eprom chips on ebay

[ocallen]

does anybody have experience of these in a 2.5 lux ?

 

[ocallen]

These are advertised on ebay at under £50. I know that we constantly hear that we only get what we pay for but I thought while I still have the 2.5 engine in the car it might make some sort of improvement. The alternative is the Promax one.

 

[Pastry]

I doubt you even get what you pay for, as you're probably getting a £1 eprom that someones cloned.

Anyone with a eprom programmer (i've got one) can clone an ECU chip. It might be a copy of the promax chip it might be a hack of the original one, who knows? I could take my ecu, clone it, then sell it on ebay as a 'performance chip' with some marketing bollocks. I'd probably get positive feedback too.

 

[Peter Empson]

I'm with Rick on this one. It could be great, it could be naff, but unless you get it on the dyno you'll never know what the fuelling is like and whether it's safe. The cost of they Dyno run will pretty much negate the cost saving sadly.

There was a similar discussion about this a short while back here, I stand by my post on that thread and say I wouldn't risk my engine with an unproven chip unless I had proof of how they were developed (with dyno plots etc). This sort of information is lacking from all the ebay ads I've seen so far which makes me very suspicious.

 

[xenon]

Even a perfect one will only liberate about 5hp on a normally-aspirated car and I'd defy anyone to notice the difference.

 

[Peter Empson]

In my experience a good chip is very noticeable on these cars. It's not about big HP gains, the shape of the curves tend to improve which is more useful in day to day driving (more area under the curve, if you like).
The improvments in throttle response and smoothness are also unsubtle to say the least. This is true with both the 2.5L and the 3L NA engines.

 

[xenon]

Sorry, I meant in terms of outright power which I thought was what the original poster was asking. I see now that he wasn't - I was getting mixed up with the ITB thread.

 

[ocallen]

So who manufactures a good chip ?
I'm tempted with Promax as I need to get a relationship with somebody who will do my S2 conversion.

So far for the conversion, and rebuild before its fitted, I hear good things about EMC, Jon Mitchell and Promax. Am I right so far?

Its probably six months before I go for the engine swap as I need suspension , brakes and a few more bits before the engine so I thought a little more driveability till then.

 

[Peter Empson]

Your list of vendors sounds good to me. I can vouch for the Promax chips and they should have a good resale value when you're ready to go to the next level.

I would add RPM Technik to the list of potential firms for the engine transplant as I know they've done it before and can vouch for their work too, but I suspect I've probably mentioned them before []