What is the deal with 911 engine "chips"...

[mmm]

...coming from the land of Audi's (and turbo Audi's at that) chip tuning usually involves upping the turbo boost, etc. to gain more power, potentially at the cost of a voided warranty, reduced reliability, turbo failures, long term wear, and reduced drivetrain life, depending on the design of the system. I've never chipped my turbo S4 given these downsides, OEM for an S4 is "fast" enough as far as I'm concerned and I've never had the OEM chip out of the car.

Conventional wisdom also states that given the inability to siginificantly increase or improve the "breathing" of a normally aspirated engine via an engine chip alone, the power gains to be had on most normally aspirated engines based on the revising the timing, related maps, etc. via chip tuning alone are modest at best.

On a turbo car you can get a LOT more power with a chip by just upping the boost and then the fuel and timing to match. On normally aspirated cars, the gains tend to be more modest, perhaps some improved response here and there, perhaps a higher rev limit, perhaps a little more power here or a little more torque there....

So how well does chip tuning work for normally aspirated 911s? What are the gains to be had? And what are the general downsides? What is the "cost" of that additional power/response in terms of reliability, longevity and wear.

Thoughts? Educate me.

[Jason Porter]

Do a search, and you'll find nothing short of pure entertainment, and maybe even the answer to all your above questions.

[mmm]

Originally posted by Jason at Pelican Parts
Do a search, and you'll find nothing short of pure entertainment, and maybe even the answer to all your above questions.

Did a search, lots of hits but not much content. Perhaps I didn't look back far enough?

[Jason Porter]

Try these 2 threads for starters:

3.2 performance upgrades

88 Carrera dyno results! chip vs. no chip

[Lorenfb]

Check out this web site ( www.andial.com) on the FAQ page Question#2.
Andial is/was Porsche's USA racing operation. They have built many race
cars over the last 25 years including Le Mans cars for Porsche/independents.

[89911]

Oh No Not again!!!!!

[MIK911]

Let's not even go there...............
Forget all the reading. Just buy SteveWong's chip and enjoy.

Mike
'86 coupe

[S4drifter]

mmm....

You missed quite a thrill in your S4. I had mine chipped and the difference was phenomenal. However, I quickly scurried back to stock when I bought the 930. Like you the fear of a $7k turbo replacement bill out of warranty scared me. I had 1 year with the chip and had a blast on the track. I count myself lucky though.. the car is back to stock, and my lease is up this month with no turbo problems.