MerlinTheHapyPig

yeah, i have an fcon pro v at home gathering dust!! came with the car, impossible to tune in melbourne. Which really sucks coz they are a fantastic ecu, 32x32 mappings and heaps of features.... had to downgrade to a powerfc

if it already has a tune on it.... expect less than an hour. once they get it on the dyno, it should only take 15 minutes or so to fix up the tune

it's a difficult question to answer, for a few reasons - it's hard to tell the kms on an engine in a car that came from japan, because alot of them have their speedo's wound back and you have no idea if it's the original engine in the car of if they've had to rebuild / change motors - running aftermarket turbos with high level's of boost will dramatically reduce engine life! Speaking from personal experience, my rb20det, whilst fairly stock, get's a lot of thrashing, in the form of drifting it once a week for the last year, and it's still going strong. I've got friends who are blowing sr20det's left right and centre, but the rb's been put under similar level's of abuse and still going strong. The car has 114,000kms on the clock and when i first got the car at 98,000kms it was showing 150psi compression across all cylinders. No idea what sort of history it had in japan, but i've been serviceing it every 4,000kms with good oil. Anyway, 150,000kms is nothing to worry about, i'd expect these engines to last well over 200-250 thou kms if it's fairly stock and well looked after. rb20det's have had a reputation for being relatively bullet-proof.

easy tiger! first things first... do not put your car on a dyno if you're showing error codes! actually another suggestion i was going to make after you've done that, is buy a consult interface from nukleer on the forum (just search for consult and you should find his thread), and you can download the car's rom onto a computer, then you can look at the tune (email the rom file to me and i'll be able to tell you what the tuner has done to it...) You'll also be able to find out if your injector duty cycle is maxing out...

can't remember spark plug gaps off the top of my head it takes a bit under 4 litres of oil from memory. Just stick 3 litres in, and keep adding until you get somewhere between E and F on the dipstick (btw, there is 1 litre of oil between E and F), then start the motor for 30 seconds or so, turn it off, let it sit for 10 mins and top it up to F.

excess airflow protection? you're probably talking about the TP limit (fuel cut table) basically max amount of TP allowed based on engine rpm. Under mildly modded cars it's pretty hard to hit the stock values, but alot of tuners will set this to the max value, effectively eliminating fuel cut, no way to tell what yours are set at without downloading a rom file of your tune. anyway.... read the next bit carefully!! my guess is you're ecu is using the "safe" fuel and timing maps due to your sensor fault, and that you should look at this before you go any further... Reset your ECU by leaving negative battery terminal disconnected overnight, then check for error codes, it should report 55 if all good. If not, check or replace whatever sensor is stuffed. Then once your car is running with code 55 (no errors) see if you have the same problems!!!!!!

Most decent Gear oils can be used for both. Just check when you buy whatever oil you're planning on, it might be better idea to get specifically labelled "gearbox" and "limited slip" oils to be safe though. But as long as the oil is GL-5 with friction modifiers for limited slip use, it will be fine for both..... Using the Redline oils as an example -- which i strongly recommend, you can use Redline Lightweight Shockproof in both gearbox and diff! and is fantastic stuff!!

The o2 sensor is only used in closed loop mode, i.e. when cruising. It won't explain a lower than normal dyno result.

the low octane maps are only used when there is a sensor fault, or it's detecting excessive detonation, it wouldn't be used at all under normal circumstances. It's considered a "safe" map and is only used if there is a problem.

i've been using walbro gss-341 "high pressure" 255l/hr pump for last year, no problems at all. Still using stock wiring, so I'm going to upgrade this at the next chance, but the pumps been going strong for 12 months daily driven / drifted roughly once a week. there were a lot of fake walbro's floating around on the market, it seems to have given them a rather bad reputation...

your mate should be able to tell, just from the feel of it when launching / kicking the tail out a bit. When you kick it out, it should stay out if you get my drift (pun intended), if it just goes straight, or you notice one wheel spinning on the spot, then it's not an lsd. Or going up driveways slowly, or driving on a dirt road that's bumpy, you should be able to notice it single-spinning if it's an open diff. Also, i thought all turbo skylines had a factory lsd? I think if you jack up one side, with car in neutral, should be hard to turn the wheel that's off the ground. (be careful because if it's an lsd it'll try to turn the wheel that's on the ground, just make sure wheels are chocked and car doesn't try and roll off the jack....) c'mon man, it'll take 5 mins! that's pretty lazy...

it's recommended to change pads when you change rotors, but not totally necessary. All you do is take out the pads and turn them face down on a flat concrete surface, stand on them and rub them a couple of times. This removes any unevenness cut into the pads by the old rotors. My rotors have a couple of lines on them like this, I changed pads & rotors at the same time and this has happened.... don't worry about it!

