[Brando]

As some of you may have noticed, Rberry has posted recently about his 944S2MAX chip for the S2. I believe he has also released a few chips for the turbo but I'm not 100% sure.

Yesterday I received the 944MAX chip for 1988 and on 944s (10.2:1 compression, non S, non S2, non turbo) and installed it. First I would like to point out that Russell has been nothing but helpful in this endeavor and informative to as much detail as possible.

So here are my first impressions of this chip:

- Fixes the NA shudder.
- Much better acceleration from a dead stop. I could roll on to the clutch at 1200 rpms without the engine hesitating.
- MUCH better acceleration from idle to 3000, instead of the power suddenly "starting" at or around 3000 rpms it's constant from idle to redline.
- Throttle response is improved, no hesitation so far when going from a high gear to a lower gear (or next lower gear) and punching the throttle.
- Fuel economy... No idea, I just filled up and I'll have a mileage count by next wednesday or friday.
- Constant power up to redline (I stopped at 6k).

Now, the best improvement IMHO:

4th and 5th gears used to be a real bear before, having to downshift into 3rd from 4th, or 4th from 5th to get some useable power for passing on the freeway or getting up to speed. I can put the car in 4th at 2000 and still have the car pick up speed and not slouch nearly as much as it did before. in 4th or 5th, if I were below 3000 rpms I couldn't go up a hill, I would have to downshift. Now the car will maintain speed and/or accelerate from lower in the rpm range, instead of leveling off or dropping on slight inclines. This chip brings a lot "oomph" into the lower RPMs, and gives you useable power right off the line.

These are just my driver's seat perceptions. Overall this is a VERY good improvement over what the stock mapping does. I bet I could beat a well-tuned 911SC from a dead start, now. Before I'd have to keep the RPMs high so I'd have useable power to keep up. Now I can probably upshift sooner rather than later.

I'm going to do three dyno runs two weeks from tomorrow (weds.) to quantify what the overall improvements are in HP/TQ. But so far, this is a very worthy investment for $175-$200.