Nistune Forums

I was doing allot of tuning the last two weeks. Surprisingly sometimes the nistune shuts down completely and sometimes it is just going mad for some seconds. But in both cases there is a great risk of damage to the car. One time the consequence was a damaged AFM (heat wire burnt through). The other times the fuel pump relay was going mad endlessly. Sometime the speedo is going mad and lots of other curious stuff. Everytime when it is not recovering automatically i pulled the nisune-board out of the ecu and then remounted it and everything is ok again.
First i suspected the Romulator but there are no problems when only using the romulator without the nistune.

Nistune is a nice tool and i really enjoy it, but i am alway nervous when using it because i fear of misfunctioning and engine damage.

Side info: I did not glue the nistune into the ecu to prevent vibration failures.

Am i the only one with nistune shut-downs?


Dino

I have the Nistune board installed in my car permanently and have been running data logging etc a daily basis with no problems but noting this, I am using the NVRAM configuration which makes things slightly different.

I also have the board hotglued to the ECU to prevent vibration issues. Any vibration can cause temporary/permanent disconnection on the socket which can then cause ECU code problems....

Out of curiousity, does your AFM have a hot wire cleaning mechanism built in? The R31 ECUs do which only should operate when the ECU is shut down and only for a second. if you ECU code was running strange it was possible it sent voltage to the AFM longer that it should but strange it would burn out since it would take more than 12v to burn it out

If your ECU is doing strange things to your car (ie fuel pump pulsating etc) then there is a serious problem where the ECU code is not being executed correctly. This is either due to Romulator corruption or poor connections causing improper ECU program operation. I will try and help you resolve this asap

But i need to determine the exact cause of the problem first

(a) First thing is to ensure that your board is hotglued or at least securely connected to your ECU! If you only have the romulator connected, then you will not have vibration issues so much because the connector is small and will not suffer as much vibration causing connectivity issues. Hence you will not see these problems.

(b) My romulator and Dell laptop have also have a bad relationship. If I restart the laptop it will corrupt the romulator contents and the car will not run! I'm not the first person to experience this problem either with romulators. The laptop should be grounded to the chasis of your car to prevent romulator corruption issues. This is on their FAQ page

(c) When does the problem actually occur. Is it purely random whilst driving and will start having problems or was there something specific that caused the problem to occur, like going over bumps etc?

Everytime when it is not recovering automatically i pulled the nistune-board out of the ecu and then remounted it and everything is ok again

(e) So reseating the board seemed to fix the problem. Was the board connecting properly to the socket you installed? Did you use a machine drilled socket in your ECU?

What about trying one thing at a time, like
1. powering off the ecu, wait 10 seconds, power on the ecu. perform an upload to the romulator and see if the ecu works fine
2. removing and reconnecting the CPU cable to the board. retry connection and see if this fixes it
3. pushing the board into the ecu solidly immediately after the problem and see if this fixes the problem
4. remove the CPU cable completely and see if car works without this. this should still run the car on the Rev B PLD version
5. when finally removing the board and reinstalling. does this fix the problem immediately?

if the problem is purely random and all connections are secure
and step 5 seems to be the only solution, there could be a defect on the board. i will send you another one free of charge in this case since you shouldn't be experiencing these problems.

Hi Matt,

thanks for your detailed reply.

Hi Matt,

>>1. powering off the ecu, wait 10 seconds, power on the ecu. perform >>an upload to the romulator and see if the ecu works fine
I tried this, but nothing changed.

At my first shutdown it was not possible any more to connect to nistune for consult mode, checksum error, if i remember correctly. The car was not starting any more. When i turned ign on, fuel pump was going permanently. Engine was not starting. AFM was damaged.
I also uploaded the stock bins and connected the complete ECU-nistune-eprom stuff to my second z31turbo which is 100%stock. When turning ign on the fuel pump was also going permanently without stopping after some seconds. Then i removed and remounted nistune and fine.

At my second shutdown i could connect to consult mode but the fuel pump rely was going mad and it disconnected the consult mode automatically after some seconds. Without consult mode the car was running fine, also with romluator activated.

- Yes my AFM (=StockAFM) has that cleaning mechanism

- I will hotglue the nistune board
- I will mount the ecu in its origin position (had it loose in the leg room so far)
After having done this i will see if there will be any more problems

- i use an old acer laptop with 266MHZ

Dino

hi dino

At my first shutdown it was not possible any more to connect to nistune for consult mode, checksum error, if i remember correctly. The car was not starting any more. When i turned ign on, fuel pump was going permanently. Engine was not starting. AFM was damaged.

checksum error generally means that there is ECU program corruption (or sometimes address file CONSULT variable is wrong).

In this cause it would be due to either corruption of the Romulator or NIStune board hardware issue (whether installation connectivity or hardware defect). since reseating the board fixed the problem, installation looks like the cause of the problem

any type of ECU program corruption may stop the car from running. it may also make the ECU do all sorts of things like pulse the fuel pump, click injectors, fire spark, flash ECU leds and pulse AAC and fuel regulator irregularly. most times, this should not cause any type of damage

however in this case looks like it had activated the hot wire cleaning mechanism and kept it activated long enough to blow the wire in the AFM the same way a fuse works

I also uploaded the stock bins and connected the complete ECU-nistune-eprom stuff to my second z31turbo which is 100%stock. When turning ign on the fuel pump was also going permanently without stopping after some seconds. Then i removed and remounted nistune and fine.

a stock Z31 BIN should run on any type of Z31 even with the nistune board. if you had ECU program corruption due to hardware installation, uploading a base stock image didn't solve the problem here. the fuel pump cycling indicated still a corrupt ECU program still

the best way to spot corruption is to look at the LEDs and if they do not flash diagnostic codes (i think normally with the potentionmeter removed thats what they do) then you have a corruption problem. NIStune consult checksum problems are also another probable indication of corruption

I will update the hardware documentation to indicate these potential issues. Please check the NIStune board and your EPROM socket are securely mounted and if you have pulsing fuel pump/flashing LED problems still then i will start investigating board defect issue.
[/quote]