Miller Preformance WAR Chip

[WhitelandRestos]

Hey guys hoping someone out there has some experience with the WAR chip from Miller performance as they seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

We're trying to get our E30 325i running. At the moment it's almost undrivable. We've been altering the map but every change we make doesn't seem to make a difference. There's a huge flat spot right in the middle of the powerband. It's running far too rich and hunts a little.

The engine mods we've done are:

Schrick 272 cam
lightweight flywheel
17lb injectors
fast flow 6 branch manifold
ported head
Miller G3 hot wire maf

Any info or pointers would be great.

Cheers

[82eye]

Hey guys hoping someone out there has some experience with the WAR chip from Miller performance as they seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

rumour is they are still around, but they've moved on from the e30 and simply have nothing to do with it anymore. they still have a website selling e30 products and an address in BC, Canada. E30 (millerperformancecars.com)

We're trying to get our E30 325i running. At the moment it's almost undrivable. We've been altering the map but every change we make doesn't seem to make a difference. There's a huge flat spot right in the middle of the powerband. It's running far too rich and hunts a little.

The engine mods we've done are:

Schrick 272 cam
lightweight flywheel
17lb injectors
fast flow 6 branch manifold
ported head
Miller G3 hot wire maf

Any info or pointers would be great.

Cheers

at this point everyone i know who has used miller has pulled everything of theirs off the car and gone with other engine management to get them running again.


edit : a quick look in the miller forum shows last member activity in 2019 and last owner activity in 2017. i'm assuming the company itself went dormant around then. it's odd the website and forum is still accessible.

i have somewhat similar mods and went with sssquid chip and stock afm set up. markd is also a well respected name in e30 tuning chips. can recommend either. past that a lot of guys go to a tunable standalone like MS / diyautotune.

sssquid also have a maf conversion but it won't work with any of the miller stuff. they've also suspended selling the maf kits. the key issue is a lack of suitable mafs that are able to have their signals, and in many cases housings, modified in order to run the gear.

[WhitelandRestos]

I'm still trying to find someone who's had some experience with tuning with one of these WAR chips. I bought the kit before lockdown then decided to restore the car so the kit was on the shelf till I rebuilt the engine. Now it seems Miller have disappeared into thin air and I can't seem to find anyone who has had dealings with them. I want to give it a chance before ripping it out because at the end of the day it was a lot of money to just chuck in the bin. A lot of the rolling roads round me don't want to touch it because they're basically just uploading ready made maps

[82eye]

I'm still trying to find someone who's had some experience with tuning with one of these WAR chips. I bought the kit before lockdown then decided to restore the car so the kit was on the shelf till I rebuilt the engine.

the issues and symptoms you are experiencing sound typical. a lot of folk had the same thing, or had it develop over time. if similar it boils down to the chip not being able to interpret / modify the maf signal properly. it's not something that you'll tune out.

miller is down to just the one guy. he doesn't answer tuning issue questions any longer. there are some professionals and vendors he still maintains communication with but that's it. he assumes if you are buying the kit you are familiar with aftermarket tuning and he is much more focused on other platforms now that the e30 is old.

the customer service experience you are having is par for the course.

I want to give it a chance before ripping it out because at the end of the day it was a lot of money to just chuck in the bin. A lot of the rolling roads round me don't want to touch it because they're basically just uploading ready made maps

that's still gonna be your best bet.

[Bi Stage]

I'm still trying to find someone who's had some experience with tuning with one of these WAR chips. I bought the kit before lockdown then decided to restore the car so the kit was on the shelf till I rebuilt the engine. Now it seems Miller have disappeared into thin air and I can't seem to find anyone who has had dealings with them. I want to give it a chance before ripping it out because at the end of the day it was a lot of money to just chuck in the bin. A lot of the rolling roads round me don't want to touch it because they're basically just uploading ready made maps

TLDR: The end all solution to the miller tune and software question is to stop using it to tune and convert to standard format files...then never go back.

This is one way you could still use the chip will get to that in bit...

The information/tools to convert the Miller file to a standard hex file is out there. I looked at the 413/506 DME tunes they put out on their file share. The methods miller used to tune the 413/506 were the hacky-ist methods IMO.

What I think you can do with the device...This may not work if the checksum is forcefully updated by the Miller software and they messed with the checksum storage location. So it depends on how the software works. Anyway:

Only use the miller chip for its multitune storage and only use the miller software to load and unload ROM files to and from the miller chip.

Use the open information to convert tunes to standard hex format and tune in free TunerPro or Romraider. This brings all the data out so you can see what is happening and exactly what is changing. For you to do it you have to either already know some about the layout and definition of the ROM hex files or you will have to learn a little bit. You will need to use and likely modify a customized definition file for either of the free tuning software programs.

Why not use miller software?... the miller tuning software is similar to tunerpro and romraider except: The miller software is paid, miller software is outdated/not supported in modern operating system, the definition file miller uses if another locked down file that cannot be edited, there is no longer any support for the miller software. Miller soft is a locked down, dumbed down version of ROM editing software. On the other hand TP and RR are to opposite.

After making adjustments in the free program of your choice you can verify the structure of your file. Then you can convert the file back to the miller format and load it onto the miller chip.

Cumbersome all that converting. I would tune on regular 27512 eeproms or an emulator and get the 4 files all finished then load onto the miller chip at the end. Of course a simple proof of concept would need to be done to show that tuning outside of the miller software, converting back, and loading onto the miller chip works. All depends on how they do the checksum. My suggestion for initial process would be NEVER click SAVE in the miller software as that is probably when it does the checksum... But it may be fine. It is known on the 413/506 that miller customize the checksum zone and wrote the checksum where the startup fuel table originally was. Which means if you try to load a standard 413 file into miller software several things are pointing to wrong locations and the miller soft overwrites your start fuel table with checksum data resulting in a no start condition.....Miller advertised you could load in a standard hex file and the software would convert it to the miller format for you.....well they failed. That is why there are several no start threads across the net relating to miller chip on 413/506 dmes.

Now with your MAF conversion miller provided a "special" tune for that. This tune is not in the miller public database of base tunes. So you have to have the miller MAF conversion base tune. The base tune might not be that good. Best would be to find the 3 ppl in the world that got their cars running okay on the miller maf conversion and ask them nicely for their tune file.

Do you have a Miller MAF conversion specific tune?

I can help you with converting to standard format file and can take a look into the miller file structure vs a stock files to aid in seeing if definition changes need to be made.

Note: other miller products like turbo kits or other conversions all require custom versions of the miller base tunes that they did not put in their public database. So only people who bought the parts got those base tunes originally. Some may have been shared privately...others are now lost forever.

Another note: it is possible to make your own multitune chip/board. 2 tune solutions can be bought that come with a switch. It is possible to build 4 and 8 tune chips/boards and has been done in the past. Making it yourself is quite the electrical engineering project for a beginner and I do not know of anyone selling them.