[s-cars] Chip - best choice

[Mihnea Cotet]

Hmmm, Feico, do you think a stroker motor won't require custom tuning? I 
actually think that everything past a stock engine requires so, "generic" 
chips work ok for 90% RS2 setups but they still won't be ok for all cars, 
BTDT several times, and sometimes even generic chips for stock engines 
don't work ok (very seldom but this happens). The reason behind this? Easy, 
not 2 engines are exactly the same, some of them have very slight boost 
leaks that will mess the MAF scaling, some will have slightly higher 
compression ratio (for various reasons, including the head gasket and 
wether it's a paper or metal one), some will have partially clogged 
injectors and so on. All this accounts for the fact that all engines are 
different and the best approach is individual and real time tuning. Believe 
me, before doing real-time tuning I used to think that "generic" chips were 
ok and sometimes some cars won't run ok and I couldn't figure why. Well, 
since I've been tuning every car individually (and I really mean EVERY car, 
even bone stock ones, and I've done dozens of those, it's amazing how you 
don't end up with the same fuel/timing settings after doing 3 cars in a 
row!!!!), I've never had such problems anymore, and I've also figured that 
a good "generic" chip always has to be detuned in order to take into 
account all possible differences between 2 engines. So MTM's 269 HP chipset 
can really do 280 if it's custom tailored to suit the particular engine 
it's installed onto, and I could also tell you about 4 ABYs tuned by me on 
a dyno that ended up at 290 HP each whereas everyone will tell you 270 is 
the limit and you can't go further.

Sorry but I'm just not with you on this one. The fact that I live in 
Belgium means nothing, first off one can really do a chip at 20 degree C 
ambient temperature and have it run great at 40+ degree C ambient with bad 
fuel, one just needs to have "a bit" more information than the other people 
in the business in order to do this and it will work ok, but how do you 
think MTM do???? Do you think they play with the air conditioning in their 
dyno room so they can make sure their chips don't ping at 40 degree C 
ambient temps? I don't think so.
Second thing is that I've already tuned more than 15 RS2s and more than 20 
stock S2/S4s in the South of France last year, in the full summer heat (42 
degree C ambient temp), and really, that's not so different for me compared 
with tuning cars at 15 degree C ambient temps in Belgium.... so I don't 
follow your skepticism at all.

But one has to have quite a good idea of what's going on in the chips and 
not only know where the main advance/fuel/boost maps are. Doing simple 
comparisons between tuned/stock chips is easy, understanding what's going 
on inside them and what every single bit means is another thing.

Anyway, thinking so highly of the 20vt engines tuning as you do seems too 
simplistic to me, MTM aren't the only people who know how to tune a 20vt 
ECU and although Peter Link is one of the 3 only tuners I respect in the 
world from a tuner standpoint, I don't think he is the only one who can 
make a 20vt run right. Of course, when it comes to experience, he has tuned 
more cars than there's been chips sold in the US so he knows what he's 
doing (hence my sayings WRT respect), but I quite frankly think that there 
are other options open.

Flying someone out from Europe to the US to tune cars on a dyno isn't that 
expensive BTW, there are some people who would like to prove you wrong and 
who would want people to be happy with their cars before even thinking of 
getting rich!


Kind regards,


Mihnea






At 20:44 20/01/2004 -0500, FvAMI at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/20/2004 7:11:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
>tfrank at symyx.com writes:
>
> > I don't quite get what you are saying here.  This is against putting in
> > any aftermarket chip in your car other than MTM, or for
> > that matter
> > doing any mods past RS2 huh.
>
>MTM was an example. They are not the only ones limited to a quite a bit of 
>knowledge. Peter at MTM sets the standard and they have apparently done 
>custom applications for Audi in the past.
>
>I will get back to you with another shortly that is a smaller outfit, but 
>once again they are in Germany. Flying them out to do some custom tuning 
>will get very expensive.
>
>Time for a stroker motor instead?
>
>Best regards,
>Feico van der Laan
>
>
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