stay6

I am ready to put a chip in my '84 911. I want to be sure I get the best performance and reliability without compromise to the engine. Does anyone have suggestions?

elpresidente

I went with a Steve Wong after researching and reading up on the subject. Steve is great and will personally talk you through which is the best fit for your car. Call him up, he's great to deal with.

JackOlsen

Steve Wong. No question.

Everybody else sells one-size-fits-all. He tailors the chip to your engine/intake/exhaust.

Lorenfb

"Everybody else sells one-size-fits-all. He tailors the chip to your engine/intake/exhaust."

Really, and that makes a significant difference for a stock engine?
Please! It's another marketing ploy for the naive.

A "performance" chip is a "performance" chip is a "performance" chip.
Nothing more than a simple timing change requiring an increased fuel octane
level to avoid engine damage. Hardly any great breakthru that wasn't known
by Porsche. A Rennlist search will provide factual data that refute the many
claims.

Bottom line: For those who lack insights and have the "herd" mentality,
"jump" on-board! A greater return on the dollar usually comes from an
investment in a POC/PCA DE course.

stay6

Loren, what am I missing here, I admit that I am a novice to all this but is there something that is so obvious that the casual observer would just say duh?

yogi

Loren it sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder.

Jerry Baer
87 coupe

84_Carrera

Loren,
While not Porsche-specific, I have indeed had MANY different results with the same type of car - 24V DOHC Yamaha-built Taurus SHO engines. I ran a shop specific to the type for almost 8 years, and have well over 100 pulls on the dyno. I can tell you point-blank that the "same" Mass Air sensor, or the "same" exhaust Y-Pipe or the "same" chip would yield different results on different cars. I personally owned 2 SHOs I was tuning at one point, moved the chip over from one car to the other, and the 2nd car didn't like it at ALL, and actually lost a little power & had horrible driveability vs the 1st car.

I'm running a Weltmeister chip on my '84, and have been since before I bought the car. I would love to have Steve Wong do a chip specific to my car vs. the off-the-shelf tuning on the ancient Welt chip I have now - even though I'm making pretty decent numbers to the ground on my 3.2L, if only for the improved driveability. I've put almost 46k miles since buying the car a little over 4 years ago, and about the only thing I've messed with was the fuel quality switch (currently running +6% fuel, no timing change) on the DME. Yes, the idle surges now, and that's something exacerbated by the fuel switch change. Considering I'm running 213 I think to the wheels using 10% Ethanol fuel, I'm VERY happy with the power & the reliability I've had thus far.

Anyway, I also vote Steve Wong, I have the Welt because it came with the car & there's always been something else I could spend my money on.

Good luck to the OP.



Dynorun 11: 3.2L, 80+k miles, never rebuilt engine, cone filter instead of airbox, Fabspeed Premuffler, M&K 1-in / 1-out muffler, Welt Chip, +6%. Early graph was the as-purchased Chip only, with airbox, stock original cat & muffler, 50k miles, 2004. Middle graph was pre-tuneup & valve adjust from memory & playing with exhausts incl catless & muffler bypass as well as stock / stock exhaust etc.

JackOlsen

I'm not going to engage Loren in the kind of argument he enjoys. His history of going after modified DME chips in general and Steve Wong's work in particular is easy to find with a Google search.

He's respected in his field (he rebuilt my DME, for example), but has a specific grudge on the chip issue that -- as a customer -- I find baffling and (because he's so persistent with it) somewhat off-putting.

But hey, it's a free country.

stay6

Ok, it would seem that there are many variables that need to be considered. As a beginner to the 911 world and not being into the DE's, I tried the local Porsche club and it was a lot like a high school clique, a real turn off. I have a very basic love for the car, and the charisma that it brings to the road. I just want to get a little more from it that I can but I don't want to get into the RACING side, way too expensive. Just a little more kick in the butt earlier in the rev's would be fun.

stay6

i'm very curious that not many others have expressed an opinion.

Brads911sc

I think there are alot of opinions... expert or not, Loren is aggressive... I think people are tired of getting into an argument with him. If you search here and over on Pelican... you will find a lists of posts pages long that answer your very question... I have an 83... with no chip.. so I dont have an opinion. Good luck with the new car!

stay6

So Loren, am I to assume that you are the "voice from above" on all this? You don't have to excuse my ignorance but you have to recognize it. I'm just one more of the uninitiated that want to have the most from the best. I'm all ears.

Amber Gramps

Stay6, just think of this subject as the mother of all arguments. It's a sore topic with guys like Laura that for some reason find no good in the advancement of technology. Why they can't see improvements is beyond all the rest of us to understand.

Chip aside for a moment and look into uncorking your exhaust. That is where the real improvements come from. Making sure everything is fresh and clean in the intake and fuel system is also a must.

Once I got all my switches and sensors working correctly and my plugs wires and rotor firing right, the need for chip and cat bypass seemed pointless. Just having a car that was well tuned was plenty to get into trouble. Trust me.

Just keep the car balanced.

Amber Gramps

Oh, ya....make sure you don't buy a chip off evibay and only get a chip that matches your year of car. You and I could not swap chips with each other......

84_Carrera

Stay,
One thing that's going to be hard to achieve with the P-car as-is, is the low end, off the line grunt. It's not a V8 with displacement to provide the low torque. If, for example, you look at the torque curve on my graph, you'll see that it's pretty well flat from 3,000-up. Here's a graph from an old SHO I had, 3.0L at the time with a couple of bolt-ons, but the bigger adder (a higher-flow Y-Pipe) was missing...



You can see the normal car has a lower-end torque curve, which peaks in this case pretty low, before 3k rpms. The V6 SHO has a dual-runner per cylinder intake manifold (think VarioRam in Porsche-speak, but beating them to the punch back in '86 when they patented the manifold), and the runners have a butterfly that opens the second set - these secondaries open up extra air, the EEC compensates and you have a 2nd torque curve. When the secondaries open, you feel that torque push, vs the slow & steady flat curve of the Porsche's air-cooled engine. Even with the secondaries though, the overall tq curve of the SHO engine is amazingly flat from 2500 to 6000 by comparison to more traditional 6-cylinder engines. (Case in point, my modded / bored out w/ Stage 2 cams, lowered-compression blower engine, without the blower attached, graph below)



anyway, without larger displacement (think a 3.6L swap), or a power adder such as nitrous or forced induction (super or turbocharger), it's VERY hard to get low-end without sacrificing high-end. Likewise, re-camming an engine sacrifices low-end tq to gain higher rpm horsepower most often - I had this with my Stage 2 cams in one of my SHO engines.

The beauty of the 911 is its balance and ability to perform in the twisties; it wasn't designed to be a stoplight racer, really. A Chevy V8 conversion in a 911 shell would give you that though, but likely sacrifice a lot of the handling you're used to now.

Personally, if I had an 80's coupe, I'd LOVE to throw a modded 3.6L in there. I just don't have the funds to make that happen anytime soon, so I'll spend your money for you.

best of luck!

PS - I know what you mean about the cliques, but there ARE great groups out there, in person & online. I'm lucky, & have a great group of guys that meet up to DRIVE the cars often ( and I do mean DRIVE) as well as have beers & lunch, hit the shows, etc.