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Hack Your Ride
LukePieStalker writes "Monday's Boston Globe has a story on the global market for car chippers. The article describes a global subculture of "drivers who reprogram their vehicles and the companies that keep them supplied with high-performance software and silicon chips".
One nice hack: a car chipped-up for the race track can be set back to factory specs for the street simply by pushing the cruise control button."
They aren't really chips anymore. The "firmware" can be revised but this is getting more and more complex. Short of reverse engineering the electrical system and creating a replacement ECU, it may not be possible to do this in the near future.
There's actually a large market for programmable PnP ECUs out there.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Having owned a car with this capability in the past, I can provide some insight. The chip supplier installs 2 or more "programs" that you can switch between (stock, chipped, valet, and race gas are some of the more common programs). To switch between programs you hold down your cruise control and after a few second a light will flash on your dash X number of times letting you know which program you're switching to.
In short, your cruise control works just fine with the switchable programs.
Take Andy Robinson's doorslammer Stude for example.
___FutureShoks___
Over the past 30 years, the chips have become more powerful and have extended their control to more and more vehicle systems.
The point of this article is to show that they have gotten better at it and they hope that we will sink our money into it.
Not all chips deliver what they claim. I knew someone who had a JET chip installed in his Toyota Tundra. He had to send the whole ECU in and wait for it to be returned. It's not a simple switch of chips, but a total reprogramming of the ECU. And to boot, he hardly noticed any difference. It just tended to smoke more in the morning. My advice would be to deeply resaerch chipping your car before you do it. It's not as easy uprgrading a PC.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
Marketing, false claims, hype...
Some cars react very well to them. Many cars don't.
And if you get the wrong programming, you can ruin your car.
When they claim 50hp you might only get 15. YMMV. Literally.
i have a chipped car (98 saab 900) and can pass inspection with it chipped with no problem. i live in PA where emissions are checked.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
www.obd-2.com
The best 120$ I ever spent.
I can now see everything happening in my car in real time, and if I get the right program and know what the hell I'm doing, I can reprogram it aswell.
The article is a bit misleading. You don't use just the cruise control button alone, it's a sequence of presses to activate it.
;-)
Check it out at http://www.goapr.com
And watch that knee-jerk.
---- The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. -Thomas Jefferson
Very cool i bought a device from cobbtuning that gave me a an additional 30+ HP and gobs more torque. Best $555 i think that can be spent on a vehicle. It can also ge selected to even have ecomny for those long trips i think it's jsut a great idea!
Link to the ddevice http://cobbtuning.com/wrx/accessport.html
Not necessarily. I am posting as AC b/c I used all my mods pts trying to dispell some really bad myhs that are being posted to this thread.
I have an 2001 Audi A4 1.8T with a GIAC ECU chip. The car passes emissions just fine, even with an aftermarket cat-back exhaust on it. The dealership just did warranty work on my car and replaced my camshaft tension adjuster. I have *NEVER* removed the chip from my car. The dealership has mentioned that they noticed it was in there and never gave me any problems (I have taken it to 2 different dealerships w/o issue).
They have to prove that the damage is done directly from your modification, as the Magnuson-Moss Act states.
And what do you do when you want "normal" cruise control?
You press the button. I have an APR chip in my car, and all you have to do is hold the cruise control button until the check engine light flashes. After you have the mode set, light goes off and the new software takes control. I like it since I don't have to put the extra stress my turbo when I don't need it.
-dk
that was a crap article that was poorly researched. the pros use ls1edit and efilive for tuning corvettes. hptuners just came out with similar products too. and if you are building a high HP race corvette, you piggyback the whole system with a FAST or DFI system for engine management.
t p://www.kcpimp.com/gallery/c5c om/gallery/dyno
i'm using ls1edit and efilive to tune my 580 HP blown c5 corvette.
http://www.kcpimp.com/cars/c5.html
ht
http://www.kcpimp.
links:
ls1edit: http://www.carputing.com/
EFILive: http://www.efilive.com/
FAST: http://www.fuelairspark.com/
DFI: http://go.mrgasket.com/
hptuners: www.hptuners.com
Regards,
kw
p.s. and only an idiot would pay $17k to replace a blown 03 cobra motor. you can get short blocks all day for well under $5k.
