Red SLR Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Has any one got any experiance of these chips? Are they worth the money? They claim about 10 - 15 bhp gain on an NA car, is this possible? Is fuel economy ruined? X777CAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V7 SLR Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 I think you have to understand what the full ECU-thing does on a car first. You'll probably answer the question yourself then. Check out Dave Andrews web site at: http://hometown.aol.com/DVAndrews/index.htm There's a whole section about electronic management which is very detailed. In a nut-shell, if your car is already running correctly (so we remove the possibility of power gains because of that) then you may be able to adjust the shape of the power curve, possibly increasing the headline figure at the expense of driveability and possibly sacrificing economy, but more likely by sacrificing longevity. The question that always comes to my mind is, how can a chip improve your engine's output when the car's not been near to a rolling road? How can they assume it's OK for your engine? No 2 engines are the same when they come out of the factory. Put a few thousand miles on them and the differences are pretty substantial. I've just replaced my MEMS with an Emerald M3DK. It has a map in it from another standard VHPD engine, but looking at the results from the various rolling road sessions that Dave Andrews has organised at Emerald over the last couple of years it is obvious that no 2 engines are the same, even if their parts are the same. I am not entirely happy to use my new ECU with the map from another car but I increased the fueling a little through the range, although not under load. I have a session booked at Emerald in a month's time to have it set up correctly. It'll be interesting to see how far out from the other VHPD mine is. I know that increases can be had more effectively with turbo engines, but they can increase boost and all sorts of things that are not adjustable on a NA engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oilyhands Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Good luck finding a superchip for the Rover Mems. The efficacy of a superchip depends on how bad the original calibration of the ECU is to start with, some are better than others. On naturally aspirated engines it's entirely possible to improve throttle response and maybe gain a little torque here or there but 10-15% seems a little optimistic. Every engine is different and the engine on which the re-calibrated maps were developed may not have identical chaaracterstics to the one its being fitted to. It is these differences that sometimes cause the standard ECUs map to be a little off beam. The best improvement I have ever witnessed was a 1.8K Caterham which had an Emerald ECU put in place of the standard Mems, with just a 'near enough' map from a friends Elise. It picked up 12BHP and 8-10 ft/lb of torque. It was so surprising that we did further back-to-back tests with the old Mems and the new ECU to substantiate the result. This is however very unusual and the owner was complaining of flat spots and rough running prior to the swap-out, clearly the original ECU calibration was erroneous. A 'Superchip' is also a non volatile device so you cannot alter the maps as you can with a proepr ECU, if they dont suit your engine you are stymied. On turbo engines with electronic boost control there are substantial gains to be had... Oily Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Corb Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Dont touch them with a bargepole. Modern engine management has got to a state where thousands of parameters have been optimised over many 1000's of man hours. You cannot expect to be able to download the software with some sort of EPROM programmer and just expect to be able to find some sort of magic number to fiddle with. A ex colleague of mine (who now co directs one of the most promising new powertrain engineering companies to appear in a long time, can I have a job please LB, RD??) badgered a chip tuning company into confessing that nowadays there is absolutely nothing that can be done to improve on the performance of an NA engine ECU without other hardware mods. Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red SLR Posted August 31, 2001 Author Share Posted August 31, 2001 Its not for my 7 !!!!!! I am not that stupid! I have a Luminition ECU as it is! It is for my road car. So basically it is not worth it.... X777CAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 How many questions regarding your tintop have we had from you, Simon? tongue.gifthumbsdown.gif Anyone got a sock? smile.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red SLR Posted September 1, 2001 Author Share Posted September 1, 2001 Well I was thinking of taking the roof off, cutting 3 feet out of the wheel base....... X777CAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Plato Posted September 1, 2001 Share Posted September 1, 2001 Cutting the roof off your vectra is probably the best thing you could do with it , it will be easier to pour the petrol in when you burn it !!! PS - Could you do my Mondeo whilst your at it ??? Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red SLR Posted September 1, 2001 Author Share Posted September 1, 2001 It does seem to drink it at a rather mad rate. X777CAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now