Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

The prev owner of mine put a chip in, I cant remember the make now, but anyway, yesterday I picked up my vehicle from Graham C, he disconnected the chip for me (I had no idea it was so simple to just plug in and out). Im pretty sure I can already tell the difference in performance, it feels alot more livelier with it disconnected now. Im guessing this chip was put in to improve consumption, at the detriment of power.

Chips are the devil!

I have to disagree…
People take short cuts putting in Plug and Play Chips.
The companies that are serious about performance tuning, don’t do plug and play, with 10 different programmes that you can then select from.


I have recently referred a Forum member, who by the way also had their chip ‘ripped’ out.
I referred them to Rob Green, who I have been using for close to 18 years and the guy got his car back yesterday.
Just Pm me to say Wow.

Chipping is no different to any other entity where you rely on someone to undertake work on your vehicle.
As they say, you pay your money and take your chances.
Those two are invariably inversely proportional.

If you are going to Chip your car needs to be mapped on a Dyno.
Then it needs to be driven in real world conditions, on the road, with all diagnostic equipment attached and values set as the tuner is driving and monitoring all the electronic feed-back he is receiving from your vehicle.
That’s all the Chip does really, is allow him to adjust timing, fuel and air within a band of optimum parameters, which include longevity and reliability.

I have never experienced a problem on any chipped car, because of the chip.

If you’re not happy, the job wasn’t done properly, a Universal map, ie Plug and play is obviously different to hours spent fine tuning.

Just for interest sake, Rob Green, the Company, run the fastest production time on one of the new Golfs, in the entire country.
Just recently broken some impressive records with the car.

Refer to Website for more info should you be interested.

Mystical_Beast wrote:I have to disagree…
People take short cuts putting in Plug and Play Chips.
The companies that are serious about performance tuning, don’t do plug and play, with 10 different programmes that you can then select from.


I have recently referred a Forum member, who by the way also had their chip ‘ripped’ out.
I referred them to Rob Green, who I have been using for close to 18 years and the guy got his car back yesterday.
Just Pm me to say Wow.

Chipping is no different to any other entity where you rely on someone to undertake work on your vehicle.
As they say, you pay your money and take your chances.
Those two are invariably inversely proportional.

If you are going to Chip your car needs to be mapped on a Dyno.
Then it needs to be driven in real world conditions, on the road, with all diagnostic equipment attached and values set as the tuner is driving and monitoring all the electronic feed-back he is receiving from your vehicle.
That’s all the Chip does really, is allow him to adjust timing, fuel and air within a band of optimum parameters, which include longevity and reliability.

Agreed.
But I just wonder whether this type of expense is justified in a modern normally-aspirated engine, where the potential gains are relatively small unless combined with extensive internal work?

Different story on turbo'd engines, but then the question becomes whether one really wants to take the chance on compromising the reliability, as the tuner just needs to make one small mistake to destroy that engine in relatively short order?

These are, for the most part, overlanding vehicles, where long-term reliability is far more importnat than performance.
Just my

100 % Peter, without forced air, naturally aspirated gains at best are modest.

However where, in my opinion chipping is useful, is where your standard vehicle is a little lack lustre.

At the risk of repeating myself my particular vehicle had a significant dip in power through the midrange.
Without a Chip you cannot access the ECU to fix that to the best of my knowledge.

So in conclusion, chipping N/A vehicles is optimal tuning and the benefits of efficiency.
The performance gains are a result of this rather than the target.
Obviously on Turbo motors or super-charged you can boost until you blow the motor but as RG have your RMI warranty on any work undertaken, its in their interest to adopt a conservative approach and therefore the likelihood of anything going wrong in a vehicle without latent defect is minimal.

I have seen dyno graphs from other well known tuners which look impressive but the truth is they manipulate compensation values around atmospheric pressure and temperature to make things look better than what they really are.
Which is why people experience differences on say a different dyno.

In my experience the result have been consistent, years apart.

Properly set up, fuel consumption has to improve, less throttle input for similar output.
Where fuel consumption improvement is not observed is where said tuner is over-fueling the vehicle in an attempt to achieve unrealistic performance gains.

That’s when you are going to crack manifolds, burn pistons etc.
Its not the Chip at fault, it’s the tuner.

The notion however that the 4.8 does not take well to being chipped has no basis in reality.

First thing I did when I got my GRX was to remove the unichip the previous owner installed. I don't like having non OEM items on my vehicle.
You can access the ECU with nissan consult 3 and change and set the fuel setting/ map in conjunction with a CO exhaust probe reader , the OEM workshop manual tells you how. This is for the non catalytic 4.8

So I've had my Patrol at RGM Motorsport..
Doing the Super Charger fitment plus general service items, new oil in the diffs, taking out play in the wheel bearings etc etc

And the biggest issue was working out how to over come the speed limiter.

Now I know that most like to cruise at around 120 but charged she hits the limiter very quickly, so I wanted that gone.
One day I will do a GPS test but I believe my Patrol will run to around 230 true speed, maybe even more, will see.

I have learnt again that no two cars are alike, I cant recall exactly but in power terms my previous Patrol after charging was around 224 Kw on the wheels.
This one pushes a little more.
The exhaust has an amazing bark to it, but I want to see how quiet she is cruising cause I don't want to hear much unless my foot is down.
So will be doing a bit of late night testing later.

Here are the final Dyno Graphs..

Ok i dont have chips in my lorrie just chip oil....and it works

I think I'll be changing the exhaust tail piece, at low speeds its too loud for my liking.

Its nice under throttle but too loud if you want to do 100/120, especially because the torque converter slips easily at those speeds.

So I did get to do a bit of testing and I got to 4500 rpm before a truck without lights required me to back off.

Some nice figures there. Must be fun to drive.