-- ken williams
I am a current owner of this "switchable" software and can verify that the cruise control works just fine with it. As for the horsepower gains, with a turbocharged car it is very significant. I go from 12psi to 20psi of boost when I switch from stock mode to the 93 octane mode. To comment on the engine wear babble, there are plenty of cars with my motor, running with my exact software that are lasting longer than their stock counterparts. It all depends on how well the motor is built to begin with.
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Well, do what we do around here when fuel gets ridiculously expensive - go to a small local airport and fill up with AvGas. High octane, cool grounding strap whilst you fill, and you get to peel out on the tarmac on the way out if it's not too busy. And it's only a couple of bucks a gallon. You'll have to get permission at the flight control center before you just drive out there, but they usually get a kick out of it, and though it runs your engine awfully hot, it's fun once in awhile...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
It all depends on how good the chip is. Strictly speaking, a good tune should put no more badness into the air than a factory ECU, once things warm up. Before the whole car is up to operating temp, you'll probably be spewing unburnt hydrocarbons out the tailpipe. Most tests are done hot anyway.
Catalytic converter removal is where you get in trouble. CA will flat out fail you on the visual inspection.
False. The EVO has an extremely strong engine that can take insane boost pressures. It has a cast iron block and has been developed for many years now. 35HP is not unreasonable, and won't significantly reduce the car's life expectancy. You'd be far more likely to wrap it around a tree than blow the engine.
Those two extra cats in our WRX-es are not needed, once the engine warms up. The first cat in the pipe up to the turbo charger is just there for cold start, as is the second cat. The sucky thing is that once it warms up and they aren't needed, they still present a parasitic loss in the exhaust that hinders performance in a big way.
A VW beetle would run 11s with a JATO booster, maybe. Be reasonable here.
Watch out. Self tuning is not for everyone. Haven't followed this area in a couple of years, but back then, MoTech was the high-end system to get. You can do all the self tuning you want but if you don't know what you're doing, get ready to kiss your engine goodbye. Too much air and not enough fuel? Say "hello" to detonation--fatal for a rotary. Tuning just the ECU is just a part of the equation. Your air and fuel subsystems must be able to supply what maps dictate.
A high-end car mechanic with a right-sized client list and his own garage can make a great living.... $100k is achievable, more in areas where the service is more in demand. (California, warm weather states, etc...) People that buy these cars will pay a premium to have an expert who knows the car inside and out work on it. For them, it is a no-brainer--make a large cash investment last longer by maintaining it with an expert--Well worth the money when needed. I mean, what, are you going to take your Testarossa to Pep Boys? Those little pimple-pusses would probably crack it up trying to take off in 1st gear...
Who did what now?
You have to hold down one of the buttons for about 5 seconds before it recognizes the command. It also only recognizes the command when the engine is not running (atleast I think they changed that now).
I have one of the APR chips for my Audi and use it regularly.
In my case, I have 4 different programs for my ECU. Holding down one of the buttons on my cruise control stalk for 5 seconds, the check engine light starts flashing (yes, poor choice of lights, but it's one of the few the ECU has direct control over) once per second, then after another 5 seconds it flashes twice per second and so on up to 4 times a second. You release the button when the light is flashing the number of times a second that corresponds with the program you want to use.
You could actually do this while the car was running too, but it was very much discouraged (imagine going from full boost on the race program, to nothing on the valet program instantly). I think the latest versions lock out the functionality when the engine is running.
So, to answer your question, normal crise control functionality is not affected.
If for some reason you don't have to get an actual emissions test, yet are required to have a catalytic converter, there's quite a simple answer -- install an empty one. Nobody is going to be able to tell visually from the outside if there's actually any platinum inside the chamber, and since the cat is wider than the main exhaust, you could easily just run a tube straight through so that the pseudo-cat has no impact whatsoever on the exhaust system.
I'm not advocating this of course. If you're required to have a catalytic converter in your area, there's probably a good reason why. Most of us like being able to breathe (relatively) hydrocarbon-free air.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Chipping a turbo car (most of the time) involves re-timing when the wastegate kicks in. A turbo will produce boost just about forever (so long as you can spin the blades faster and faster), so at some point, you dump so much pressure in the cylinder that you start to blow head gaskets and all sorts of other nasty stuff like that. The wastegate kicks in at some point, dumping off the extra pressure at a preset psi. By modding the gate's setpoint, you make more pressure, and therefore more power.
