cold_beer839

Anybody tried one of the eBay chips in their 87 or later S4?

What are the recommended chips? Authority?

David L. Lutz

ColdBeer,

I have read many post and lengthy discussions on the Chips and it just doesn't seem to help our 87's that much. If I went in that direction I would go Authority, but again I haven't heard about enough improvement to warrant the $$.

Although I do think they raise the RPM limiter!

aggravation

I've got a set of AutoAuthority chips in my 88 S4 that seem to make a bit of improvement.
You can hear the difference in the exhaust note, I'm guessing it has to do with the way they change the fueling and the idle is raised by about 200 rpm.
Don't know about the rev limiter I never have hit it although I have taken it up to 6400 rpm's before shifting numerous times I never tried to go beyond that.

I've switched back to the stock chips for a while then gone back to the AutoAuthority's and could feel a slight improvement but who knows how much of that is placebo affect...my guess is, on a dyno, you would see a small percentage increase in power.

I have a SharkTuner and am in the process of ordering a new supercharger which will require it's own set of chips so between that and having the SharkTuner I don't think I'll be using the AutoAuthority chips any more so if you want them you can have them for $100 paypal.

morganabowen

I originally put a set of autothority chips in my 91 S-4, and the improvement was amazing. I later changed to a custom German chip, and the initial improvement was very noticable. After several months with the new chips, I sold my Autothority chips to a rennlister. The past 6 to 8 months, I've experienced some loss of power, something that only an owner would notice. Due to this, I've gone back to my factory chips, and am waiting for another set of autothority chips to surface at a reasonable price I was told that the chips for each year of the S-4 are slightly different. So if you own a 87, 88 or 89, the individual chip should correspond to the model year. believe me, the chips do make a difference

Aggrevation, $100 for genuine autothority chips is an excellent price. That is what I sold mine for

rixter

hey David,
run those wheels by my house and I'll lend you the brains from my 87 for a week to let you see the diff, they have autothority chipset in them

cold_beer839

I'll try to get them over this weekend.

Still waiting on that radiator!! FedEx screwed up yesterday, so hopefully it will come in today.

David

cold_beer839

aggravation, PM Sent on the chips.

F451

I'll try to find the thread that addressed this very issue recently, and the response from Carl F (I believe it was Carl) was that the chips in fact do make a performance increase for the S4's, contrary to a lot of discussion on RL.

He mentioned some reasons why there is this perception that the chips do not make much difference in the S4, and then he clarified the issue - rather well I thought.

Sorry, I cannot provide the link or more details right now, but I will look it up.

Some good data points there that made me decide to get one (not a eBay clone) for my '88 S4.

At some point if I upgrade to a different exhaust or othe performance mods I will consider a custom chip made with the Shark Tuner.

Oh yeah!

The_Remora

REcent discussions here stated that chips make an improvement on 87-88 cars (as well as BIG) improvement on 85-86.5) but not on the later cars.

The_Remora

Cold-beer, if you pass on Aggravations' chips I would be interested.

morganabowen

Not true The chips made a big improvement on my 91 S-4

TheoJ

Interesting. Have you guys ever looked at the fuel maps of the ecu's? They are very similar. Some of the performance chips I've seen are definitely a bit different but not even so much. I'm experimenting with fuel maps, and made an eprom-extender solution to replace the software in the ecu quickly. No download, but simple eprom swap.

I've managed to degrade some performance by adding serious amounts of fuel, so I'm past that stage now and really finetuning (not selling anything) Maybe Andrew should re-activate his thread....?

aggravation

Here they are cold_beer839, just pulled them out of the car.

cold_beer839

aggravation, PM sent.


The '87 and '88 Autothority chips should be the same from what I can find.

The_Remora

ARe there different chips for 5-speed and automatic cars or are the chips all the same?
'87-'88 chips are different than the '89 -> S4 chips?
Thanks