What's the view on diesel tuning chips claiming improved efficiency?

dairees

I've started researching diesel tuning chips with a view to deciding whether to pay for the engine upgrade in order to gain future mpg savings as per manufacturer claims and therefore save on my fuel outgoings (and payback the initial investment over time)!

Does anyone have any experience of this that they could share generally? (Specifically, my car is a volvo automatic with the D5 engine).

Cheers,
Dairees

harveybobbles

I had my Audi A4 chipped a few years ago. It gave me another 30bhp and huge amount of extra mid range power! Fuel economy was no different.

However, this was on the petrol 1.8 Turbo, so not sure if the diesel is any different.

The D5 engine is fast enough anyway!

Hintza

Oh dear too early in the morning thought this was a thread about running cars on chip fryer oil........:o

jack_spratt_2

What a lot of people forget that chipping the engine will increase insurance premiums as this has to be notified to your insurance company and also make getting standard renewal quotes at renewal time more difficult !!

To be honest I cannot quite get my head round this one !! if fitting a chip to improve performance and obtain more MPG is not detrimental to the engine !!! why do manufacturers simply not do it on there cars as standard

Hintza

I know nothing about this but is it worth asking your dealer or independent volvo specialist. They should have someone who will know all the geeky facts about chips etc. Volvo owners club?

I imagine though a performance car will be optimised for performance whilst a family car will be optimised for fuel economy. I guess though there will be cars in the middle which could be chipped either way.

Think Jack raises good points about insurance though.

Interesting thread.

EdGasket

My view is that manufacturers 'tune' their engines conservatively for reliability. It may therefore be possible to 'Chip' the car's computer so that it is optimised for your own engine but it will only be as at the particular time the 'chipping' is carried out and after more driving and wear, the new chipped map may no longer be the best. Also some computers automatically adapt as the engine wears making chipping rather pointless. You'd also need to get a very good fuel saving before you recover the cost of the tuning. Overall unless you are a speed freak, I would not bother with chipping.

pulliptears

we had a chipped PT Cruiser, cant tell you the exact figures (oh could lol) but it did improve mpg and slightly improve performance.

motorguy

Yes, tuning boxes do work. I've used them on maybe ten cars over the years.

I fitted them for the power boost but you should see a slight increase in performance too.

They are generally removeable in about 5 mins, if warranty etc is a concern.

For the record Mercedes will cheerfully fit a Brabus tuning box to any new mercedes (and relieve you of £995 in the process), so its not as if manufacturers dont condone them when it suits them

pulliptears

pgilc1 wrote: »

Yes, tuning boxes do work. I've used them on maybe ten cars over the years.

I fitted them for the power boost but you should see a slight increase in performance too.

They are generally removeable in about 5 mins, if warranty etc is a concern.

For the record Mercedes will cheerfully fit a Brabus tuning box to any new mercedes (and relieve you of £995 in the process), so its not as if manufacturers dont condone them when it suits them

Im not mechanically minded (I work on old cars, OH deals with new) but I think the PT engine is a Mercedes engine. I know OH went through phases with his chip where he would fit it, then remove it so I agree with you completely, they are easy to fit and remove.
At the moment he is in the "removed phase" and was talking about selling the chip. We had ours from a guy in Germany and it seems a lot of them come in from there.

motorguy

jack_spratt wrote: »

What a lot of people forget that chipping the engine will increase insurance premiums as this has to be notified to your insurance company and also make getting standard renewal quotes at renewal time more difficult !!

To be honest I cannot quite get my head round this one !! if fitting a chip to improve performance and obtain more MPG is not detrimental to the engine !!! why do manufacturers simply not do it on there cars as standard

They *may* increase insurance premiums, but not necessarily.

Because it allows manufacturers to sell the same engine at various different states of tune.

You can buy a 118BHP 2.0 diesel BMW as fitted in the 116d, yet there is also a 177BHP version of the same engine. Granted there may be some slight mechanical changes too, but enough to warrant a £5K difference, or is it clever marketing?

VAG do the same thing with their 140BHP / 170BHP 2.0 TDI engine fitted to their Golf / Passat / Audi / Seat ranges.

AdrianHi

A proper ECU remap will generally give better results. Best to go for a remap or tuning box for the purposes of obtaining better performacne than the expectation of saving money. Different tuning boxes will do things differently.

Is tuning bad for the car?
Done properly (and I mean properly ) in my opinion no, though you can expect the extra stresses of the increased power and torque on offer - if you actually use it, to shorten the life of various car components. So may be you get 250,000 miles out of the car instead of 300,000 miles.

Why don't the car manufacturers do it?
The dealers do sometimes, as well as Merc. doing the Brabas tuning box BMW dealers can supply an AC Schnitzer tungin box, maintain warranty and releive of around £1000 in the process. It's no better or worse than the best of the other tuning boxes.

Why not tuned this way from the factory?
1. The car is tuned to an insurance group and emissions level target in accordance with the official tests which isn't neccessariyl real life
2. The car is tuned so that you can use it in a wide variety of climate conduitions, arctic to the Sahara
3. The car is tuned so you can stick any old s**tty diesel in it from anywhere in the world without breaking it and keeping the standard service schedule

If you are always going to use your turbo diesel in a European climate and use the higher quality EN590 minimum 51 Cetan rating diesel fuel which is all you can buy in European you can safely optimise the tuning of the car and release the extra power potential and may be save some fuel.

The laws of physics apply, if you use the extra performance you are using extra fuel - period. However the majority of the time you drive the car your cruising and better more optimal fuel (and if a good remap air flow via slight increase of turbo pressure) delivery can result in improved fuel consumption.

I have a BMW 320d (163bhp standard). Last August I fitted a Spider tuning box which boosts this to 195bhp (it shows, I can feel it ) and started paying an extra £25 a year on my insurance for the privalege. On the daily half hour trip to work I was doing where there is not much open road cruising I saw a 5% increase in fuel consumption.
Since then I've done a number of long distance trips cruising on the motorway where it seems the clever fuel management in cruising comes into play. On this kind of drive I see about a 15% decrease in fuel consumption. That's 56mpg instead of 48mpg on a fully loaded roof box fitted 320d tourng (E91).

So if you pick the right tuning box or better yet the right re-map (I can refer you to someone if you want) it can save fuel with the vehicle driven in the right way.

In order to give my cars fuel system the best treatment I can I use premium fuels liek BP Ultimate or a fuel additive like Millers Diesel Sport 4 to get the fuel quality as good as possible (also improves mpg by 5-7% so is money saving). The Spider box increases fuel pressure which means more strain on the fuel pump and injectors. One re-map I know of does it by altering the timing and duration of the fuel delivery and not the pressure - very clever.
Any tuning method had better be developed with the drive train (gearbox etc.) maximum torque limits in mind otherwise you can get drive train "rumble" which indicates unhealthy strain.
The engine block itself is pretty indestructable, VW group and BMW stick anything from 110bhp to 212bhp throught the same 2.0 diesel engine block in their engine ranges.

Downside of a remap is sometimes a dealer will overwrite it with the standard map if there is software update they need to apply.
That means travelling back to the remapper or paying their travel expenses to get the remap re-applied. They don't tend charge again for thsi kind of restoration.

Hope that helps you to make an informed decision - one way or the other.