NEWEST! eBay chip review

[nando]

majority of ebay chips are one of 5 things.. complete rubbish, a copy of active autowerks, a copy of mark d, a copy of jim c or a copy of an alpina B3 chip. just dont confuse mine with any of those because i also list a couple of mine on ebay though mine are probably harder to find amidst the flood of weak or copied stuff.

also all ebay HP claims are bogus.. even HP claims on websites are usually overestimated because lets face it, people will buy more of something that lies and says +30hp as apposed to something well tuned with an honest gain figure of say +5 to 15hp. you see bigger numbers and think its a better chip/tune. its all a business ploy though, this is why i try to avoid HP gain talk on my stuff, i have bought chips from AA, JC, mark d, dinan, autothority, etc, etc. and run them in my own M20 to compare with and further my own tune and even at that peak gains are not earth shattering so id hate to see how the claimed gains on cheap crap stack up to actual gains.

also folks out there who do work alot with these motronic systems and sell decent quantities of chips usually have a supplier for blank chips sussed out. if you think you cant get an m27c256-10f1 or -12f1 for less than about $30 you would shit a brick if you knew what i pay per unit on the blanks i buy in bulk.. lol

i really cant get across just how much of a difference there is between "good" tunes and good tunes so heres a visual reference. here you have a typical M20 low part throttle ignition timing map, most of the "good" aftermarket tunes are this shape and in a similar ballpark timing wise, a bit over stock but with lots of room for improvement. 99.99% of aftermarket tunes retain stock shape and are essentially just "bumped up" a little from stock.


and here is my own personal low part throttle ignition map.. dont think i really need to say anything here, there is an absurd difference in <50% load power and overall feel between the two maps shown here lol

you have never dyno'd that map to verify any performance improvement. All butt-dyno and your own word.

I can pretty much say it's probably over-advanced, especially at peak torque. there is good reason for the shape of the stock curve. yes, the magnitude can use improvement, but you have, way, way, way too much timing at peak torque. You'd likely see a real performance increase by dropping that and following a similar shape to stock.

You don't tune a timing map by increasing advance until it knocks. It just doesn't work that way. Not unless the engine is a piece of crap and is severely knock limited, but the M20 is not.

But, you'll never dyno it or prove any real evidence, so I'm just wasting my breath..

[DmcL]

i have spent some time on the dyno.. not loads mind but enough to ensure the tune is solid and up to par at full throttle compared to the other good tunes. i have compared it with and run it against B25 chips from mark d, jim conforti, active autowerks, dinan, alpina and autothority to name a few. im well aware of where the sweet spots are for the B25 especially. i also sent one of my chips for a dyno comparison against mark d's, it was done by a mod on E30tech so no funny business in the comparison.. if memory serves he did not want to be named because he is/was a racer but i may be thinking of someone else i sent a chip off to for comparison. i could ask him if he minds me naming him if you like? as im an honest guy i will say straight up that the tune i had out at the time was very slightly edged off by mark d's at peak TQ but mine started making torque sooner and also beat his in peak HP. his only bettered mine for about 500rpm before the HP/TQ crossover though. dug out the peak numbers and marks tune was 159.41lbft/155.94whp while mine was 158.73lbft/156.69whp. the tune has evolved a bit since though.

its not over advanced nor do i tune until it knocks. i have never run into knock once.. not even tuning a turbo B25. i have no doubt i will run into knock one of these days but it wont be on a stock-ish M20, may well happen on my M20 once its up and running with the GT3582 and i start tuning it but i will be deliberately pushing the tune a bit if i feel i can get more from it after running conservative-ish timing.

lastly im assuming your commenting on the timing in the map shown.. which is low part throttle and below 50% load, the high advance is only at relatively low load.. it tapers off from between 18-23% load.

if your in that much doubt/that sure its no good then find a stock B25, get a well known good chip and get one of mine and run them back to back yourself. you wont notice much of a difference at WOT because the M20 likes what it likes so you cant deviate too much aside from shooting for a more broad/linear delivery but i can assure you the difference in part throttle would make you think its a different engine compared to most if not all others as theres huge room for improvement at part throttle particularly.

[fporro]

it would be nice to addapt a cycling (bicycle) Power Meter to our cars for it to translate what our butt dyno is trying to tell us, just saying.

