Has your Infiniti felt sluggish lately? Have you noticed a drop in fuel mileage performance? Does your car not feel as snappy as it usually does on acceleration? This can happen to cars after a couple of years of normal wear and tear and there are ways to remedy this situation.
In the old days, you would take your car to a trusted mechanic and they would adjust some parameters inside your engine, put the vehicle on a dyno machine to test it and the tune up would be completed. These days, tune ups are a lot more complex as virtually all manufacturers have chips inside the engine to control performance.
This has made the job of the mechanic a lot easier from a physical point of view as they don’t have to manually adjust carburetors or intake valves anymore, but it has increased the difficulty in other ways as they have to abide by the data that they see on the ECU.
What is the ECU? How does that affect my performance? Is there a way to improve my car’s performance? What about these performance chips that I keep hearing about? All answers will be revealed below as we showcase how an Infiniti performance chip can help your car improve horsepower and response with Infiniti performance chip tune.
The ECU or Electronic Control Unit is the “brain” or information headquarters of your car. Some manufacturers also refer to this component as the ECM or Electronic Control Module. Your car has thousands of sensors that are installed around your car and inside your engine. These sensors relay information back to the ECM for continuous data analysis.
This data analysis is then used to make adjustments to your engine’s performance in real-time. There is a way to change these parameters that your car currently runs under and that’s with the installation of an Infiniti Performance Chip.
How Infiniti Performance Chips Work
If you’ve ever driven a go-kart at an amusement park and you can feel the engine top out prematurely, you know that the go-kart can go faster than that! That’s because go-karts have governors put onto the engines to limit their speed and acceleration. This is essentially what happens in today’s modern cars when they come off of the assembly line. The ECM is installed into the engine with set parameters (or limits) from the manufacturer.
The performance chip changes the parameters and removes these factory-set limits from your car and installs new limits which open up your car’s performance capabilities. The adjustment is still safe for the life of the vehicle and does not void the warranty.
The performance chip plugs into your car’s OBD-II port which is located beneath your car’s steering wheel on the bottom of the dashboard. This port is the same one that you would use to plug in a scan tool to check your car’s error codes. You leave the chip plugged in to the port and you simply drive your car with it plugged in.
The chip should be left in for 150 miles of driving as the parameter remapping takes some time to complete. As you drive, the chip introduces a new fuel map. This changes your car’s engine makeup to produce more horsepower, better fuel economy, and better response from the accelerator.
The benefits are plentiful with a performance chip as these are just some of them listed below:
- Standard performance chip improves performance by 20 hp and improves fuel mileage by 1-2 mpg.
- Mid-Grade performance chip improves performance by 40 hp and improves fuel mileage by 2-4 mpg.
- Premium performance chip improves performance by 60 hp and improves fuel mileage by 4-6 mpg.
Infiniti
The Infiniti was created as a luxury badge of Nissan in 1989 to enter the North American market to compete with other luxury brands such as the Acura (Honda) and the Lexus (Toyota). The Infiniti went on to great success as models such as the Q45, the G20, and the G35 were quite popular in the United States.
Popular Infiniti Models Over The Years
Infiniti Q45
The Infiniti Q45 became one of Nissan’s most revered and popular cars over the years. The Q45 entered the North American market in August of 1989 and lasted for 17 years and three different iterations. The Q45 also came out in the rest of the world as a popular luxury brand and as a lower-priced alternative to a Mercedes-Benz or Acura. Nissan changed the Q45 look and styling in 1997 and based it upon the Japanese-only Nissan Cima model. The Q45 made its last change in 2001 and the changes were based on the then-new Japanese-only Nissan President.
Infiniti Q50
The Infiniti Q50 made its debut in 2013 as a North American import of the classic Nissan Skyline. The Nissan Skyline’s roots go all the way back to the Prince Motor Company of the 1950s. The Prince Skyline started in 1957 as a compact car (as virtually all Japanese cars were back then) and was very popular in Japan. The Prince Motor Company merged with Nissan in 1967 and the flagship model name was changed to the Nissan Skyline. The Skyline went through a few more changes in the 1970s and 1980s and became the car that we all know and love in 1998 with the R34 model. The Q50 retains most of the Skyline’s power but with an “executive” look and feel for the luxury car market of North America that continues to this very day.
Infiniti J30
The Infiniti J30 was Nissan’s attempt at a mid-size luxury car aimed at the North American market with a reasonable sticker price. The J30 was a popular choice and retained many great features such as Bose sound system, 8-way heated power seats, and sunroof. The J30 was in production from 1992 to 1997.
Infiniti I30
The Infiniti I30 was the successor to the J30 and first hit the North American market in 1995. The I30 was already in production for the Japanese market since 1988 under the Cefiro badge name. The Cefiro was a smaller, slightly-sportier version of the Skyline. The Infiniti I30 ceased production in 2003.
Infiniti QX4
In 1997, Nissan was looking to release a luxury version of their popular SUV model, the Pathfinder. They succeeded with the worldwide release of the Infiniti QX4 which retained the durability of the Pathfinder but also introduced the beautiful stylings and interior of the Infiniti line of sedans.
The Infiniti is a great car to drive and the parameters from the factory are good enough for most drivers. But why be like “most drivers’? You should be unique from most drivers and forge your own path with an Infiniti performance chip tune.