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zzp pcm pros and cons



We want apples to apples. Anyone can purchase a tuner and tune it themselves. Obviously this a route most should take, but some don't have the time needed to actually learn how to properly tune. This thread is about a ZZP shelf tune. Not a tuning yourself vs a ZZP PCM.

Who has had a bad experience with a ZZP PCM? What factors played in it being "bad.". Specifically what was in the PCM that caused it to be bad? What was specifically done before the PCM was added and what was done after. What was the timing set at etc? Those are the items we are looking for. I constantly hear ZZP PCM's are bad yet no one has mentioned what specifically in the PCM made it bad. Love to here input as I have run 2 ZZP PCM's and neither were an issue.

AjL227 said:
Junk. Save your money and buy a tuner, or have someone else tune your car.
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Why is it junk? Did you have a personal experience with one? You cant state it's junk without giving reasoning behind that statement.

goldgp said:
^^This^^
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So you feel as though a ZZP PCM is junk as well. Why?
 
Last edited:
Quit multi-posting...we get your point.

I had 5 of them.

All of them stuck in programming mode.

My car toasted the motor about a week after the 5th one.

ZZP wouldn't return my money so I had to get the Missouri Attorney General involved to get it ALL back. An intercooled guy here recently toasted his motor as well.

Have people had good luck with them? Sure? Would I ever recommened anyone to buy one? No.

Have people EVER had issues with DHP PCM's who have been around since day one? None that I have EVER heard of, and is the tune that is in my silver GT now and was put onto my GTP after it grenaded from the ZZP tune...and has been tossed onto TONS AND TONS of 3.4"~ setup GTP's. SDGTP99 also lost his motor last year as well.

Which is, why for the SAME exact price...I always tell people to buy a 3800Performance.com PCM (who now has the rights to DHP tune files). I don't see why people don't go through them, or Will @ Overkill...it's common sense.

If you've had good luck with your ZZP PCM's, then great. More power to you. I'd just rather get a PCM that has a positive track record with no issues for the same amount of coin.

Or, buy a tuner and go even faster...because in the long run. Canned tunes SUCK. And can always be improved on with a custom tune vs. a canned one.
 
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4 tunes from ZZP and never a problem. Not as good as a dyno tune but got the job done. Over the years I owned my GP the trap went from 88mph to 115mph.

I have had an issue with an Overkill tune in the past. He installed the wrong gear set into the settings (stock gear set! so it should have not been a problem) I spent weeks trying to figure out why my shift points were ****ed up. He also has about the worst customer service (doesn't answer emails for ****)

People are going to have arguments on both sides, but ZZP is a big part of why this community is still moving forward, considering how much things have fallen off.
 
When i first bought my GT i purchased a DHP. When i went M90 i bought ZZPs tune for the blower. The first PCM would stall the car out, and only command 6 degrees of timing, and dump fuel like crazy. They sent me another one and it fried when i was having the car dyno tuned. I bought an intense PCM and its still in the car now, re tuned a few times with the blower and now how it sits with the turbo. Personally id choose a DHP or Intense, then again i have my own tuner. Is there a GM shop local to you? if they can tune LS cars the 3800 shouldn't be an issue.
 
Going with what six said above, one of the main things needed to be looked at is what the tune was designed for and what you're actually running for mods. There actually was a list created about 5-7 years ago that listed motor failures, mods and pcm being used, have to dig up the link.

If you actually open up each of the tunes in an editor you will see some major differences in the zzp's from intense/dhp.
 
bluegtp91 said:
Quit multi-posting...we get your point.

I had 5 of them.

All of them stuck in programming mode.

My car toasted the motor about a week after the 5th one.

ZZP wouldn't return my money so I had to get the Missouri Attorney General involved to get it ALL back. An intercooled guy here recently toasted his motor as well.

Have people had good luck with them? Sure? Would I ever recommened anyone to buy one? No.

Have people EVER had issues with DHP PCM's who have been around since day one? None that I have EVER heard of, and is the tune that is in my silver GT now and was put onto my GTP after it grenaded from the ZZP tune...and has been tossed onto TONS AND TONS of 3.4"~ setup GTP's. SDGTP99 also lost his motor last year as well.

Which is, why for the SAME exact price...I always tell people to buy a 3800Performance.com PCM (who now has the rights to DHP tune files). I don't see why people don't go through them, or Will @ Overkill...it's common sense.

If you've had good luck with your ZZP PCM's, then great. More power to you. I'd just rather get a PCM that has a positive track record with no issues for the same amount of coin.

Or, buy a tuner and go even faster...because in the long run. Canned tunes SUCK. And can always be improved on with a custom tune vs. a canned one.
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I'm curous as to why you kept buying the same product when the outcome was the same the 2nd time.






So 2 have posted bad experiences with the ZZP PCM. I wonder why many think it's bad on this forum? Does this warrant people bad mouthing and bashing their PCM?
 
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Google it. Look at all the failures that their PCMs have "likely" caused. I'm on my 4th Grand Prix and got my first in 2006. In the past 5 years of forum time, I can tell you that it is not a PCM I would run my car on for any extended period of time. Maybe after a build to get to a dyno shop or someone who could tune, but that's it.

In my personal experiance, I was having issues with my tune, tired to purchase an .hpt file with their tune. I paid upon ordering a few days before I wanted it in my car. They charged me shipping, so I asked for that back since the file was to be e-mailed to me. I after days had not received the file, which on their site says they ship within 24 hours of purchase. I asked for a refund and they refused to give it to me saying that paypal wouldn't allow it and that they tried to get ahold of me about it. I never got e-mails in regards to it, so not only did they lie to me, I had to file a claim with paypal to get my money back.
 


