What Is Engine Chip Tuning?

Engine Chip Tuning Details

Have you ever worked on a classic car? Even if you personally haven’t done the work, you’ve probably known someone who spent hours and hours making tiny changes to the carburetor valves, tweaking the camshaft position, or adjusting the spark plugs. If everything went correctly, the arrangement of these parts would lead to a dramatic increase in horsepower, fuel efficiency, and other traits.

Back then, these factors were controlled by mechanical means. Today they’re controlled by computers, and those careful tune ups have changed from mechanical to digital, and that’s engine chip tuning.

Electronic Control Units

Usually these are known simply by their acronym: ECU. An electronic control unit is the generic term for any of the electronic modules or systems that are scattered around modern cars. And there are a lot of them. In fact, a modern car can have well over eighty different ECUs scattered around the vehicles that control everything from the engine to the brakes to the dash console.

All of the ECUs can be tweaked or replaced by people with the right knowledge and equipment, which is usually professional mechanics. But when it comes to getting the most out of your engine, you’re only concerned with one kind of ECU.

The Engine Control Module a.k.a. the Engine Control Unit

A quick search of acronyms might confuse you, and with good reason. The computer that controls your vehicle’s engine can be known by both the Engine Control Module (ECM) or the Engine Control Unit (ECU)—the same acronym that’s used for Electronic Control Units.

Whatever you call it, that computer controls how well your engine works. Fuel/air mixture, timing, speed governing systems, and more are all managed by the software in the module. As long as the various engine components, such as the fuel injector, are hooked up correctly, adjustments to the computer change how those components work.

Engine Chip Tuning

Manufacturer installed software is made to run the engine conservatively. This helps give the engine a certain amount of wiggle room to account for infrequent service, poor quality fuel, and the engine variations between various vehicles.

Engine chip tuning adds new software into the mix. Chip tuners are installed into your existing system and allow the settings to be changed. The right adjustments can increase the power, fuel efficiency, produce cleaner emissions, and more. These software tweaks are made to specifically fit your engine and are unique to the vehicle, especially if you’ve customized the engine at all.

As a note, remember that engine chip tuning can cause major changes to how your car runs. While other car customization's can sometimes be done in your own garage, engine chip tuning is best left to the pros. Your engine may also need to be more frequently serviced afterwards, so make sure you take that into account.

More Benefits of Engine Chip Tuning

Benefits of Engine Chip Tuning

If you’re into upgrading or customizing your car, then you’ve probably heard about engine chip tuning. Whether the ECU is changed, the engine is remapped, or a performance chip is added, the change in the software can make a big difference in how your vehicle functions.

1. You Get More Horsepower

When the ECU comes from the factory it comes with conservative software settings, and that includes power settings. These help the car be more stable under a variety of different conditions, but it also means there’s some power left behind. Chip tuning can change the fuel/air ratio and timing to give your car extra power and torque.

2. You Get More Fuel Efficiency

For a long time, engine chip tuning was almost exclusively used to get more power out of vehicles. However, the recent emphasis on fuel efficiency and environmentalism has changed that. The right chip tuning can make a substantial difference in your fuel economy. It may be at the sacrifice of horsepower, but many cars have a lot more power than they need for everyday driving.

3. They’re Affordable Upgrades

There are plenty of upgrades that can increase your horsepower or improve your fuel efficiency. For example, a custom exhaust system can make a big difference. But these cost a lot to have made, and require a lot of labor to install correctly. Chip tuning, on the other hand, is a much more affordable option. Even if you pay extra to get the tuning done by a pro shop, it’s still cheaper than other options.

4. They’re Easy to Install

A big part of that affordability comes from the ease of installation. Universal diagnostic ports make it easy to plug new engine chips or chip management units into the existing system without having to take apart the ECU. This cuts down on the necessary labor immensely. This makes it extra affordable to have the chip tuning done by a pro, since the labor costs are low.

5. They’re Tuned to Fit Your Driving

Manufacturers set the software to fit a variety of conditions, everything from the high elevation cold of the northern Rockies to the humid heat of south Florida. They’re also made to work with a wide variety of gasoline grades for versatility. Unless you’re road tripping across the country on a regular basis, you don’t need that versatility. Chip tuning allows you to make sure that your car is specifically made to work at its best in the conditions where you drive it.

6. They Give You a Cleaner Burn

There are a wide variety of different technologies that need to work together to get the most out of your fuel, including the timing, fuel/air ratio, injection, transmission, and more. The cleaner the burn, the more efficiency, more power, and less build-up you’ll have. This kind of fine tuning means that you’ll have to be much more selective in your gas choices, but it can pay off in a big way.

