Blitz throttle controller

jumbosrule

jumbosrule

Fully FX Invested
Premium
Car
2003 FX35T
Name
Brad
http://www.blitzperformancesales.com/products/throcon/throcon.html

The first time I saw this was when we crossed over to the Japanese FX site. One of the FXs had this mod and I was interested, but didn't have a whole lot of info.

Shortly after joining a local city forum about a week ago, I found a Z owner who was parting out his car. He had the Blitz and bought it new one year ago for $360. After listing it for several months on the forum, he had steadily dropped the price down to $150. I jumped on it. He came over tonight and it turns out he used to work for one of the shops I was looking to have do my turbo install. Small world. Anyway, he wired it up for me in about 20 mintues. You remove an OEM connector under the dash, put in the Blitz connector and plug the OEM into the Blitz module. Then you have to tap one wire in the harness to bypass the throttle controller whenever you are in reverse. Don't need to go into the engine bay at all.

I tried it out immediately. It's a cool toy, but if you want it, I would say definitely buy it used. $360 seems steep for what you are getting. There are four modes. When you turn on the ignition, the Blitz defaults to "OFF". To use any mode, you press the power button and then cycle through ECO, SP1, SP2, SP3.

ECO is supposed to increase response of the throttle at the low end, somehow saving you gas. Reading what the site has to say - I'm not sure I buy it. But if it does work, I could see this mode being a good influence on me when driving to work. I'll drive a full tank on ECO mode and see how it works out for mpgs.

SP1 is supposed to emulate drive by wire. Just like any car before electronic fuel ignition and variable valve timing. The response is a straight line.

SP2 is a bit more responsive. Push the accerator just a little and the throttle opens a lot more than it used to. It's easy to be agressive. This will probably be the mode I use the most.

SP3 is a little silly. It's a little difficult to baby. Just a touch on the pedal pretty much slams open the throttle plate. The guy that installed it told me if I ever wanted to mess with friends, put it on SP3 and let them test drive. "They'll look like they are driving manual for the first time". I wouldn't go quite that far. After driving around on SP3 for a while, I got used to it and could control the car as usual, just with itty biddy acceration pedal presses. I thought about giving it to the valet with this mode on. You owe me a new bumper!!!

Like I said it's a cool gadget, but not for so much cake. Also, I would prefer the LED display in amber - this is the only green light in my whole car. Is there an amber sticker I could use? I mounted it close to the door seam so the wire was easy to hide. But if the green lights get on my nerves, I might have to move this into the center console or tucked lower on the dash.

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HumbertoCALI said:
Wow that seems to be a great toy to have..

Wow.. I wonder how my baby would respond.... Hmm?
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I was told you can use this module no matter what other mods you have, including aftermarket engine management, with or without Forced Induction, etc. The only limitation is that it must be installed on a VQ35DE. It's all done under the dash and should definitely work for you.
 
jumbosrule said:
I was told you can use this module no matter what other mods you have, including aftermarket engine management, with or without Forced Induction, etc. The only limitation is that it must be installed on a VQ35DE. It's all done under the dash and should definitely work for you.
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Conflict detected.
 
no conflict. They are engine specific - info on the site.

All it's doing is changing the signal from the pedal to the throttle body. It uses a formula that if you graphed it - looks like those graphs on the site. In one mode it might not change the signal at all when the pedal is in a particular position and in another mode it might amplify it. On SP3, the graph shows WOT when the pedal is half way down. Doesn't matter what ECU is controling the fuel the Blitz only changes what the throttle plate is doing.
 
I will not buy from a company that can't spell the name of the automobile manufacturer correctly - "INFINITY"

J/K

-What does this exactly do to help performance?
-ECO- What happens in an emergency situation or passing situation where you need that throttle immediately? Do you have to press a button on the controller? You may not have time...
- SP1 is it like driving our cars currently? Drive by Wire?
- SP3 sounds unreasonable and unusable... if you are opening up your throttle body all the way, and only giving it half throttle, do you lean out your gas mixture going into the engine since you are basically tricking the TB to open up all the way, but not giving it enough fuel to burn properly?
- SP2 sounds to be the only one we could use safely....

If I am off, please enlighten me....I really do not see the purpose of this?
 
Definitely a poorly translated Japanese site.

The fuel is determined by the ECU and is going to be correct for whatever position the throttle plate is in (along with MAF data). These driving modes - think of them just like BMW's "sport mode".

You are not tricking anything. You are just changing the formula that manages pedal to throttle - which is just a formula that Nissan came up with to begin with. There's no direct line from our pedal to the throttle body.