True, some engines can take the extra boost just fine (cast iron blocks are very good for abuse. Aluminum....eeeh), some will blow sky-high the first time you try it. It's a calculated risk, just like OC'ing your processor. It IS harder on your engine, no doubt. So while it make take it, the damn thing might go 20 or 30k miles before it should have otherwise. Of course, if you are doing mods like this, you likely don't care about the 20 or 30k. As for naturally aspirated engines, you don't have wastegates to play with. Sure, you can fuck with throttle response curves and the like, but it's not nearly as effective.
You want real power? Go get a bike. Figure this:
An Aprilia Mille weighs about 400 pounds. Puts out 140 horses. That gives me a hp/weight ratio of about 2.8. Cost: about 18 grand.
A Pontiac Vibe weights about 2800 pounds. Puts out 127 horses. That gives me a hp/weight ratio of about 22. Cost: about 18 grand.
A Dodge Viper weights about 3400 pounds. Puts out 500 horses. That gives me a hp/weight ratio of about 6.8. Cost: about 80 grand.
And you get more chicks with the bike, too.
Chris Knight is my hero.
Here's a few urls for those interested (this is slashdot so I'll probably be flamed for being on topic):
http://www.apten-us.com/ - Ford performance chips
http://www.hypertech-inc.com/ - Dodge, Ford, GMC performance chips
http://www.jetchip.com/ - Domestic and Import performance chips
http://www.diablosport.com/main.php - Dodge, Ford, GMC performance chips
I've heard that the Apten chips are really good and they're custom programmed for the the stuff that you have already done to your vehicle (Intake, heads, headers, exhaust, etc). I've heard that the Jet chips suck. Hypertech is a well known brand though.
A chip adjusts the sensitivity of the wastegate (which is electronically adjustable, yes, it's apparently a solenoid), as well as controlling the fuel-air mixture. It also increases the rev limit, not that it matters since you'll never hit it (the shift point is in the late 5000s for the 1.8T). Here's some info from a Volvo turbo page...though the effect on VW/Audi cars is a bit more spectacular (due to heavily overengineered and underspeced engines...if only the steering and stabilization systems were so trustworthy!).
The overengineered specs for the 1.8T mean HUGE boosts in engine performance can be had relatively simply. Generally, a chip in a normally aspirated car means at most 10 hp. In a turbo, it can be fairly extreme...with the Audi V6 2.7 biturbo seeing a boost of 65+ hp without adding new turbos or exhausts! VW noticed this overengineering as well (if they didn't do it on purpose) -- notice with the 1.8T that the same engine that was stock 150 hp in 1997 is now stock at 170 hp. They say it's due to DBW, but I say it's due to a better boost program.
Either way, you'd be nuts to buy the crummy 2.8 V6, which actually puts out LESS power after a boost mod than the 1.8T. And it's heavier. And it's $1800 more expensive. But I guess you get more torque under 2k, meaning you don't sound like you're gunning it all the time.
The chip is particular to the engine, but this usually amounts to being particular to model as well, because though Volkswagen uses the same basic engine, the 1.8T, on 4 models, each has a different exhaust and intake system and thus has different allowances for safe boosting.
A quick primer in speed: your engine has three main systems: air intake, combustion, and exhaust. Your car can only be as fast as the weakest of these three. Chipping takes advantage of down-speccing that goes on with the intake and the engine to reduce warranty requests -- the exhaust, at least on modern german autos, is usually good enough for up to 230-250hp. Chipping is a much more effective AND cost effective means of gaining speed out of a stock automobile than slapping on a big exhaust system or a body kit. It's why my Passat has been known to smoke Integras and Mustangs (though, to be honest, that's more likely a combination of good reflexes and shitty driving on the Ford's part).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Most "chips" these days still pass emissions tests - the only issue is if you remove your pre-cats - but then it's only a problem when the car is still cold - once things warm up, you're still ok. So, maybe a bit more pollution every time you start your car, but then quit smoking or something to compensate. ;)
The wastegate is not the same thing as a diverter/blowoff.. both exist at the same time.
The wastegate serves to limit the boost pressure.. if pressure rises too high the wastegate vents excess pressure to atmosphere. By raising the release pressure on the wastegate, you allow the turbo to generate more boost. On some vehicles, this is electronically controllable, so in theory (and practice) the ECU can adjust the boost on the fly.
A blowoff or diverter, serve to let air flow cleanly when the throttle is closed, so as not to create backpressure on the turbo... different thing entirely.