I'm currently in the process of collecting the parts for my mods in the end of June. So far I have:

LT1 cam
hedman hedders
flowmaster 80 series

I'll be removing the cat and eveything that goes along with that.

I'm going to be getting:

open element
305 TPI heads

I'm thinking about getting into DIY proms but am a little unsure about it. Does anyone have any suggestiong about a place where I can get a good custom chip wher I woudl tell them the mods I've made and they would set me up with a chip? Or woud anyone suggest I get a Prominator?

 

I don't know if this thread is supposed to be here, but whatever helps... Brian from TBIchips.com does a nice job.


edit: I mean for $64 shipped, it's not a bad price if you want something that will jsut get up and running.

 

I'm looking for any feedback I can get. I'll have to contact brian.

 

Personally, I thought Brian was a decent guy when he was selling chips for $30 just to help people out that have poorly running cars. Now that he has raised his prices considerably (double) I see it more from the standpoint that the DIY-ers were always preaching: that he came on this site took all the info people here gave him for free and is using it for profit.

Burning your own proms is not that difficult and if you truly want your car to run great, and to its full potential (like I hope all of us do) then chip burning is the only route. Jump into it right now and start burning on your stock engine then do the cam swap once you have a good handle of what to do.

 

would you suggest the PROMinator then? What kind of system would be easiest to modify as i start getting into adding on all my parts?

 

I would suggest getting into burning your own chips. The romulator is just a tool you use to tune with. You would still need to get a burner to burn your chip once you get the tune right. You can run your car off of the romulator without removing it but thats not the best way to do it. With just a burner you will have to stop and burn your new chip and swap it then do some more data logging. The romulator just cuts out the chip burning and swapping part of the process, not really worth it to me. I suggest you go over to the DIY prom board and read the stickies. Start learning. Play around with your car while it's stock then you'll be ready to tune it with the addons.

The mail order stuff is just guess work. I would compare it to taking your carb off and sending it to some one to have the jets changed. Kinda dumb, because you can do it your self with the right tools. You'll learn more about your car than you car to know when you start tuning your own chip. It's deffinetly one of those you really won't understand the power till you try it, kind of things.

 

He's talking about the PROMinator , it replaces the chip completely in the ECM. Going with either the prominator or just a burner and chips you're still modifying the same parameters so both methods are going to require the same amount of work basically. The prominator is just a quicker way to implement changes without having to swap chips all the time. So, yes I would go with the prominator, it should be a good investment.

 

Actually I'm pretty sure Brian lowered the price on custom chips, I believe which were at $100. It was $50 to burn, $10 for the little mounting clip thingy, and $4 to ship it. I'll let you know how satisfied I am with it soon.

 

Damn... $10 dollars for the 'RN' chip carrier?

 

from the info i gather on the DIY board its best to do it yourself, that way if you dont like it you can rewrite it, without having to wait for something to be shipped. even if one parameter is off or not to your liking, you have to send it back to wherever it came from. Since i have lots of mods on my LO3 I have decided to take on the task of burning, them myself. it will be cheaper in the long run. the burner im looking at is $75.

 

the "burn is 1/2 of the process. the other 1/2 is the datalog. the log tells the burner what to do. kinda like the doctor listening to you on telephone about your pain and prescribing the cure without diagnosis.

 

i don't know brian, but i think that's a little harsh. the truth is chip burning is pretty intimidating to people at the lower end of the skill scale. right or wrong, some people feel more comfortable having someone more knowledgable than they are burning their chips for them.

ed wright charges 300 bucks for a chip; that's pretty much the going rate. i don't think tbi chips' price is unreasonable at all. my question is; what will he charge to dial that chip in after it's up and running and he starts datalogging?

i agree that someone burning a generic chip can't do a good job, but someone willing to read the datalogs you provide and burn correction chips for you at a reasonable price can dial your car in pretty quick. there's a guy named mike crews who has a tpi 383 camaro running low, low 12s on street tires, full exhaust and no nitrous. he just sticks it in "d" and goes. the guy who burns his chips (i can't recall his name) burned a total of 4 chips to get the initial combination dialed in, then 3 additional chips as he made changes. you can get a car tuned as well with someone else burning your chips, it just depends on who is burning the chips.

 

Thats certainly believable if he has MAF. Alot of people have gone pretty fast with that system jsut by tinkering with the calibration some. None of those guys would be able to get a car to run like it came from the factory with jsut a few burns. W/o a dyno and all the other high tech stuff car manufacturers have, tuning is highly iterative, and you ahve to repeat things many times to finally home in on the best setting for stuff. Looking at data logs and burning a few chips jsut wont do that.

 

that's a good point. i'm not sure whether he's maf or map. i'll have to check.

 

right now Brian is working with me on two chips one for my 65pph injectors and the other 90pph injectors. I only bought one chip and because of a mistake when i ordered the chip he sent me two. And he will be working with me to get the chip dial in no charge. you just have to do some datalogging to help him out. i give tbi chips a thumbs up. but still would like do my own soon.