Like I said, after using SP3 for a few minutes, I mastered it. To me it would have been like renting a really touchy car. Just different than I am used to, but still driveable. On ECO I floored it and it lagged a little, but made it all the way to WOT. You don't lose control of anything. It just changes the feel of the throttle control.
 
wow, funny thing is I thought of trying to do something similar to this way efore I saw this thing, it's all done with a microcontroller I think, that's how I would have done it. thought it'd be cool to have it ramp up the throttle & have it reach full throttle at half travel. alsol a valet mode that only allowed 1/2 throttle at full pedal travel.

what I think it does is intercept the signal from the pedal sensor & gives out a modified signal to the ecu, so when it's "normal" it's


input:output

1:1
2:2
3:3
4:4
5:5

putting out what it gets in...


in valet mode it would be

1:1
2:1.5
3:2
4:2.5
5:2.5

and then performance mode could be

1:1
2:3
3:5
4:5
5:5


it's only changing the pedal ratio, not adding any performance really, def a cool toy though, wish I knew enough about pic programming, this could be built pretty cheaply really but the programming's the whole show...
 
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fxlr8 said:
Would hate to have some kind of malfunction that kept the throttle open at 100%..
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like turbo said - it's just software. Even written in the same "language" as the car already has (why it is model-specific). If you are worried about this software failing, I would argue the OEM throttle software has the same chance of failure.

These are not uncommon modules. The guy I bought it from has experience on the Z forums and when these first came out it was a mad rush. Lots of Z drivers in Houston use these. Guess you could always research problems or issues reported on the module, but I haven't found any so far.
 
don't know that it's the same language, there are several different languages a microcontroller could be programmed in & probably nothing like how the ecu is programmed really, it actualy does no communication at all with the ecu as far as actual communication, all it does is modify an input before it passes it on to the ecu as it's output... this thing probaly costs under $50 to make, if that... all the rest is in packaging, modular plugs for plug & play & the display itself...

I find it hard to figure out why they'd be model specific, maybe engine specific if nissan uses a different logic for say a de vs a rev up vs a vk vs a hr, but I woulda expected the throttles to all be the same electrically as far as pedal output even across all these platforms... maybe the plugs are different between models?

chances of it failing wot is almost none, if it failed more than likely it would just have no output & a dead throttle pedal...
 
I feel like I've vaguely heard of something like this before that just plugs in below the dash, but it alot simpler, and cheaper (since it's only one setting). But I also thought someone said you could make it yourself? Anyone happen to remember this, or maybe I'm just crazy?
 
our pedal sensor is really 2 variable potentiometers, almost exactly the same as what used to be used as throttle position sensors on earlier cable driven throttles... only instead of sensing the opening of a throttle plate there sensing the "opening" of the gas pedal...

these are fed a 5v reference, & the variable potentiometer then gives back a portion of this reference voltage to the ecu depending on how "open" the pedal is... anything that alters this voltage is going to alter what the ecu sees, so it wouldn't be too hard to build something cheaply to modify these voltages, but to what end or what purpose is going to depend on what your doing... it does get a little more complicated that they use 2 & they are not parallel either, think they use 2 as a fail safe check sum really, if there was just one then it would be impossible to know if it was off, but by comparing 2 then it can tell more readily when there is an error..
 
A company called Venom used to make something similar. Don't know if it was cheaper or not.

StuLax18 said:
I feel like I've vaguely heard of something like this before that just plugs in below the dash, but it alot simpler, and cheaper (since it's only one setting). But I also thought someone said you could make it yourself? Anyone happen to remember this, or maybe I'm just crazy?
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After a couple of weeks with this controller, I don't think it saves me any gas on ECO mode. Maybe I'm just too aggressive for it to provide any benefit.

I'll use SP1 or SP2 when driving around the city. On the highway it almost doesn't matter what setting it is on since speed doesn't change all that often. For bursts of acceleration, any SP setting seems a little more responsive and faster than OEM (controller OFF).

I stand by my original testimonial. It's a fun toy, but no real benefit or value. If you can find it for a price you can live with, go for it. But I wouldn't pay retail of $360. Anything under $200 would be more reasonable.
 
so maybe i should just get my pedal adjusted to be more sensitive rather than dong this then? haha
 
jbaker1121 said:
so maybe i should just get my pedal adjusted to be more sensitive rather than dong this then? haha
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That's one way to look at it. Really, this is a way of having your pedal adjusted five ways, allowing you to select which one you feel like driving on.
 
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