[93supercoupe]

what id like to know is when it became ok to charge 250$ for a chip? Thats the outrage here, not the 30$ copy. The copy, in my eyes, is insurance against price gouging, witch is what has been happening when paying the retarded high prices of 200$+

[DmcL]

it would be nice to addapt a cycling (bicycle) Power Meter to our cars for it to translate what our butt dyno is trying to tell us, just saying.

read the post, i edited in numbers from a comparison (done by a mod on E30tech) a couple years back with mark d's chip. so dyno dyno and butt dyno both agree.

what id like to know is when it became ok to charge 250$ for a chip? Thats the outrage here, not the 30$ copy. The copy, in my eyes, is insurance against price gouging, witch is what has been happening when paying the retarded high prices of 200$+

cant say.. id charge around that price for a custom tune where im tuning the car in the flesh but i have never sold my chips for that much. even with the exchange rate the bulk of the chips i sell are about half that $250 price and the tunes are original, are very good and are not copied. i just figured that since i came up with something as good as the rest of the good stuff i may as well put it out there for reasonable money and take a cut of the business since my 9-5 job only pays a mediocre wage and any extra would be nice (roll on 2 years and my chip sales have more or less funded my turbo build that im about to start lol).

if you think $250 is steep for a chip, you should see how much dinan and autothority charge, dinan's was over $250 (dont remember exact price) and autothority's was atleast $450 (not listed on their site anymore, however, the E36 325i that is still listed is $495). i have also either bought or aquired all these chips to compare against and better my own since then too.

[fporro]

it would be nice to addapt a cycling (bicycle) Power Meter to our cars for it to translate what our butt dyno is trying to tell us, just saying.

read the post, i edited in numbers from a comparison (done by a mod on E30tech) a couple years back with mark d's chip. so dyno dyno and butt dyno both agree.

That was not a direct response to your post nor am I saying that you did or did not do what you claim, it's non of my business.,
it was a general statement about possibilities of "to go" dyno's., that's so.

[DmcL]

ok sorry lol

on newer cars with factory MAF's you can get a rough idea of HP by taking the MAF readings via OBD in g/s and work out 80% of that which gives a ballpark HP figure. more flow = more HP. or for older cars you can use something like the Gtech pro, i have one and its a handy little toy for checking for gains though it only gives readouts in NHP (net HP) which would be accounting for aero drag, drivetrain losses, etc.

[nickmcc92]

I dyno'd it.
The eBay chips actually outperformed all the other chips. Look it up.

[e30trooper]

I dyno'd it.
The eBay chips actually outperformed all the other chips. Look it up.

Look it up where?

[tightithrash]

Haha it's a dd. Hated driving manual on the streets of SoCal. Its pointless unless you're trying to show off...
Can you post pics on your iphone? No computer...

[e30trooper]

I DD a auto now, it is pretty pointless because I cant because racecar :(


Back on a subject, I bought a "alpina b3" chip from a forum member and ended up being a rep sold out of the UK. However, it was a good tune and I did feel improvement with my Decked 2.7i set up. Annoying part is the 950rpm idle and the lack of topend power but over all I was happy. Still paid $60 shipped for a used part.

[nickmcc92]

On ebay of course.

[DmcL]

you cant just say "ebay chips" tbh as every one is different. some are good, some are bad, some are copies of something else and a select few are original. i know because i bought a bunch to check out myself. you dont see me naming any of them among the chips i have compared because the ones that were not copies of a decent chip were pretty crappy tbh..

@e30trooper, is it the guy that sells chips on e30zone? have sent him a few tunes.. also supplied blank chips to him a few times, decent guy but i dont know if he has much original stuff as hes not much into the tuning side of it. genuine B3 or a copy B3 chip doesnt really matter, same tune and it is not well suited to the M20 unless you have replicated the alpina B3 engines spec otherwise there isnt enough ignition advance and it runs rich. i dynoed my 325i on the B3 chip before i started tuning and HP was not great, infact it ran that rich that i was able to make 12hp fiddling with the AFM. unless you have significantly higher compression than a stock B25 you would see better gains with a good 325i chip. the pina tune is actually running less ignition advance than stock over roughly 1/2 to 3/4 of the full throttle ignition map.

[danix]

I installed this chip in my 325i convertible. Seems about the same as stock - idle may be a touch smoother, or that might just be my head.
The big difference is at the top end - felt like it pulled much stronger after 4000rpm.
Hard to tell with an automatic - I didn't take it past 80mph or shift manually - but it seems OK. Earth shattering? No. I'll report back once I have a few miles on it.

[bastianshaw]

Chips in autos are subtle going from a chip back to stock is far more noticeable.