'Burned' perf chip

[blkongry]

Anyone tried any of the 'burned copy' performance chips you find on Ebay? I've looked around at the different chips out there. You know Dinan and AC Schnitzer burn their chips, so if some dude has the same capability and a good program, wouldn't his chip be just as good? There is a guy up in Canada who some people swear by as having great chips, and he burns them himself. I don't know... how do you tell who has the best mapped chip? Doesn't all that depend on your intake and exhaust too?

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

Its hit or miss basically. I 've heard of chips that work really well, and then there are the $30 eBay specials. Keep in mind that doing a chip "correctly" involves using a dyno, which the avearge code writer isnt going to have in his garage.

[blkongry]

When you say "doing a chip "correctly" involves using a dyno", you mean the mapping of the chip, right? That guy in Canada is a pro tuner and makes his own mapping using a dyno, but if I bought a Dinan chip, pulled the mapped code off it, then burned a billizion copies of it, wouldn't they all be the same mapped chip?... just at Dinan specs?

I don't know... I think I'll do a little more research and see if I can get a 'hit' instead of a 'miss'. Thanks for the feedback!

[SteveSteinhauer]

You're right, blkongry - my concern would be the following:
1) are the maps actually Dinan - or some fly-by-night who doesn't know what they're doing?
2) copyright infringement of Dinan's maps
3) chip heat rating - that the chip is designed/rated for engine bay temps.

(btw - I'm an Electrical Engineer, used to work in Flash/EEPROM memory chips that go into multiple applications including automotive - Bosch amongst many)

[blkongry]

Sooo.... you're an EE who has worked with EEPROM, eh? Hmm, you ever thought about burnin' some performance chips there Steve ??? Just kiddin'... nice to see we are in good company here... I'm a design engineer, mainly mechanical/automation.

I also wondered about Dinan infrigement. I wonder if you change a slight variation in the mapping, such as bump the idle RPM up 20rpm, if that is enough to circumvent the copyright.

I'll keep looking. Thanks for the input, though... all 'food for thought' is very appreciated. If anyone is interested, here is the link for the dude in Canada... http://www.dsylva-tech.ca

[Wayne 962]

I'm not a terribly huge fan of chips. They have a tendency to simply advance the timing, which can cause excess detonation and engine damage. There is really no replacement for displacement increase in terms of HP gains. Also compression boosts or forced induction. The way the chips gain extra power is by pushing 'the envelope' a bit further than the factory wanted, which almost always results in decreased engine life and reliability.

A burned copy of a Dinan chip would be an illegal copy, because the map is considered software. I'm not sure how much you would have to change in order for it to be determined legal. I would guess not too much, since all the chips will be similar to the stock ones...

-Wayne

[blkongry]

Can you enlighten me a little more on what you mean by 'pushing the envelope'?? If you put on a supercharger/turbo, are you not pushing the envelope.... or are these actually easier on the engine than a chip. I mean, what does a chip actually do??? Remap the ignition/fuel delivery to a point that causes your engine to run hotter? Cause detonation? Or does it actually make it more efficient, burning the fuel better. I know if you put premium fuel in an engine designed to run on 'regular', you don't get any increased performance. The higher octane needs to run in a higher compression engine to burn efficiently and get more performance. The trade off is 'higher octane is need to prevent ping/detonation in higher compression engines'. If you have a lower compression engine that doesn't ping with regular, you aren't going to get much more performance running premium. ALTHOUGH... you are supposed to run premium with a performance chip. Now it's not increasing compression, and you aren't pushing more air in there to bump up the compression... so what is it doing?

I tend to stay away from turbos because of the heat generation. They are great if you have a nice air/water heat exchanger, but I would rather go with a small supercharger system. If I were to do that, would I get better/safer performance using a factory chip with a supercharger, or a performance chip? It would seem a performance chip... or am I feeding into 'chip hype'???

[Wayne 962]

Excellent questions, let me dig out some info. Here is an excerpt from one of our DriveWerks newsletters:

It's a false misconception that higher octane fuel will automatically increase fuel mileage and performance. In reality, it often does neither. Your car does need a certain octane of fuel to burn properly through it's combustion cycle. If the octane is too low, and the compression of the engine too high, then the fuel will explode prematurely, resulting what is commonly known as engine knocking, or pinging. This can typically be heard at partial throttle when the car is under load, like when it's going up a hill.

