Best Aftermarket Chip???
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Joined: Jun 2000
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From: Festus, MO, USA
Best Aftermarket Chip???
I was wondering what is the best aftermarket chip I can get? What is the best value? I don't really want to pay 150 bucks. I heard you could get them on E-bay for like 30 or 40. Also, this is unrelated, but what should I expect to pay for a 350? A bare block?
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Joined: Jul 1999
Posts: 10,907
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From: The Bone Yard
Car: Death Mobile
Engine: 666 c.i.
Simple, none. I've looked inside most of those aftermarket "off-the-shelf" BINs and they don't much of anything.
Generally they add a couple of degrees to the spark advance at the mid-high rpm range, a little extra fuel, possibly lock the TCC a couple of MPHs higher and, if they are designed around a cooler T-stat, turn our fan on a little sooner. And that is about it.
You could modify your own BIN to do those same things in about 15 minutes, and frankly, I wouldn't consider those very big changes at all. Good beginner stuff, if you were to get into eprom burning - but a complete waste of money.
The mods done to those eproms for generally wrong for our cars. Most of our cars are highly susceptible to Knock Retard due to the design of the GM iron heads. Adding a little more spark but not controlling it properly just produces more knock retard and can actually end up with the ecm pulling out more spark than the advance they gave. Also, almost every basically stock GM car I've played with needed LESS FUEL, not more fuel. GM designed the eproms to be overly rich to minimize warranty claims and to compensate for 100,000 mile motors.
Custom eproms are generally better and SOME actually do try to make the engine more efficient. But even they can be a complete waste of money.
The only good eprom is one you "tune yourself". On the DIY PROM Board, we equate an "off-the-shelf" eprom similar to buying a carb from a store and bolting it on an engine without adjusting ANYTHING! Would you expect the carb to be pre-set to its optimal settings right out of the box? Hell no. So why people think they can do the same thing with an eprom is beyond me.
Modifying an eprom is easy, getting the setings correct involves a lot of testing to get all the settings correct for your car. Back in the 60s and 70s, why some guys cars were a lot faster than others was that some guys would seldom touch their carb (jets and rods), or rework their distributor. Then they wondered with their big block was getting blown away by some guy with a basically stock small block. Because the guy with the small block tuned his carb and distributor to work optimally on his engine. There is a lot of extra HP waiting if you set it all up optimally.
The nice thing about burning your own eprom, is that you don't even get dirty doing it.
Generally they add a couple of degrees to the spark advance at the mid-high rpm range, a little extra fuel, possibly lock the TCC a couple of MPHs higher and, if they are designed around a cooler T-stat, turn our fan on a little sooner. And that is about it.
You could modify your own BIN to do those same things in about 15 minutes, and frankly, I wouldn't consider those very big changes at all. Good beginner stuff, if you were to get into eprom burning - but a complete waste of money.
The mods done to those eproms for generally wrong for our cars. Most of our cars are highly susceptible to Knock Retard due to the design of the GM iron heads. Adding a little more spark but not controlling it properly just produces more knock retard and can actually end up with the ecm pulling out more spark than the advance they gave. Also, almost every basically stock GM car I've played with needed LESS FUEL, not more fuel. GM designed the eproms to be overly rich to minimize warranty claims and to compensate for 100,000 mile motors.
Custom eproms are generally better and SOME actually do try to make the engine more efficient. But even they can be a complete waste of money.
The only good eprom is one you "tune yourself". On the DIY PROM Board, we equate an "off-the-shelf" eprom similar to buying a carb from a store and bolting it on an engine without adjusting ANYTHING! Would you expect the carb to be pre-set to its optimal settings right out of the box? Hell no. So why people think they can do the same thing with an eprom is beyond me.
Modifying an eprom is easy, getting the setings correct involves a lot of testing to get all the settings correct for your car. Back in the 60s and 70s, why some guys cars were a lot faster than others was that some guys would seldom touch their carb (jets and rods), or rework their distributor. Then they wondered with their big block was getting blown away by some guy with a basically stock small block. Because the guy with the small block tuned his carb and distributor to work optimally on his engine. There is a lot of extra HP waiting if you set it all up optimally.
The nice thing about burning your own eprom, is that you don't even get dirty doing it.
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