TOO dangerous on the 10.3:1 cr.

 

Interesting information all. Gumbee thanks for the information, I believe we all appreciate your efforts.

 

OOOOHHHHH, my side hurts. My cheeks ache because I can't stop laughing. Good one!!!

Did you see the latest thread click here where another guy just had the Unichip installed on his car and he got ZERO GAINS! And all of the Hydrazine Harridan's are getting on my case because of my "inside info" and asking the guy from v6p.net for a discounted chip to do my own testing so that other poor G35 owners would not get taken to the cleaners. With over a 100% markup, I didn't think him selling a chip for cost (or a little over) would hurt any. Notice how my offer was never accepted and now we've got 2 people with ZERO RESULTS and they're each out about $1,000.

I'm still taking a beating from the hydrazine harridan's (I'm gonna have a little fun with this for a while) for trying to help others out and keep people from getting ripped off. Isn't life grand Mr. Pierson!

 

Have you tried both A and B maps?

Yes, this Unichip phenomenon is interesting. I paid just under 1,000 and it DOES NOT WORK. That is, for the 2004 G35. I find it interesting that Unichip has incredible dyno results for the G35 posted on their website. However, those results are on a 2003 G35. I remember Technosquare was having problems programming the 2004 ECU as well. I will go out on a limb and state that this damn thing does not even work. In fact, if this were not so easy to install, I would be inclined to say it was installed improperly. I am going to talk with Joe of Unichip on Monday. If he does not have a reasonable explanation for this, I am getting my money back. Out of the gate and Unichip already has two strikes against them...

 

Mine is a 2003, and I didn't get the gains their page shows. Although, I believe the dyno from the website also has an intake, headers, and cats installed. The gain is probably from these mods, and not the Unichip.

Yes, I tried both maps. Map B trips the CEL, as the advance causes detonation problems on the car. I would be extremely interested in what you hear from Unichip. If you need another person to help address this with them directly, please PM me.

I am sure the rest of the folks here will be very interested in what we can find out.

 

The problem is two-fold. The engine does not like to be fiddled with and the ECU does not react well to configuration changes. In reality, we all know that five different G35’s will produce different results. Therefore, for Unichip to design generic maps to fits similar configurations will yield different results across all five cars. I believe that if you spend untold hours building custom maps from the ground up, will yield success. However, I have wasted enough money and time with this car. I am no longer interested in driving across town, running dozens of dyno’s, replacing various components, and spending untold amounts of money tweaking this car. This is a colossal disappointment.

 

Before you go much farther COMPRESSION CHECK the car.

The high compression motor does NOT like detonation. Besides having cheap, weak piston rings the piston rings are mounted VERY high up on the piston, making them very vulnerable to detonation. It is extremelely possible that if you were on the dyno and detonating you cracked at least one ring. This would lead to a loss of compression which will lower your numbers.

How much? My car dyno'd at 380rwhp with an 'ok' motor and 350rwhp with a 'blown' motor. The differance isn't that much, so you might not be able to tell while driving it on the streets. (www.KPtechnologies.com/dynos/dyno.htm for more details)

The major side effect of a cracked piston ring is that oil will shoot by the piston at high RPM. This oil will be routed out your crank case vent (and if stock) will end up back in your engine intake. Oil does not have very high octane so when mixed with gas in the compression chamber will actually lower the octane of the gas!

Oh, did I mention that the piston rings are junk?

 

Thanks for the warning!

Don't get the wrong idea, I don't RUN the car on map B. This alternative map was turned on, and almost immediately the CEL was tripped. We figured that when map A was being customized, and as I mentioned earlier the timing was actually retarded a bit, that map B had the timing advanced way too far for the high compression engine. Basically, map B will *never* be run in my car (unless I spring for something over 100 octane, and that is very unlikely).

 

It doesn't really surprise me that people aren't seeing large gains with the unichip on the VQ. After all, this engine is pretty highly tuned straight from the factory.

In defense of the unichip, though, I have seen it make a huge difference on other cars. I know people with WRX's that saw gains of around 25-30 whp with just a unichip and a good tune. This was because the WRX ran pig rich from the factory and could take a pretty good advance in timing (as long as you weren't running the water they call gas in CA).

 

I tend to agree. However, referencing Unichip’s website, they have dyno results from a 2003 G35 that are quite inspiring. I question how Unichip obtained those results when both Gumbee and I had vastly different experiences with this useless device. Oddly, My CEL was on prior to the installation of the Unichip. After we installed the Unichip, my CEL turned off! This should not have happened. The CEL should still be on.

I have scoured the Internet and our Unichip problems are not isolated. In fact, there appears to be many unsatisfied Unichip owners representing many different cars. Other then the testimonials, on Unichip’s website, I have not read of anyone having success with this product. Are there any 350Z owners that have this chip installed that we can reference?

 

gumbee,

just fyi, TSed 6MT sedan with ztube/crawford plenum/exhaust made 243whp on the same dyno on Saturday.

 

I can show you dynos from my personal car...

baesline = 233rwhp

After I installed a KPtechnologies window module I dyno'd at 380 rwhp.

Its not hard for manufacturers to show gains, and manufacturers claims should be for reference only, not accepted as standard. There are WAY too many factors to consider.

If they really wanted to show gains they should have a baseline dyno and another dyno with ONLY the Unichip installed.

Af far as unhappy customers the V6P.net owners have nothing but good things to say about the unichip. Of course, its 100% markup and their complete lack of knowledge about how/what it does comes in to play.... Todd, this is almost too easy!

 

That is right! Real Window Horse Power = 380 RWHP! Nonetheless, when I was researching the Unichip, I found V6P.net and for a moment, I thought Unichip was affiliated with V6P.net. There was/is a huge push for the Unichip everywhere you look. I would love to see more real “end-user” experiences such as the ones from Gumbee and me.

 

Oh, I forgot to add, I added a few other parts also in between dynos. But, I feel that most of the added horsepower can be attributed to the window module.

There are more then a few of us on here who are disgusted with V6Ps promotion of products (for profit) with NO understanding of the actual product.

The Unichip is flawed from many points. Over priced and not user tunable to name a few. I am disgusted that I will soon be a Unichip user. I feel that I will NOT get the most out of my TT investment because there are NO Unichip tuners near where I live. They are nuts if they think I"m going to drive 5.5 hours to Chicago to have a 'professional' tune.

If I'm going to have an engine management system that I can't tune I would rather go with TS, at least they have direct G35 experiance....