Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think these piggyback chips seem to be a waste of time.. This is basically a glorified version of the $15 chips they sell on eBay for Hondas..
OK, I'll correct you
Seriously though Mark, this is certainly not the case. I understand your position with Maserati and your sort of being the official connection here on the board but Dyno charts don't lie and our customers have been very satisfied. Our products produce power, it's that simple.
Are you saying that you don't believe that Eurotek or FD Chips produce results? Have you ever driven or dyno'd a car with either of our products installed? Or perhaps our customers just spend money for no reason and leave happy? Bottom Line, we work with our customer to make sure they are happy, we give them what they want and what they paid for.
Emissions, gas mileage, good operability in all climates, failsafe against bad gas, ethanol differences, etc... (I've done pre-detonation fuel tests with a highly modified supercharged car running Haltech stand alone, and not all 93 \ 91 octanes are the same. There were a couple brands that knocked sooner and more often than others, even a 93 that was worse than a 91) Ethanol makes a difference because it's 'correct' air to fuel ratio is 9:1 vs gasoline's 14.7:1, and I believe it burns hotter in general.
Fuel is different and that's why we ask customers what they run and we lookup the specs to tune. This would be the same issue if it weren't a piggy back. If detonation does occur, it sets off your CEL anyway. The customer calls in and we back off the timing on their chip. It's never happened, but very doable for us. It's easy with the piggy back because all they have to do is install the bypass plug for a few days while they ship our chip back in for a change ( free of charge ). Note: The factory ECU remains untouched.
We also leave some room as well for these conditions. For our higher octane programs, we actually have tunes for different fuels such as VP, Sunoco and soon F&L. Once you get into these fuels, quite a lot is different and the programs change a bunch.
They adjust the resistance\voltage values of the air temperature sensor, air pressure sensor, O2 sensor, and others to fool the ECU into enriching the fuel mixture to make a few more horsepower.
This is it in a nutshell, except that we also adjust ignition timing which is a bit more complicated. Everything is based off maps of Throttle Position, RPM, Engine Temp and Intake Temp, the change is not a single offset to the factory curves. It's just as complete as the map that BOSCH / Maserati uses inside the factory ECU. This is not a $15 part as you suggested. The Hardware alone costs many hundreds of dollars.
Chips have been around as long as EFI, with mixed results. Older systems could be fooled into making a good amount more power, especially when the engines weren't tuned very well leaving the factories. They are also very capable of making more power on Turbo-charged cars.
These Maserati engines aren't coming off the line at GM with bad tolerances and software to make up for that.. These are highly tuned performance engines built by arguably the best engine builder in the world with software to match.
Agreed, but there is still power to be made and there are very few options for Maserati Customers. So if you want another 25-35 more HP. This is your option. There is another 6-8% left for us to unleash.
Tubi and BMC from our experience does not gain any more than a few HP, even after relearning. Someone please show me a dyno graph with a larger improvement from just these mods. It sounds louder, you may think it's faster.
I don't even recommend Tubi to my customers for any other reason besides the sound. Even then we simply replace the center resonator and mufflers with straight pipes because it sounds very similar and costs only $500 or so with some nice tips.
There are real questions about possible long-term issues with using these chips that could be legitimate warranty questions on many engine-related claims with no more horsepower gains than installing a Tubi and freer flowing air intake, and then driving the hell out of the car for two weeks while the stock ECU re-learns your driving style.
So what are the questions? Again, show us some real data. Chip companies have been doing this for a long time and I have yet to see any legitimate information that proves that any problem ( for a stock car ) was caused by a chip. And even if it was, it's not our chip. I understand that Maserati doesn't want anyone mucking with anything, but in general chips are not a cause of engine problems, if adjusting the fuel and timing a bit caused engine problems then someone made a big mistake designing the engine.
Unless of course you've got some before and after dyno testing with a car that's had its ECU reset and driven hard for a week before getting on the dyno, and then another follow up test after installing the chip.
Our dyno graphs are posted on our website.
I don't want to rain on your parade, as I've got customers that would love to have something like this if it indeed works regardless of the possible warranty issues. I just don't see much room for improvement without drastic modifications to the engine.
No raining on anyone's parade here. I have strong repeat customers that bring me back many of their cars. In fact, we can chip just about anything, sometimes there is no power to be gained, like the BMW M3... pretty much a waste of time. Many times we can produce some real power. 25HP is not a ton of power but it also makes the car accelerate smoother and come on faster. Customers like it.
A Supercharger is the way to go with these cars to make BIG power. We're working on that as well. This modification requires our chip also.