slotted rotors are a good upgrade, but perhaps you should consider larger calipers and slotted rotors to match (as mentioned, r32 gtr or r33 gst-t or brembos's perhaps) also, what braking problems are you having? are you getting brake fade? alot of people contribute poor braking performance to the actual brakes but often it's the tyres you're using (if you have no problems locking all 4 wheels up with abs unplugged...)

resetting ecu is fine, it's not going to cause you to loose the tune. you should track down that error code though.

generally N/A motors can be tuned leaner, around 13-14, but for turbo's you generally aim at around 12 or slightly richer. if your tuner thinks 14 is an ideal af ratio ask him if he'll replace the motor when it blows up...

11.4:1 afr isn't too bad, it wouldn't explain the low power reading, i wouldn't be too worried about running a bit rich, heaps better then running lean. Post a pic of your dyno chart with the AFR reading on it and we'll have a look

firstly, you *can* tune a stock ecu with a remap. however, I wouldn't bother with only these mods, if you change turbo's then yes, but otherwise it should be ok. Just get it on the dyno when you get a chance and make sure the AFR's aren't too lean. If a "tune" you're referring to spark plugs, check timing etc. then all cars should have this done from time to time!

it mightn't suit people without a little technical knowledge, but for me, a remap is the best option. For around $600 or so I can buy a consult interface, wideband o2, eprom writer & solder a socket onto the stock ecu, and then tune it myself. Road-tuning is almost as good as dyno, and since I did the tune myself i can easily modify it when I add mods etc. I can do a "map trace" using the consult interface and some software I have written, the only disadvantage is I can't do real-time tuning without a rom emulator. but i'm looking at that! for an rb20det, an aftermarket ecu with the features I want and wideband o2 will be costing in the midst of $2k, so this is a good option... If your tuner has the correct setup, tuning a stock ecu is as easu as powerfc. If he had problems with tuning your stock ecu, he would have had the same problems with powerfc, and would have spent roughly the same time on the dyno! I guess it comes down to how good your tuner is!!

harder to tune with remaps, but there is more stuff you can do. base emanage package doesn't allow ignition timing adjustment, to get same capability as stock ECU remap you will need: - Base emanage - Injection harness - Ignition harness you can also get a map sensor for it and boost sensor (which i think is a boost controller of some sort) They are ok for nearly half the price of a powerfc, if all you want to do is alter rev/speed limits, fuel cut, fuel map, and bigger injectors/afm. But any of that you can do with a stock remap with relative ease.

are you bleeding all 4 brakes?

get rims in correct offset, or some form or spacer how do the edges of the wheels sit in relation to the guards? you can get 20-50mm bolt-on spacers from www.garage-13.com

some aftermarket ecu's use a map sensor instead of the afm, however as sk mentioned once you are on full boost the ecu only has one reference (engine rpm) the fuel and timing tables in nissan ECU's are a 3dimentional graph showing... Engine RPM vs Theoretical Pulsewidth (TP is calculated based on AFM voltage, RPM and K value) so depending on what the engine rpm and TP is, is where on the ecu's maps the data is read from, if you are on full boost - the car will be reading the same manifold pressure and can only use rpm as a reference, as opposed to with an afm where it will still read changes in airflow when on full boost. It's arguable whether this matters or not, To answer your question, when tuning doing wot runs on my car, when holding say 10psi of boost the TP is more or less the same for that period, with the exception perhaps of very minor fluctuations. So anyway, in my opinion, if map sensors are good enough for well known aftermarket ecu's to start using to replace afm's (eg. apexi powerfc djetro, hks fcon...), then i don't see a major problem there. I wouldn't say they were better or worse, an advantage is you get to f**k off the afm, which also can cause problems maxing out the voltage (and have to upgrade to z32 or q45 etc.), at the end of the day, why bother if the afm does the job? the cost of a new afm will be far less then the cost of a map sensor & ecu remap.

probably nothing to do with diff, more your driving style. downshifting as you describe without heel-toe causes a compression-lock if you are carrying high enough revs, either learn to heel-toe or downshift later when speed is a bit lower.

remaps are better than safc's if you're on a budget it's the way to go, you can do everything a power fc can do, only you don't get a hand controller. The advantage is it's easier to tune, and also has a 20x20 map instead of the stock ecu's 16x16 map (so technically is better, however if you extend the map 16x16 is plenty of resolution imo). As mentioned, sam (dr_drift) is probably the dude to talk to.

this would be an indication of an accident damage repair, and i'd suggest you avoid this car. The quality of the weld is quite poor and they may have replaced sections of the inner skirt.