[DWR]

Quote from Nizpro:
Now, many said re-calibrating the ZF via the BMW OBD2 port along with locating the calibration tables required for transmission control could not be possible. We at Nizpro are very excited to say that we have now been able to achieve this goal. It is now possible to read existing calibration, and also write new calibrations. New calibrations can be flashed directly to the ZF TCU via the OBD2 port....

As a proven example, one of our Level 2 internally upgraded 6HP26 transmissions using standard calibration will be 2 tenths faster over the ¼ mile compared to a good condition standard transmission.
Take the same Level 2 upgraded 6HP26, add a recalibrated file and you will see a further reductions of 4 tenths.

This was all done on a modified 335i.

More info at http://www.nizpro.com.au/nizpro-news-may-2016/

[DWR]

Here's the response I received from NizPro to a brief introductory email:

Thanks for your interest. The BMW side of the ZF market is very new to us, and being in Australia fairly small, so I thought anyway. I have quickly found out that the OS market is massive. I have had a read of your thread on e90 but forgive me for not reading the full 49 pages. For what seems to be non commercial reason you are a very determined bunch.

There are certainly gains to be made with custom calibrations that would suit individual owners driving habits, however in our experience here in Australia, guys that are using HP tuners software that is released to anyone that wants it for tuning there HP26 ends in cars on tow trucks more than 50% of the time. Please keep in mind I am referring to the HP26 found in our Australian Ford Turbo vehicles. Typically guys are reducing shift times, adding both oncoming and applied pressure and reducing torque limits and not by very much, this however leads to a broken input shaft very quickly in most cases. It is not the engine torque but the shock loading that causes the failure in the most part.

The shock loading is mostly generated by the reciprocating mass of the engine during a gear change resulting in a different engine speed. That being said I would think that the 3 litre Diesel engine may be worse due to its heavier reciprocating mass compared to our petrol 4 litre engines. I would also say that the throttle responce of the diesel would be far slower after the gear shift, so the fast onset of torque I am not so concerned about.

I would also think extreme care is needed when performing any calibration changes. ZF in my opinion have done a remarkable job preserving transmission reliability over the life of the transmission with their programming using torque management. There are gains to be made with increased pressures once the shift has been performed, you can also sharpen shift speeds up a touch. The massive gains come once internal components have been upgraded, we are now able to supply the HP26 in a form that will handle 1600 nm in racing conditions.

Due to the torque management, the best results come from individual calibration to suit individual cars, as torque reductions numbers are calculated by the overall torque being produced by the engine minus the torque number the transmission will cope with on any particular gear shift. It is a juggling act between gear shift speed and transmission reliability.

With the above being said at this point we will only be releasing upgraded calibrations via a flash device to suit standard transmission with limited engine power upgrades or a complete transmission upgrade package. Our starting point is for the N54 owners, sorry. However we have a lot better understanding of what the HP26 will handle so that should be able to follow more quickly.

I am interested in having mutual assistance, once I get a little further down the track as far as marketing the product goes.

Regards

Simon Gischus
Director

Nizpro Turbocharging Pty Ltd
8 Turbo Drive
Bayswater North, VIC 3153
Phone: 03 9738 2134
Fax: 03 9729 4295
Email: sales@nizpro.com.au
ABN: 77 270 998 085

[DWR]

More good news from NizPro regarding ODBII flashers:

As soon as we have customer stock on hand we will make an announcement so customers wanting them can purchase. We would be happy to work with you and your diesel community to customize a calibration for what you are looking for, and provide customization of the tune at no cost. I own some fairly seriously fast petrol cars { GTR R35 } however my everyday car is VW V8 TDI Touareg, so I full understand what you are after.

Tonight I'll have an adult beverage raised in the direction of Simon Gischus!

[DWR]

I don't see NizPro giving away their method for taking care of the checksums and RSA. So, I am not sure how this might impact DIY tuning of the TCU. IMO, that is the reason for continuing the work in the "Let's do it ourselves" Thread. However, for those who prefer to work with a tuner I'm hoping this becomes a viable option.

I need to follow up with Simon to understand what parts of their implementation model will be proprietary. He has already stated updated calibrations will be free, so I think it is safe to assume NizPro will be making their money on both the flasher and initial calibration/remap. They will want to protect that.

[HeatherM35d]

Atleast I can contribute a little; I've got a better input shaft so we don't have to worry about breaking them.

[DWR]

Originally Posted by HeatherM35d

Atleast I can contribute a little; I've got a better input shaft so we don't have to worry about breaking them.

That's great!

[Puerto Rican 335d]

interesting

[DWR]

Trying to be respectful of Simon's time, I sent another email with an inquiry about the best way to communicate along with a couple of questions I thought might be on your minds. Here's his response:

Hello, my name is Simon, owner/founder of Nizpro Turbocharging which is based in Melbourne Australia. After having a spare hour or so, and being sent a link to your forum, I’ve had a chance to read many of your thoughts. I think it maybe appropriate for you to hear first hand about our plans with the 6HP series of BMW ZF transmissions.