TheBestNick said:
Quit multi-posting...we get your point.

I had 5 of them.

All of them stuck in programming mode.
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This is either a lie, or you have no idea what you are talking about. If you had a pcm "stuck in programming mode", it would not start.

Secondly, there is no such thing as "stuck in programming mode" as every time you power cycle the pcm, it resets and boots into "normal mode", there is no physical way you can boot it into "programming mode" without sending a long list of commands to it.

My car toasted the motor about a week after the 5th one.
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Toasted in what way? Did the ZZP PCM start a barbque on your crankshaft? Did you chip a piston? Blow a rod bearing? What were you doing around the time of it breaking?

Or, buy a tuner and go even faster...because in the long run. Canned tunes SUCK. And can always be improved on with a custom tune vs. a canned one.
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I am sure you are speaking from experience here.... Considering I have retuned MANY cars that came with "box tunes".... I can easily say that it is not easy to "custom tune in power". The variance found in things like air temperature, moisture content, etc has a much larger effect on horsepower than anything you can do by tweaking a fuel curve by a few percent or adding a degree of timing on a car that probably knocks a bit anyway.

I can easily say that I am a very experienced tuner, and I have yet to "tune more power' into a mechanically sound car that had a box tune on it. Living very close to ZZP, I have a very large collection of ZZP bin files (10+ last time I checked), all of them are very simple, and none of them are nearly as agressive or "fuel dumpy" as the DHP pcm files i have.
 
I had my zzp tune in my car for almost a year and a half with no problems what so ever, the car ran great. Then i went to get it emissioned so i could get my tags and it failed due to crazy high NOx. So i took it to school and with a scan tool figured out they turned off my egr.So i thought no big deal i will just find a tuner and get it turned back on, well found a tuner and he tried everything he could to get into the stupid thing but it was locked. Now im kinda irratated, for one on zzp's website it says the car WILL pass emissions with this pcm. Mine did not. And then it also says they DO NOT lock there pcm's so you can tune it down the road. Well that wasnt so true either. Oh and when i was in the computer with a scan tool i also found they didnt program in the right VIN. Whatever. So i just bought another computer and had it tuned and all is well now. I couldnt be too angry tho, for $100 bucks the car ran great. I guess i was just more irratated that they werent exactly honest on there website.
 
Then i went to get it emissioned so i could get my tags and it failed due to crazy high NOx.
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That has nothing to do with the PCM, that was a mechanical sniffer issue. The PCM reports emissions through the OBD2 port, and I am sure that it passed those tests (which are the only ones that zzp has control of.). I have disabled / removed EGR from many cars without issues of emmissions.

well found a tuner and he tried everything he could to get into the stupid thing but it was locked.
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First off, if it was locked by zzp (which it wasnt), the tuner would have had NO issues fixing the file, as the only method of locking availible is extremely easy to override. Secondly, it wasnt locked by zzp, because they DONT lock their pcms, they actually do not have the ability to lock their pcm's with the package they use.
 
darkhorizon said:
That has nothing to do with the PCM, that was a mechanical sniffer issue. The PCM reports emissions through the OBD2 port, and I am sure that it passed those tests (which are the only ones that zzp has control of.). I have disabled / removed EGR from many cars without issues of emmissions.

First off, if it was locked by zzp (which it wasnt), the tuner would have had NO issues fixing the file, as the only method of locking availible is extremely easy to override. Secondly, it wasnt locked by zzp, because they DONT lock their pcms, they actually do not have the ability to lock their pcm's with the package they use.
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1) Im not sure how they do emissions where your from but in CO they get your reading through your exhaust, not your obd port, zzp turning off the egr did in fact cause me to fail emissions, if the egr isnt recirculating some exhaust gas like it should, you blow high NOx out your exhaust. Plain and simple.



2) About this i have no idea, i just went off what he said. But he had no reason to lie to me so idk.
 


I had a canned DHP tune for a few months with no issues, even after I went cammed, the trimms were all over the place, but at least it wasn't knocking. Before that, it worked just fine with thee basic 3.4 setup.
 
TheBestNick said:
Quit multi-posting...we get your point.

I had 5 of them.

All of them stuck in programming mode.
Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, I think the programming mode was once refered here to as when the DIC would flash in 0 when you opened the switch?

The other day I put a stock 01 impala LS PCM on my car to do a full write and the DIC would flash 0 all the time.

If that's the case, I think the problem would be having the incorrect OSID loaded in your PCM.
 
Juanmiguel said:
If I remember correctly, I think the programming mode was once refered here to as when the DIC would flash in 0 when you opened the switch?

The other day I put a stock 01 impala LS PCM on my car to do a full write and the DIC would flash 0 all the time.

If that's the case, I think the problem would be having the incorrect OSID loaded in your PCM.
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Basically the flashing 0 just means you have no PCM communitation, which could be anything... The last GTP I built had that "problem" (it wasnt actually a problem, just something I noticed) because I had not connected the large transmission ground that runs to the battery.
 
JbrownGTP said:
1) Im not sure how they do emissions where your from but in CO they get your reading through your exhaust, not your obd port, zzp turning off the egr did in fact cause me to fail emissions, if the egr isnt recirculating some exhaust gas like it should, you blow high NOx out your exhaust. Plain and simple.



2) About this i have no idea, i just went off what he said. But he had no reason to lie to me so idk.
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In most every other state, they do a OBD2 test, and then possibly a sniff test.

Even in sniff test states, a 3800 will pass NOX without a EGR.
 
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