Knocking and pinging are hard on an engine, and can cause premature engine wear.

Most of today's modern cars have high compression engines, which would make you think that they would need high octane fuel. In reality, it often depends upon a variety of factors. For example, modern cars can easily correct for low octane fuel by electronically advancing or retarding the ignition timing. The computer detects the car knocking and compensates, which may result in a very small reduction in power that often goes unnoticed to the driver. Older cars typically don't have knock sensors, and may ping/knock more often because their fuel systems can't adjust for the lower octane fuels.

The bottom line? You only need to run high octane gas in your car if it pings and detonates on the lower octane stuff. I recommend that people try out the lower octane fuel for a few tanks and keep a close ear for engine knocking. If all is fine, then you don't need to waste your hard-earned money on higher octane fuel.

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

The chips tend to change the timing to gain a bit more HP. The downside is that this can detonate the mixture. The 3-series engine has a knock-sensor that should detect and compensate for this...

In general, I have to think that the factory knew what it was doing when it designed it's chips. They are optimized for power, fuel economy, and emissions. Most of the aftermarket chips change the timing or fuel maps to give more power, at the sacrifice of fuel economy and emissions. The chips do indeed work, by being less conservative than the factory mappings in many areas.

They placed added stress on an engine by running more agressive profiles in the mapping. A supercharger or turbocharger would be far more stressful than a chip - hands down... However, forced induction will give you much, much more power than any chip can.

"The higher octane needs to run in a higher compression engine to burn efficiently and get more performance."

Technically no - the higher octane is needed to prevent detonation when running with the more aggressive chip profile. You have less margin because the timing has been changed to a more aggressive profile.

Make sense?

-Wayne

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

hmm, I think the fuel mileage issue depends on the chip as well. For instance, I had a Dinan chip in my car, and the fuel milage went down, however, once I installed the Turner Motorsports chip, my mileage went up.

[blkongry]

Yeah, that makes sense. If the ignition profile was advanced to say TDC (top-dead-center) for an aftermarket chip, and a factory chip ran a few degrees off, then one would probably get detonation without higher octane fuel.

I still don't know how to get a 'matched set' regarding mixing and matching performance parts.... sounds like it is a bit of trial and error. I also wonder how conservative the factory was in their profile. I guess I'll try a few things and see what works. Thanks!!

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by blkongry
I still don't know how to get a 'matched set' regarding mixing and matching performance parts.... sounds like it is a bit of trial and error.

This is an age old question. You really need a programmable engine management system (like TEC-3), and a dyno to tweak the most HP out of it...

-Wayne

[Larry F.]

I hate to be a prude, guys, but the main issue in *my* mind about "burning chips" is that it is outright theft. Changing a small amount of the code does not remove or modify the ownership of the intellectual property that is the information in the chip itself. In fact, using just a small part of the code would still constitute theft.

And, we *want* the Steve Dinan's and Jim Conforti's of the world to keep doing their stuff! If we as a community support the rip-offs that are certainly out there to be had, we end up with fewer options to add to our cars! And then where would we be: bone stock?!? Horrors!

[blkongry]

Point well taken. Copyright infringement is indeed illegal, but there is a bit of a gray area on copyrights and patents. You can not copy an exact image of somebody's profile, but all the code for air/fuel/ignition mapping has to be relatively similar because there is only a narrow window in which these engines run well. For example, if I were to map out my own chip using a dyno, then I start to burn and sell my own chips, is that illegal or a rip-off? No. Now what if my mapping happens to be a very near mirror image of someone else's chip, do I have to be squeezed out of making my chips? It is illegal if I use a big name maker to push my product, but I shouldn't be shut down because my mapping is very similar. Nobody wants Dinan or Conforti to stop doing their stuff, I just don't want to miss out on a decent performance chip that may be burned by some little guy.

[Larry F.]

blkongry:

It's all about intellectual property. If somebody sets up a dyno, does the research, and develops his/her own data, more power to 'em. However, that is a costly and time-consuming affair, and, they will not sell their results incredibly cheaply. If the finished product is being sold very cheaply, it strongly suggests (I'm not omniscent, yet!) that they don't have much invested, i.e. a computer and an EPROM burner.

