Ken7258

I'm sure glad they have a 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE.

I have a 2001 C2 tip. I had Fabspeed maxflow muffler and their headers put on along with Evo. Motorsports highflow K&N cone intake put in. I was told I would need to remap the chip to get any real gain out of those as well as the 20 hp & torgue the upsolute chip was suppose to produce. If you add up all the manufacturers advertised gains, I would get an extra 40-50 hp & torgue gain. Realistically I was hoping for an extra 30hp & torgue.

I dealt with Lanny Richardson out of CA. He was great to deal with, gave me great instructions on removing the ecu and everything was done on time. Along with my ecu I sent to Lanny, I also included a flyer on all three of my mods along with a dyno sheet from each manufacturer. Lanny said the people that reprogram the chip in Austria are very familiar with most mods and take that all into account when reprogramming the chip. One thing I was very interested in what Lanny said was they up the max RPM to 7200. I was real happy about that because my tip (no matter if I'm in manual or auto mode)always shifts out of 1st at 6400 and all other gears between 6800-7000RPM.

One thing most people may not know is whomever you go through in the US does none of the reprogramming. They just act as a middle man with Austria. They just send the current ecu info to Austria and download the reprogrammed info from Austria onto you ecu. THE RESULTS.


I dynoed the car on 3/20/04, a hot afternoon at 3:50. My hp was 238.7 and torgue was 215.0. A little bit lower then WYO996 258hp and 219 torgue he did on his pre Evo. supercharger. I realize I have the extra loss of a tip transmission. We are both in CO at approx 5300-5500 feet.

I got the chip back, put it in, started and warmed my car up, looking forward to 7200 RPM. 1st gear shifted at exactly the same point, 6400RPM, 2nd and 3rd shifted at exactly the same RPM points. I'm not a happy camper. I realize I have to have the car re-dynoed to see if there are any gains. I go back to the same dyno, same guy runs it on a cool morning at 10:18. My new post chipped 996 is 236.1 hp and torque is 215.9. We re-ran it 3 times with no real change. The operator printed my pre and post chipped dyno runs over each other. They look almost exactly the same, with the pre chip run a little higher over the whole RPM range. WHAT A MAJOR DISSAPOINTMENT.

I'm now wondering if anything was reprogrammed since my car shifts at exactly the same low points, not at 7200 RPM.

I will be contacting Lanny tomorrow. I'll probably have to re-send my ecu back, be without my car for another 5 days and redyno the car again to make sure it's least at where it was hp & torgue before I sent the ecu to upsolute. I always tell people, you never know how good a company is until you have a problem. I will now find out about Upsolute. I am so dissapointed, since I've heard nothing but great things about Upsolutes chips. I will now have spent 225.00 on dyno's. What a royal PIA.

In my opinion, don't believe any manufactures claims of higher hp & torque with performance mods on a N/A 996. I spent $2,500 on Fabspeeds muffler/headers and EVO highflow intake. Don't waste your money on any of these mods unles you want a more agressive sounding car. I would still get the Fabspeed Maxflow muffler because of the great sound. Just don't expect and power gain. If you want real gains, I guess you should buy a TT or get the EVO or TPC supercharger. I've now spent 1/4 of what a S.C. would have cost, with zero power gains. This sucks.

Ken

MJones

Sorry to hear about your saga, but one thing ...
your shift points are not controled by the ECU but by a seperate transmission control unit

penguinking

thats because you cant trust folks to "tune" stuff for you when they can't be there to tune your car on the dyno. sure, preprogramed maps will get you somewhere (and in this case nowhere) but the only way to get the highest possible gains is by tuning on the dyno (or road tuning some would argue) becasue you can see what timing/fuel changes affect hp when you run the dyno...

i wish there were more dyno tuners out there for porsche - we have this stuff all over the place when i had my subaru. alot of that stuff is even programable yourself if you own a laptop

SPR

that's upsolutely dissapointing, should have gotten a giac- sorry couldn't resist.

NickS

Sound is the only reason I bought my exhaust... and I have serious doubts the even GIAC can give me the +18hp that they claim from just a chip.

I'll wait till someone buys one and has before and after dyno sheets.

David A

I have one with ngtmotorsport.com on my 02 996 and I'm very happy with.My trottle is much more responsive.

Hank Cohn

Ken,

As I’m sure you’re aware, you cannot go buy three items that each claim some amount of HP or Torque gain, take the sum of those gains and come up with a net gain number. It just doesn’t work like that although some manufacturers would lead you to believe otherwise. I know very little about Porsche tiptronic transmissions; however, as MJones points out, most automatic transmissions are controlled by a separate controller. So, while your rev limit may indeed have been raised, there has been no change in your transmissions electronics and therefore no change in its programmed shift points. Can’t you put the transmission in manual mode and make it hold a gear until you want to shift?

Even if someone has mapped a chip with your specific mods on another car, it is highly unlikely that the same programming will maximize your engine’s performance. There are too many variables like altitude, fuel quality, your engines timing, age and current state of tune not to mention quality of install.

The short of it is that chip tuning is a science and the tuner needs multiple iterations on the exact car to maximize the numbers. Lastly, the specific combination of your mods may actually be hurting your engine’s performance. You could run it on the dyno with every combination of your performance mods to determine what is and what isn’t working – not very fun but well worth your time if you’re really after gains.

Hank

RR

Dont waste your money on chipping your car.
Get a set of equal length headers and sport cats and a set of mufflers you like.

For those people who think they can feel a better throttle response with a chipped NA car, its most likely b/c your wallet is $2500 lighter, and you dont want to admit to yourself that you spent money on a placebo.

