Does an aftermarket or custom chip make a noticable difference? I only ask because I've never put a chip in any of my cars. Now that I have a 1LE it's time to start thinking of mods. Thanks for any input

 

If you want to chip a car hang out here and read up on it, then do your own.
99.99999% of the aftermarket ones are nothing more then changing fan temps., and they use a cooler thermostat to run a little richer, and more adavanced with timing, which aint the right way to do it. Look at the thread today on the 406.

 

I second what Grumpy said. ALL of the aftermarket "off-the-shelf" eproms are basically useless IMO. They do very little, if anything....a little extra spark here, a little extra fuel there, slight change in the TCC locking speed (when applicable), remove a "speed limiter" and adjust the fans. That's it. My neices could do a better job.

As for "custom proms" from actual prom writers, some guys are pretty good and a lot are not. The key is, that unless they have access to your car to see how it performs, it still will be less than optimal.

And, most just concentrate on WOT. They seldom play with part throttle, which is where you spend 95% of your driving, so you will often encounter driveability issues. Especially, if your engine is heavily modified.

SAVE YOUR MONEY and buy the equipment. Can you benefit from burning your own eprom on a basically stock engine? Sure can. My engine is "basically stock" and I have greatly increased my gas mileage, my plugs are FINALLY a nice golden tan color and my car is faster than it ever has been before.

I also fixed a LOT of little "quirks" that my car has experienced from the day I drove it off the showroom floor back in 1991.

Oh yeah, I also had an aftermarket chip (bought that in 1995). When I saw what was REALLY done inside the eprom, I realized that I just threw my money away. It actually richened my mixture when I needed to lean it. No wonder my car was slower with it in than with the stock eprom.

The only advantage of the aftermarket eprom is that it was a "piggy back" which allowed me to install a Flash Prom in it and save me from unsoldering/resoldering the old eprom with a Flash Prom in the Memcal. But, buying a soldering iron would have been cheaper.