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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.
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.
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
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.
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