Litchfield - Nissan GTR Engine and Transmission software upgrades

Select a highlighted area on the interactive image below to view Performance Upgrade options for the Nissan GT-R.
To view the Litchfield GTR Performance Pack upgrades, Stage 1 to 6, please click here:

Key to our performance upgrades is our close work with Engine management specialists and long term partners, ECUTEK.

In early 2008 Litchfield provided ECUTEK with a GTR for their ECU development work. Detailed testing has been continuous with the car on a variety of dynos including ECUTEK's state of the art R&D facility, road and circuit testing including the famous Nurburgring. ECUTEK are the world leaders in ECU programming with solutions provided to the aftermarket and manufacturers including Mitsubishi, Subaru UK and Prodrive to name just a few.

In 2011 we were delighted to present the RaceROM ECU upgrade for the 2008-2011 GTR.

What is RaceROM?

RaceROM is a suite of feature enhancements available for the GTR OEM ECUs tuned with EcuTek tuning tools, which offers increased tuning & driving capabilities.

Why add Features to the Standard ECU?

Without question, the OEM ECU offers the best cold start, driveability and refinement when compared to aftermarket ECU hardware. However, many aftermarket ECUs provide extra (generally motorsport related) features, that many enthusiasts desire. Unfortunately, when replacing the standard ECU with an aftermarket system, the refinement of the standard ECU is often lost.

Now with EcuTek RaceROM, this compromise is no longer necessary. By the way of a software upgrade to the standard ECU, RaceROM adds many custom calibration options to the standard OEM ECU, offering features beyond the standard fuelling, ignition, and boost control, yet retaining its driveability, sophistication and fuel economy. Extra features that can be added include; switchable maps, higher boost limits, per gear boost control, larger fuel injector support, Speed Density, visual Knock warning levels, Sensor calibration and much more.

GTR RaceROM also enables our FlashCAN GTR tuning software to measure and record extra diagnostic parameters, not accessible as standard. These parameters include knock correction in degrees, boost error, timing adjustment, mass airflow per bank and many others. This extra information enables us to quickly and accurately refine our custom maps to offer the very best performance for each individual car. The ECUTEK software lets us instantly look at the log file the ECU has just generated using a variety of display options for close analysis. The ECUTEK software will even allow the integration of external input devices like separate Wide Band Lambda sensors.

What does this mean for my Litchfield tuned GTR?

We have had much of the custom code for some time and have been actively helping Ecutek develop this exciting product. For all our previous ECUTEK tuned customers we are offering a FREE upgrade to the full RaceROM software. This means your tune will be updated with the following options as standard:

Adjustable boost - We are able to make the boost adjustable using the Cruise control switches on the steering wheel. With the Cruise control switched off a quick flick of the Accel switch changes the Boost gauge on the Multi Function Display to show the current boost level. Moving the switch up and down again will raise and lower the desired boost level between our pre-set points. As soon as Cruise control is turned on the switches revert back to their original function.

Switchable Economy map - Using our experience and many of the changes observed in the 2011 GTRs "Save" mode we provide an enhanced Economy map known as "Road Mode". This can be selected easily by holding down the Cruise control Cancel button for 1 second. These settings are geared around fuel consumption savings and will be ideal for normal commuting.

The original full power map, "Race Mode", can be swapped back to at anytime by holding cancel button again.

These 2 features along with a range of other changes will further improve your enjoyment of our performance remaps.

ECU tuning for 2011+ Nissan GTRs

As soon as we took delivery of our 2011 GTR we sent the ECU off to our technical partners ECUTEK and within a couple of days they had disassembled the code to a level where we could tune and test the car further. Ecutek continued to delve deeper into the ECU code to get a full understanding of some of the new features Nissan have implemented such as the "Save" mode. By the end of March 2011 Ecutek had completed all ECU disassembly and we delivered our 2011 car so they could check and prove each aspect of their work.

Here is our car strapped down on the ECUTEK's in-house dyno

Their excellent dyno makes fine tuning maps very easy. Below are some examples of the graphs produced at lower boost when we compared just VVT changes at the bottom and mid range. You can see the improvement in turbo response and torque from just these changes.

Following this extra work with our demo car and after some further training we are now in a position to offer ECUTEK's new RaceRom upgrades to both 2011 and 2008-2010 owners.

Big Power support

The RaceROM custom code lets us easily setup cars with big horsepower without sacrificing control and refinement.

The Standard ECU has a number of internal limits which restrict how high some of the settings can go. RaceROM's custom code lets us increase these to insure the calibrations are correctly scaled. For example Injector size can increase over the standard limit and we can also lift the Boost limit over the previous 8 bit maximums. Essential features when customers are looking to build 800bhp+ monsters. Once you have these larger turbos producing high boost pressure Ecutek software has custom 3D maps for smooth boost control on gear changes.

We can also turn on the Speed Density control for our higher powered GTRs. This means that ECU will instantly switch from a MAF sensor based Load input to a MAP sensor input. Some of our more powerful cars have maxed out the MAF sensor scaling even when they are placed in a larger intake pipe. The beauty of this custom code is that you can take advantage of the key benefits of a MAF based system (idle control, cruise and partial throttles) and then at a pre-defined point the ECU seamless switches to the MAP sensor under load giving the best of both worlds.

The RaceROM software is standard fitment on all Litchfield upgrade packages and custom tunes.

Along with our own development car we have tuned a large number of 2011 GTR's that are used on both road and track. We had one of our 2011 tuned car impress Nissan's own test driver at the Nurburgring, even Formula 1 driver Vitaly Petrov's personal GTR which features a Litchfield Stage1 upgrade.

Transmission software upgrades

We have the full selection of Nissan's transmission software upgrades for both our Consult III and Consult III+ and we were the first to be able to update 2008-2010 cars to the latest 2011 GTR gearbox software and Launch Control 4. This new software significantly improves the gearboxes shifting and smoothness. Nissan also claims a standard 2011 GTR will accelerate from 0-60mph in just 2.9sec! with revised LC4 activated.

The ECUTEK end user software allows detailed data logging from the gearbox and as we develop new upgrades we can simply email out revisions to customers with the Race Rom cable.

EASY ECU end user cable and remote tuning

One of the biggest updates to come from ECUTEK will be the release of their new EASY ECU software and cable. This will allow customers to have access to the full power of the ECUTEK software on their laptops. The cable simply plugs into the cars diagnostic port and the easy to use software will work through the various options available to the user.

With EASY ECU you are able to monitor and data log important information from the ECU and this can be instantly viewed within software for detailed analysis. This information can be used for remote tuning as it can easily be emailed to us and we can reply with revised maps and changes.

EASY ECU can also be used as a powerful diagnostic tool as it is able to display and clear any fault codes that may appear.

The software will also have the option of allowing customers to perform routine servicing adjustments such as Gearbox Clutch Learning, Clutch Touch Point and Capacity adjustment without the need to visit a Nissan Consult III equipped dealer.

More information to follow soon.

What next?

As always the development continues, ECUTEK are working on the long term logging on the Flickr data recorder (incredible information that each car retains), further custom code for the ECU and TCM and enhanced Launch Control features.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at anytime.

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