I talk from experience.

I played with a ton of mods on my old C2.

I tried all types of mufflers, sport cats and header combos.
The biggest difference in seat of the pants performance was or is- BELIEVE IT OR NOT - equal length headers, sport cats, AND a straight thru pipe. Without the straight through pipe there was a NOTICEABLE decrease in power. Its loud but really the best bet.

I know a ton of people on here have been saying that the car needs the back pressure, blah blah blah, but I can tell you from experience that the best exhaust combo with sport cats and equal length header is the straight through.

SPR

that ng site is strosek stuff, and upon speaking with them at that SEMA event in la, they confirmed they use the giac chip-

996FLT6

At Least from experience with the Unichip on my 996 and my VW GTI(MK1-1.8 16v swap with cis-e) if you plan to chip/reflash you gotta lean out fuel from 1-4k rpm and increase fuel from 4k on. From 4k on car is running more air and more air means more fuel is needed whereas from 1-4k there's no need to increase fuel or get a richer condition because not enough air to combust all the fuel thus performance is dramatically lowered from 1-4k so it's need to be lean- side effects smelly gas at idle and cruising speeds and total lack of throttle response. Now with my GTI it uses cis-e injection which basically runs same amount of fuel from 1 to redline-the bad thing is at higher rpms from 4k 16 v enignes runs alot of air so it's running lean so performance is not so great. So I ordered a hack type relay that connects to coolant temp sensor to throttle return and cheats the computer that air is running cooler so computer will increase more fuel. And boy after getting it installed very noticeable kick from 4k on(my hack is adjustable also so i can increase more fuel or lean it out). Everyone knows colder air makes for better performance. Kudos to the guy about automatics-it needs a tranny chip. I had a dinan chip plus tranny chip done on my ex BMW 525i to change the tranny shift points. Make sure whichever tuner you use 1-4k rpm-leaner condition is best option and richer condition from 4k on. Since you are pretty into the mod thing you may want to get the lite flywheel/clutch from EVO if you don't mind the chatter and drivetrain noise but rewards you with quicker revs and better throttle response. Regards and good luck. Mike

Ken7258

Thanks for all the replies.

It's my fault this happened. I saw the dyno charts of these mods. It's a shame all manufacturers take one point on the chart that has the biggest gain and that's what they advertise. The dyno chart could be flat except one 20 hp blip, and that's what they say the gain is - not the average. I still can't believe I got a zero hp gain from the Upsolute chip.

I guess I've only lost 1,400 for the Fabspeed headers and Evo intake, plus 225 for 3 dynos. I love the sound of the Fabspeed muffler. I would have kept those no matter what.

Evo did tell me about there ecu upgrade when I spent 2,500 for the headers/muffler and intake. For 1,100 I didn't think a 18 hp & torque increase was worth it. Now it doesn't look so bad. I should have just waited until their S.C. came out.

I do have the dyno runs printed out. I forgot to get the AFR's printed out. I'm going to go get those. I'm going to try and put another 100 miles on the car to see if there is any difference.

My first gear use to shift close to 7,000 RPM before I went to the dealer for a transmission oil leak and a new battery. I wonder if putting the new battery in reset the transmission shift points.

A learning process. Thanks for all your help.

Ken

wet996

Having the Fabspeed cold air/equal length headers/exhaust did improve high rev performance (seamed "peaky" - this is on a 99 cab/manual). I think the low end suffered a little (maybe this is the back pressure issue mentioned elswhere). I have been looking for "chipping" or DME re-mapping info to optimize the "power curve" (I heard there are many programs already in the DME that might be usuable, including a ROW setting). So far I have found very mixed opinions on this - I guess the thing to do is find a place that can actually do the DME "tuning", which requires leaving the car - and additional $$$ I'm sure. I do not (and did not) expect big HP gains. 20 REAL HP would be great - but how there ponys are introduced is key (as Ken7358 found out).

caf

There was an interesting article on dynos out this month in either Car & Driver or Road & Track(sorry I can't remember which). The article was written by Steve Dinan, and he basically says most of these tuner dynos are total rubbish. There are many sources of error, and it's very difficult to control for them.

One might think that the dynos would at least be useful in doing a before and after mod comparison test, but Dinan explains why that's a fallacy as well. Apparently manufacturers tune their set-ups in such a way as to count on considerable and increasing frontal air pressure at speed to affect the air/fuel ratios. The small fan many tuner dynos put in front of the car to simulate this air pressure is pathetically inadequate. It really takes a huge, wind tunnel size fan to create this frontal air pressure and allow the tuning to be done properly (or you could do it on the road, I suppose, but then there would be other factors difficult to control for such as wind, grade, ambient temp.,etc.).

All this just reinforces my opinion that on most current, normally aspirated cars playing with the ECU is a waste of time. Virtually none of these tuners have the ability to run realistic dynos.

JasonAndreas

Is there a chance your dealer reflashed your ECU when you brought the car in for service? Does the 996 software from Upsolute have anyway of preventing a dealer from using their PST2/3 to update your ECU?

wet996

I talked with a porsche shop (not dealer) on the DME (ECU) mapping issue. They had gone through many itterations on a boxter project car(Dyno/track - benchmark/mod/re-benchmark) and were able to get some "power curve" improvments with the REASONABLE increase hp of the mods. Again, I do not anticipate significant power increase - just utilizing the free-flow over a better curve (I have to think this is doable - isn't this a fundemantal concept??). I realize the 996 is "optimized" - but this is with US DOT regulations as well. They also mentioned the ROW setting - anyone herd of this DME mapping vs, the NA (also - I am at sea level, I hear there is also a high-elevation setting too).