A Sensible Look At Tuning

I found this great website that I think you should take a look at before taking a spanner to that beautiful Alfa engine. The article on chipping struck a chord as I've always though it was purely a placebo device (excluding 3rd party turbo engines).

Chip tuning for cars. Does it work? - More-Power.info

Tony

I think this guy who wrote this is a moron though, as it is possible to increase performance on a naturally aspirated car by altering the engine control settings.

Hey Steve, what exactly are engine control settings? Is that the same idea as chipping? Surely the manufacture adjusts these for optimum efficiency?
I didn't post the article as 100% factual, I just wondered if we could make any criticisms of his ideas :-)

Its always going to be possible to get a few BHP just by reducing the engines safety settings. For instance the engine has to be able to cope with substandard fuel, or neglected servicing.

Power gains on a Naturally aspirated car will never be great, but you should get a few BHp and a bit more torque.

The way i understand it (and i am a layman!) is that the manufacturer of a car chooses a happy medium for the way the engine will run, i.e so in all conditions, climates, extending service intervals, response required from a wide range of drivers etc. There is a program that controls the engine, this can be altered either by a whole new chip, or by adjusting the existing program with a serial interface. The idea would be to put the car on a rolling road, and tweek the settings to maximise power etc, correct other aspects of the power delivery, you can also adjust settings such as when the rev limiter works, i.e. if the factory setting is restricted fuel once 6800 revs are achieved it could be altered to restrict fuel at 7000 revs, im sure there are others out there could give a more lucid explanation! Certainly i think new chips for naturally aspirated cars are rare, but they can be re-mapped to good effect.... Im hoping someone will work on a new map for the 1.8 mpi 159 engine.....

All naturally aspirated engines are limited by the amount of air they can suck in. To increase power substantially you need to get more air in. With more air you can add more fuel so you get more power.
You can do this by gas flowing, adding high lift cams, or by bolting on a supercharger or turbo charger which are basically air pumps.

Unless a chip/remap can add more air (Which it does on a turbo car by raising the boost) it will have very limited effect. All it can do is optimise ignition, fuelling, and possibly rev limiter settings.

Ah yes, now I see. It is possible for small gains in a naturally aspired car but you may be sacrificing some safety/economy/reliability right? I was thinking of tweaking my Spider, but after the new spark plugs and air filter I think I'm at my limit. I don't want to wase hundreds of pounds killing my engine and only gaining a couple of BHP.

As a side note, I ordered a SuperChip brochure which happily told me I could get a large BHP increase by paying £300 for a chip. I knew something was fishy.

Check out the thread on tuning about the 2.2jts, below is an excerpt, its not all about raw BHP increase, its a proper tuning, and it doesent damage the engine or make it more fuel consuming (sometimes the reverse) if done properly...

:I had mine mapped a month ago by Jano. It removed the really annoying surging around 2000rpm, kangarooing when cold has gone and the throttle now responds!
Performance is better all round and it is a bit lighter on fuel in town. Basically now its a much nicer drive and it is clearly a major improvement on the original so for me it was worth the money.

Don't forget, the OEM deliberately runs the engine lean at around the government mpg speeds to give best official fuel economy; which may not mean best real world fuel economy or performance....
You're not going to go 20mph faster, but I recon you'd notice an improvement

Getting more air in is only part of the equation, getting the waste gasses out is also pretty important which is where a good quality manifold and straight through (or hi flow cat) exhaust system in conjunction with a good air induction kit or throttle bodies as some people use COMBINED with a chip tune to run on higher octane fuel will give best results without going to the extra expense of new cams, etc...

Forced induction will always give better gains but it's more expensive to add to a car that is normally aspirated and it's a horses for courses thing, some people prefer NA over FI.

Anyway the biggest restriction is the CAT, always will be, a good analogy is trying to breath with someone's hands wrapped round your throat, that's what it's like for your car.

Just me tuppence.

Very wise words....

the term chippin annoys me an i think most ppl in tuning circles will agree its not the correct 1 to use. it is possible to add a 'chip' which is a naff bit of electronics basically a resistor which fools the ecu into adding more fuel. these are widely critisized and really just left for the uninformed lookin for easy power.

the only thing to do is re-map the ecu as has been mentioned an to agree with previous posts this isnt a miricle bhp creator. i think re-mapping is essential to get the most out of other mods you do to the engine. there is no quick fix for tuning and that is that (except forced induction). to re-iterate i would never touch a piggy back device like superchip so many bad stories!!

my 2 pence

Originally Posted by jimjamiejames

the term chippin annoys me an i think most ppl in tuning circles will agree its not the correct 1 to use. it is possible to add a 'chip' which is a naff bit of electronics basically a resistor which fools the ecu into adding more fuel. these are widely critisized and really just left for the uninformed lookin for easy power.

the only thing to do is re-map the ecu as has been mentioned an to agree with previous posts this isnt a miricle bhp creator. i think re-mapping is essential to get the most out of other mods you do to the engine. there is no quick fix for tuning and that is that (except forced induction). to re-iterate i would never touch a piggy back device like superchip so many bad stories!!

my 2 pence

Not nessesarily..
Chipping the ECU is basically the same as re-mapping it. On some car the standard chip is re-mappable, in other cases the original one is removed and replaced by one containing the new settings.

Adding a resistor is a totally different concept to chipping (if concept is the correct word) this just fools the engine into overfuelling itself. It does nothing to optimise other engine parameters.

The reason these resistor mods are confused with chipping is that people how sell these resistor bodges want you to think it is the same as chipping when it certainly isn't.

What SymonH said, and on that old Turbo with a lance on the grill, I paid particular attention to that all important oil temperature gauge, because continous 2nd boost, or so 'they' said, could cause piston meltdown.: It was still a great motor for an 'eighty niner' but feeble I guess by todays standards of performance? Served me well all through the nineties though.:

My car has a 'chip' fitted, actually its an inline mappable ECU but lets not get technical. The car won't run well on 95 RON anymore, as the chip has advanced the timing (retarded the spark) for ignition at a point in the engine's cycle that means the compression is higher. When the car was mapped it produced 25bhp more than the manufacturers claimed figures for the engine the car is fitted with. The car also has a BMC CDA induction kit fitted but minimal exhaust modifications. That's an 11% peak power gain.

Red Dot managed to get a 14.5% peak power gain on a 1.6 Twin Spark, taking it from its rolling road-measured 117bhp to 134bhp on the day.

So I think its fair to say there is quite some improvements that can be made on standard ECU settings with a bit of know-how.