DJ23

500, I do have a dyno that I think has before and after the chip upgrade. I have to get a scan of it and post. As far as warranty I was assured by FBL that it didn't affect warranty, but who really knows. It was my choice and I trusted them. The fact is Kip said it wouldn't place any undue stress on the engine if programmed properly. I've haven't had any problems to date and haven't looked back.

Jay

500

You don't need to post the dyno chart etc, I'm just curious of the net change in hp & trq before and after the chip. Thx

RonCT

My car has AWE headers, cats, and mufflers, oem everything else when it comes to power. I have no idea what the before and after are, though I can tell you that I saw estimates in the 20/20 range in the literature for the 3.8 997S (taken with a grain of salt). But, the real-world performance gain was clearly obvious to me in my pre-track review and then the on-track experience was icing on the cake. Walking away from my pre-software performance, matching acceleration exactly with a 997 GT3 where I could never do that before, etc.

sandwedge

Not sure what I overlooked here but it feels like there's something missing in this equation if an $800 chip yields roughly the same gain as a $17,000 X51 kit.

RonCT

What you are missing is that I have AWE headers, cats, and mufflers on top of the software -- Probably a $5k investment. My car has 7k miles, so it's fully broken in, meaning it's into it's full "grown up" power. All 997s pull much harder once they come into their full power -- mine felt like it happened around 4k miles (I was at about 4k when I recorded the TraqMate data of the pre-software sessions). So X51 may claim small gains, but Porsche is conservative.

In my case (as a track guy) I felt and saw the data in my before and after. I'm paying for the power in fuel economy and sound (Porsche could never sell a car that sounds like mine does due to international sound level regulations).

Sharptt

Great review Ron. BTW, I am surprised about the fuel economy comment. My car currently has the X51 header, Techart mufflers and AWE 200 cell cats and the fuel economy jumped up almost 1 mpg. Until I added the AWE sport cats the gas mileage was essentially unchanged. Do you think the REVO software is impairing the mpgs?

dndodd

It is probably his foot impairing the gas economy.

RonCT

Don't know about economy -- all I have recorded is about 9 MPG on the track since I got the Revo

sandwedge

Actually I didn't miss that but thought the consensus was that exhaust mods hardly registers on a dyno. I guess combining all that with the chip is what makes hp. Seems like you get X51 type gains for less than 1/3 of the cost even if you include the exhaust package.

RonCT

There's clearly power and torque to be gained by just the headers, cats, and mufflers. Once you open the restriction a bit, the engine can't help but to make more. Then I suppose when you fine-tune the management of all of the factors, you can do even better. I'm not a scientist, so I can't explain the physics of it all, but the results are there on the dyno (ie: AWE's site) and in the actual real-world performance.

mdrums

For the doubters Revo has a deal were they will download the new software and you can try it out for 5 hours and see for yourself. My Porsche dealer offered this to me and it is in the Revo lit.

JasonAndreas

Any aftermarket chip upgrade will invalidate the powertrain warranty.

Just one thing to be aware of is that after 5 hours the REVO demo software is not completely deleted from the ECU. A few remnants remain and they are detectable by PAG. So if there are any major engine warranty claims PCNA will deny them.

DJ23

[You don't need to post the dyno chart etc, I'm just curious of the net change in hp & trq before and after the chip.

500,
the upgrades I had before the Revo upgrade where, Evo V flow air induction (which I was told by my dealership does not affect warranty), Fabspeed headers, and PSE. Here are the before and after figures on the dyno if I'm reading them correctly. HP before 362, after 380. Torque ft.lb before 310, after 328. When I got my dyno back it allowed me to shift my car in its peak RPM zone. To clarify this better I will quote a section of "Speed Secrets" by Ross Bentley, pg. 23; "An engine will operate most effectively -resulting in the maximum acceleration-when the rpm is maintained between the torque peak and the horsepower peak." Pg.22 "With many engines you're better off shifting before reaching the redline, because you want to shift at an rpm that allows the engine to stay in the peak torque range." So after I got my car this spring I did exactly this. My torque peaked at around 4900 rpm and my HP peaked at around 6700 rpm. I took my car out on a nice drive and came down off an entrance ramp on Rt 8 in CT. I figured around a 1500 to 2000 drop in rpm between shifts, so I shifted at approx. 6800 rpm to stay within my power band. I got to 4th gear and began to pull up. I can't even tell you how fast I was going, but it felt like the car was going to go into orbit. I never felt such pull and acceleration. Mr. Bentley was right. You don't have to go to redline. In fact if you do you'll actually lose some torque, because it tails off. So whether you get a chip upgrade or not, and that's your personal preference, a dyno does contain some valuable information pertaining to your shift points. Hope this was helpful. I have a busy medical practice and I don't get a lot of time to respond to this great forum.

As far as the warranty issue is concerned I did a lot of research before deciding upon which product to use for my upgrade and I felt very comfortable with Kip doing the programing. I do have to mention that there is an advantage getting the upgrade and dyno done at the same time, because certain adjustments can be examined and altered pertaining to your engine and modifications, allowing the best enhancement without being harmful to your 911. To date I haven't had any problems, I never burned any oil from day one, and my car is a joy to drive whether going to get the newpaper or on a long drive in the hills of Connecticut.

Take Care , Jay

RonCT

Absolutely not true (in writing) per my Porsche dealer who installs aftermarket performance software on Porsches. If that were the case, I would not have touched the software. By the way, my BMW dealer assured me of the same regarding the Shark Injector for my previous E46M3. I can't remember exactly why this is the case, but I believe it has to do almost with the concept of tuning up a car -- you can adjust timing, fuel ratios, throttle linkage, etc. -- the things that software does.

JasonAndreas

Your warranty coverage is provided by Porsche Cars North America and not your local dealership (check your warranty coverage statement that came with the car). So it doesn't matter what the service advisor or parts guy (both work on commision) tell you. You can call PCNA or ask your district service manager or even just ask the warranty claims administrator at your dealership if he/she will even bother submitting a claim for a replacement engine (due to any number of reasons) after your DME control unit has been plugged into their networked PiWiS tester. With the older Porsche System Tester 2 (PST2), PCNA sent out a warning to dealers:



The newer PiWiS computer transfers data to PCNA/PAG and that is compared against any warranty claims. The software is also a bit smarter now and they don't just look for non-matching checksums and flash counts. I would love to see what the dealer provided to you in writing if possible. Please don't get me wrong, I'm all for chip tuning. In fact I'm one of a (probably) very small number of people on here that have actually written software for tuning Porsches (944, 968, 911, 964, 993, 996, & 996TT -- still finishing up the last two but most of the disassembly is done) so I'm all for modding. But I am also aware of what the 2004 EPA regulations permitted and the reality of pushing a powertrain warranty claim through PCNA (there are several on here that have been denied).