Firstly an introduction to Nizpro may be helpful.

I started modifying cars around 30 years ago, electronic engine control in the after market was at its very beginning, providing a great opportunity to get a very good grounding in control systems, and while the technology was in it’s infancy compared to today. It was the crawl before you could walk scenario, I was 19 and had very little money. Any modifications I wanted to make, I simply had to learn, fabricate components, wire ECU ‘s or tune myself. Luckily I had a neighbour named Steve that became a very good friend, he was able to teach me a huge amount over the next ten years. His background was in electronics and actually produced programmable ECU’s for me to run Nissan EFI engines that I was importing from Japan. This period was before world class leading aftermarket engine management companies like MoTeC even existed.

Steve’s career progressed to roles within Australia motorsport teams, Gibson Motorsport and Holden Racing team. Steve is still, 30 years later, the most intelligent guy I have ever met and had the pleasure of working with, his influence on my ability to get where I am today has been massive.

At this point I was exclusively working on Nissan vehicles, hence the name Nizpro. Nizpro 30 years later, is still a small business with 6 staff. This allows me to still have a “hands on” approach and guide project directions.

Nizpro for the first 20 plus years had a focus on turbocharging hardware and tuning. We became involved with ZF transmissions out of necessity, when our engine packages out grew the torque capacity of the transmissions. Customers were being told from transmission shops that they could upgrade the ZF transmissions to handle our power outputs, but they would fail in ten minutes. Eventually, we made the decision to investigate whether we could make them survive ourselves.

We did make them survive, and now the ZF side of Nizpro is 45% of our workload.

I will attempt to answer some of your questions. All the info I provide below is based on our 9 years experience with the HP26. We are currently concentrating on the smaller HP21. I understand that most of you are looking at improving the calibration within the standard HP26 for your diesel vehicles, so I don’t need to talk too much on the mechanical upgrades we have available. I also noticed members have posted some parts of emails I have written, so I won't cover details already answered in regards to increased toque levels.

1: Reality of being able to program the TCU
Firstly, let me make this crystal clear, Nizpro nor myself are not producing the hardware or software for TCU recalibration in-house. We have engaged people that I believe could deliver the best end result, to provide user friendly software and hardware to accomplish recalibration. Nizpro has invested a lot of time and money to make this available, so although I did not personal do it, I certainly commissioned the work. Nizpro are proud of our accomplishment, as the ability to do this did not previously exist. At this point, our personal knowledge of the internal maps plays a key role in being able to complete the project.

We are very much on track, but like most projects with a high level of complexity, it has taken longer to achieve than we all would have liked. The good news is, we can read and write to the ZF Megatronic unit via the OBD2 port on all the BMW’s we have tested so far.

Some examples of what we are able to configure are:
1. adjust torque limits for each gear
2. gear shift points (both up and down)
3. shift time
4. on coming pressures for each gear
5. clamp pressure for each gear
6. maximum shift time
7. maximum torque allowed on up shifts
8. maximum rpm for transmission

Both ‘bench flashing’ and ‘obd2 flashing’ methods are supported, giving us the ability to flash with or without the car being available.
There is no doubt that within the range of BMW vehicles there will be ECU variations, models and versions etc that we will struggle with. The good news is we are concentrating on the 335's at this point, and although untested at this stage we believe the 330 D will also be successful.

2: Why has it taken so long?
This is interesting, I read someone saying ‘how has Nizpro been able to do this out of nowhere?’, when in fact this started around two years ago for us. I feel like its taken forever and although I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, its only a miners torch. We still have a fair bit to do before releasing a product that I can be confident and comfortable with.

As mentioned above, we are a team of six and our day to day workload keeps us all very busy. We also have other exciting projects we are involved with, delays in getting components produced, and lastly, we have not previously been involved with the BMW market so it has sometimes fallen between the cracked in terms of priorities.

I hope this has answered some of your questions, I’m sure you will have more! I will try and reply through DWR in a timely matter. Please don’t read anything into me not joining your forum personally, I’m simply time poor. If I sign up to this forum, I should also sign up to another half a dozen, and I’m afraid I will not be able to give questions the attention they deserve.




Regards

Simon Gischus
Director


Nizpro Turbocharging Pty Ltd
8 Turbo Drive
Bayswater North, VIC 3153
Phone: 03 9738 2134
Fax: 03 9729 4295
Email: sales@nizpro.com.au
ABN: 77 270 998 085

[iaknown]

Thanks for sharing!

[DWR]

Originally Posted by iaknown

Thanks for sharing!

You're welcome. These communications are for everyone. Based on Simon's feedback, I'll try to keep the info flowing in both directions and not get in the way.

[shnaggs]

This is good!

[RollingCoal]

Originally Posted by iaknown

Thanks for sharing!

+1, and thanks for the leg work on this one.

Out of curiosity, if one had the ability to read and write through obd2, couldn't we potentially monitor (or better yet log) what the transmission is actually doing during actual runs.