Don't get me wrong - I *love* bargains and I am fine with supporting the little guy (Conforti is the 'little guy' in this picture compared to BMW NA), but when an item is *too* cheap there is a reason. . . .
Larry F.

[Wayne 962]

Let me chime in. If you buy a car with a factory chip, you obviously have bought a "license" to use that chip. Whether or not you can modify it that's another legal question, but I'll avoid that for now.

So, if you start with a stock chip and modify it to your needs, I don't see any problem with that, as we all have the stock chips in our cars. Now, if you take someone else's chip and look at it, and see what they've done, and then make your own chip doing something similar? I'm not sure what gray area that would fall under. Part of the success of a chip is the dyno tests and name to back it up. If a no-name chip is selling on eBay, then would you trust that in your car to actually be a descent chip?

Who knows...

-Wayne

[Kelley Brown]

I would be interested in getting some info about burning my chip in my 325i. Would you help?

Kelley Brown

kelleybrown1@comcast.net

[Larry F.]

Kelley:

My recommendation is to buy a Jim Conforti chip from one of the several fine outlets that sell them. The $250ish is well-spent, and you get a legitimate, guaranteed product. Check out:

http://www.uucmotorwerks.com/html_product/conforti/software.htm

or many other spots (I don't see any at Pelican . . .)

Larry F.

[blkongry]

Interesting... can you re-burn your factory chip with a new mapping? I've looking around at different chips and manufacturers, and have found some very interesting stuff. There are a lot of chip burners/mappers, and one, Bavarian Autosports, sells an upgradeable chip that they will reburn based on your mods. Here's their sales pitch:

"Get our upgradeable chip. Performance chips are programmed to match your BMW's current power configuration. Thus when you make a modification such as adding a free flow exhaust, the chip is no longer optimized. But if you've bought our upgradeable chip, simply send it back to us, tell us your latest performance modification and we'll customize a new one for you.. FREE! The only thing you pay for is shipping. Ask your Bavarian Autosport sales representative for details"

So much info I have found on chips is all relative to how the rest of the car is set up (meaning both performance parts and mechanical condition), and every comparative review gives their 'insight' on how they performed... very speculative. As a whole, they are all pretty similar... from the big name guys to the little dudes (the big name chips tend to be a bit more refined, especially for vehicles with automatics). I know there can't be that big of a window to work within as far as the mapping, and every mapping will work differently with different performance components. I'm still at a bit of a loss of who to try... a $180 E.A.T. chip, a couple hundred dollar BAS or Conforti chip, or a several hundred dollar Dinan chip? You know the big names are tried and true, but this technology has been out for a decade, and there are plenty of little guys making good stuff. Is the extra money worth a 3hp gain over some other performance chip? Is it cheaper to have someone reburn a factory chip? Hmm... of course, I still want my stock chip when it comes time to test for emissions.

[Larry F.]

blkongry:

The BavAuto argument (and offer) is a good one - a chip needs to "know" about any mods in your system to take advantage of them.

A brief aside on "chip" technology: there are a number of ways to make a chip, and by far the cheapest is to manufacture it with the data "hard-coded" if you will. The logic is fixed, the data is not changable. This is referred to as Read Only Memory, or ROM. Analagous to a music CD that is "stamped" out in volume. This is what the BMW factory has used, so there is no "re-burning" of the chip.

The industry also builds chips that you can burn once, Programmable Read-Only Memory, or PROM's. These are analagous to CD R's that you can use once. Lastly, there are Erasable Programmable ROMS's, or EPROM's, that can be erased either by exposure to high intensity UV light (old-fashioned) or by a special signal. This may well be what BavAuto uses, or they may just burn another PROM - the chips themselves are cheap nowadays.

Another point: the vast majority of the changes made in the chip are at WOT - wide open throttle. Most chip tuners leave the idle area alone, as well as the typical (CA or WA) "cruise" area that the "smog check" is done it. No need to change your chip back to stock with a decent "tuned" chip. (Another reason to stay with the "tried and true", from my point of view.

More later, Larry F.