Nistune Forums

Ok so i went to take the z out for a tuning session tonight and the car would not start. consult would not connect either. it kept giving me the "no data received - check connection error". one time it gave me a
"possible corrupted ecu image" error or something like that cant quite remember. i think i'm in big trouble

last time i took it out was late last week - car was running great.

any advice appreciated

thanks,

Brian

two possibilities...

has the board fallen out or some other kind of dodgy connection problem problem has caused this. open up the ECU and check the board is plugged in and connections secure. they should be hot glued in to the ECU

or... you have had a corrupt ROM image which got 'burnt' in last time you used the software and car doesnt start because of this

either way you will get Coms error when ECU doesnt work (and car doesnt start)

Check the board firstly, and if that doesnt work then try the original factory chip if you still have that and see if ECU lights flash diag codes still

If the factory chip works, then some knid of issue with the board (or corruption problem mentioned above)

Matt,

The last time i was working with the car, I did burn changes to the ecu. But if i remember correctly (which i may not) i did turn the car off and was able to restart it with the newly burnt changes.

I took the cover off and checked that the board was secure - it is. I gave each of the soldered wires a light tug to make sure they were properly connected. The #2 wire going into the cpu was either disconnected or the very light tug i gave it disconnected it - not sure which - either way this connection was weak. I pulled out my pos 15 dollar soldering iron and somehow managed to solder it back on (not very good with soldering). Put the ecu back in and still the same result. No start condition, cant hear the fuel pump prime, lights on ecu are on, but not blinking.

Installed another ecu. One that came with the car. It is an 88t ecu, which the PO had socketed and tuned with a romulator. Car started up fine.

Thanks,
Brian

what if you put the chip out of the 88t ECU into your current one. Does the ECU flash the diag codes and prime the fuel pump?

If so then shoot me an email and I'll organise an exchange for you

Matt,

The original ecu that I had the nistune board in is a 87t, fyi. There is no chip in the 88t ecu. The pocket romulator that the PO was using was hooked directly up to the ecu. So i pulled the romulator off the 88t ecu and hooked it up to the 87t ecu. No dice. Car would not start, no priming of the fuel pump, and no ecu lights on (which is different, they were on when the nistune board was plugged in and when the car wouldnt start). I didnt need to disconnect the 4 wires going into the cpu did i? I just removed the nistune board wrapped it in a plastic bag and set it aside, leaving the wires hooked up to the cpu. Just for shits and giggles i put the romulator back in the 88t ecu and tried it again - started just fine. So i guess my 87t ecu is fried...huh? Looks like i need to transfer the nistune board to the 88t ecu...Not to big a deal i suppose especially since its already socketed. So all i need to do is solder the 4 wires onto the cpu and get rid of the dial thingy for the diagnostics and put the usb in its place, correct? The 88t ecu only has one processor, as the 87t has two, correct?

Any ideas on what may have caused the ecu to go bad.

Thanks for all your help,

Brian

So...

Do i need to get the nistune board reprogrammed to go from 87t to 88t ecu?

Thanks,
Brian

Thanks for trying that out. No need to unsolder the CPU wires during your experiment with the romulator in the 87t ECU

You should be fine to plug the nistune board in your 88t ECU (no changes to ROM image required) and move the CPU wires into that ECU

As for your 87t ECU... what went wrong? Were the CPU connector wires accidentally bridging another pin on the CPU they were soldered to? What about the ROM socket, is there any suspect soldering joints with that?

The board itself cant really do anything to damage stuff, so I suspect there might be some wiring problem there. No glue as to why the differences in operation to the board/romulator even though both work wither

As for your 87t ECU... what went wrong?

The only thing that was out of order was, as i mentioned earlier in the thread, the #2 (grey) wire going into the cpu was not connected very well - if at all -seems it may have come loose at some point. The weekend before we had a cold snap, got down to 30 deg. F - maybe that was just enough to break the connection. I suppose that is a longshot, but like i mentioned earlier, i put the car away in the garage and it was running fine, didnt touch it for 5 days and then i got this no start condition. I would say that there is a possibility that this wire jumped to one of the pins next to it. Lets say the last time i took the car out and the #2 wire came loose during that tuning session, would the car still run with a bad or broken connection there or would it run but just not start the next time. Also, what can happen if the #2 wire were to jump to a neighboring pin on the ecu?

What about the ROM socket, is there any suspect soldering joints with that?

Took the back cover off and everything looks okay.

So today i installed the nistune board into the 88t ecu. Same no start condition. Arg! Then i removed the nistune board and hooked up the romulator to the 88t ecu. Same no start condition... The 88t ecu was working with the romulator and now it is not.

Then i pulled out an 84t ecu from my previous z that i had laying around. This ecu is bone stock. Plugged it in and the car started normally.

I just don't know.

Thanks,
Brian

So now neither ECU is running

Sounds like you will need to send the ECU/s here and I'll have a look over them and see what the problem is. Shoot me an email and we'll sort it out

have you also tried reuploading the image to the romulator? Sometimes the romulator can get corrupted contents