[DWR]

Originally Posted by RollingCoal

+1, and thanks for the leg work on this one.

Out of curiosity, if one had the ability to read and write through obd2, couldn't we potentially monitor (or better yet log) what the transmission is actually doing during actual runs.

Actually, we are already able to do that using Testo.

In the beginning of his thread, you can find this posted by Mik325tds: http://www.e90post.com/forums/showpo...79&postcount=3

[RBT-Tuning]

Just to show, what BMW has already done with the 6HP26 on diesel cars:

530d with "Sport Automatic" option (SAT) retrofit:

I'd say that substantially faster then in in the E9x application and obviously is possible inside of OEM limits.

[DWR]

Just a quick status update on Nizpro. Below is an except of an email I received from Simon. Some of the email relates to non 335d conversation and personal exchanges that are not relavent to this thread, that is the reason for not publishing the email in full.

Simon:
The maps are all very similar within the Megatronic range, we dont have a description file for the HP21, we are filling in the blanks as we locate and test them.. We do have a reasonable description of the the HP8 maps within the total 1800 plus , theses are also important to us for other vehicles we are interested in and show that even from the early HP6 though to the latest HP8’s they have kept very close continuity. We also of course have the SCT and HP tuners versions for the HP26 and can recognise tables from these with the HP21.

The diesel and petrol versions of the HP8 look to be almost identical so far in lay out terms, I expect the 335D and 335 I to be the same, a dump of yours maybe very helpful if we can’t get hold of one locally.

So far we have defined on coming pressures for all forward gears, the stall up limits and a number of others. There are around 118 maps in both the HP6 and HP8 that are undefined, their structures look the same and we believe are the main control maps we are interested in. Sitting in my office I watch the 335 drive past 1000 times!! a day over the last week. I have not been pestering Dave very much as he works best left alone.

Just wanted everyone to know that this is not a back burner project for Nizpro. And, although they certainly have others things in the works, there is steady effort and progress being made.

At least one forum member has hinted they have working definitions for these TCUs. If anyone would care to share those with me via private message, that would be appreciated.

[dixy2k]

It would be nice if the 2nd to 3rd shift problem can be cured by some software update.
The dealer can reset the transmission but it will develop the same problem soon after.

I was just reading about this issues being a common one in both ZF and GM 6 speed auto.

http://histall.blogspot.com/2012/06/...smissions.html

[Hoooper]

I wouldnt be surprised if its the case in all ZF 6 speeds due to some recommendation from ZF. I can tell you the 8 speeds across different brands also have very similar characteristics, even through the different 8HP variations.

[DWR]

Just received an update from Simon at Nizpro. They had a setback, but I'll let him explain.

There is no doubt that our announcement a month or so ago was a bit early, not so much on a technical side but on a release product side. I dont think I ever mention we were ready to ship product or even mention a possible date, Unfortunely many took it that we were ready to ship. I am certainly not going to release or at least do my utmost not to release product that wont perform as we suggest it will. Many think the software will be the magic bullet and all of a sudden the stock transmission will be able to handle 8 million hp. I understand the Diesel guys are not wanting it for this purpose.

So using our car for calibration over the last month, we discovered some issues that were not behaving as we thought they should, it was decided to remove our transmission and have a look though it. It was quickly discovered that it was substantially worn out and no software changes were going to fix it. This is going to be a common issue and we will be faced with guys buying product looking for the magic fix all to be disappointed and them bad mouthing us all because they have mechanically worn transmissions.

So from our point of view we need to document the improvements and limitation very accurately so no one gets their noises out of joint with ridiculous expectations. Remembering we are also developing internal transmission upgrades that will need to work with standard calibration, Alpina cals and our own custom cals, along with standard transmission recals for varies engine types and power levels.

We have achieved a reasonable amount in the back ground however not wanting to repeat the mistake of making people think we are days away from shipping product dont wont to release to many details.

We were actually caught testing a few weeks ago while trying to keep a low profile, this has now been released although we did ask them to keep it under wraps for a couple of weeks.

I understand your communities eagerness, please dont let us stand in their way, if they want and need to continue doing their own thing please let them. What we are trying to achieve in terms of calibration takes OEM’s years to develop before being released, we are trying to improve their calibration in various formats in 3 months, Im sure you understand this extremely well, others certainly dont.

[iaknown]

Thanks for the update

[Nadir Point]

Originally Posted by DWR

What we are trying to achieve in terms of calibration takes OEM’s years to develop before being released...

Whodathunkit?!

[DWR]

A quick update from Simon at Nizpro:

We have had reasonable success over the last few weeks, currently we are working on file corruption recovery in the event the flash is interrupted so as we dont lose the TCM. This is nearly completed and we hope to have a full production display on the 17 th of September for our local BMW owners, including being able to road test cars to show the live real feel re calibration differences.

After that date all going well we will release pricing and product.

[Puerto Rican 335d]

Cant wait Im interested in this