Costs and Benefits: The Numbers Behind Chip Tuning

Costs and Benefits Of Chip Tuning

When you’re considering engine chip tuning or remapping, it’s easy to run into conflicting and confusing information. It can be tough to track down concrete numbers for what it can and can’t do for your car. Believe it or not, there’s actually a good reason for that.

So Why the Ambiguity?

There are a couple reasons why chip tuning doesn’t always get the same results. The first is the variation of cars out there. For example, a 1997 Honda Civic has little in common with a 2007 Ford F-150 4×4. There’s also a large variety of environments where the cars are driven. Chip tuning for a steadily hot environment can give much more stable results than chip tuning for an environment that swings from cold and dry to hot and humid.

The other big reason is the chip tuners themselves. There’s a wide variety of ways to change your car computer’s software, everything from a cheap “plug and play” external chip module to having a professional remap the software or switch out the engine chip. As you can imagine, this produces a wide range of results.

By the Numbers

All of that being said, there are a few numbers that can be thrown out there. With upgrades like this, it’s a good idea to look at the upper ranges of what you can accomplish. Then you can adjust downwards depending on your budget or abilities.

Tuning for Performance:
Up to 30% more power and up to 25% more torque

To get these results, your best bet is to go to a professional. They’ll perform complete diagnostics and tuning with the car on a rolling road. Be prepared to answer questions about your driving habits, and be honest. A pro will tune the software to specifically give you the most power for those driving conditions, so the more accurate you are, the more power you’ll get.

Tuning for Efficiency:
Lower fuel consumption by up to 16%

This doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing engine power. In fact, many software remaps can actually increase your power and lower your fuel consumption at the same time. Again, the key here is to have the chip tuned to specifically fit your car, your driving conditions, and to have consistent driving behavior.

The Costs of Chip Tuning

This is another area where it can be tough to track down numbers, but here are a few rough ranges:

Performance Chips: $300-$700

This is for a chip or module that you plug into the diagnostic ports yourself. Performance chips or modules are the cheaper option, and pretty easy to install. That being said, they’re also not going to give you the best results. That cheaper price tag might only give you a tiny fraction of what you could get.

Professional Chip Tuning or Remapping: $400-$900

This price is really an incredibly broad estimate, since every situation is different. The more precisely you want the engine tuned, the more time it’s going to take, which means the more it’s going to cost. This also varies depending on the car. Some cars are capable of a lot more fine-tuning than others, and a pro can help you get the most out of them.

Additional Costs:

Chip tuning changes how your engine runs, and you should be prepared for a change in how you use your car. A great example is fuel costs. Chip tuning focuses your engine to the point where you have to be a lot more choosy when it comes to the gas you use. This can lead to increased fuel costs. That being said, those increase costs could be easily offset by the increase fuel economy.

Ultimately, chip tuning is like any other car upgrade: The more you put into the improvements, the more you’ll get out of them.

Engine Chip Tuning and Your Warranty

Warranty On Engine Chip Tuning 

Engine chip tuning, or adding performance chips, can make a big difference in how the engine in your vehicle runs. However, if your vehicle is under warranty then you probably want to keep it that way, and no amount of improvements are worth having to shell out big money the next time anything goes wrong.
These tips can help you figure out what will happen to your warranty with engine chip tuning. This does not qualify as legal advice, and if you really want to be sure then you should consult a warranty attorney.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is a federal law that was passed back in 1975 to protect consumers. The law specifically covers how warranties are treated by the consumer and the warrantor. There are a wide variety of protections and regulations that are part of it.

But what does this have to do with engine computer unit tuning? The protections of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act mean that a warranty cannot be declared invalid just because you install aftermarket modifications, and that includes performance chips. Since performance chips or engine tuning add-ons leave the original components intact, the warranty is still valid.

Exceptions to the Rule

That being said, there are notable exceptions. The biggest one is Engine Management Systems (EMS). When these are added to your car, they bypass the existing onboard computer. Since this completely changes the OEM systems, it will void you manufacturer’s warranty.

The other exception is when the tuning modification can be proven to have caused the damage. This is true for more than just engine chip tuning. Your warranty simply isn’t going to cover repairs if you installed a radiator that didn’t work and caused the engine to overheat. The same is true if you added a chip that overrode safety standards and made the engine break down.

A perfect example of this is a Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) issued by Ford a few years ago. A large number of F series pickups with 6.0 Powerstroke turbo diesel engines were coming in with blown head gaskets. Ford found that almost every single one of them had a power chip installed that boosted engine output and damaged the head gasket. As a result, this specific damage was no longer covered under warranty, and Ford had every legal right to deny the warranty claim.

Do Your Homework

The very best thing you can do before your modify your vehicle is to research all of the data that’s out there. Professional aftermarket mechanics can be an invaluable resource for this. They’ll keep track of the TSBs that are out there for your car. Even if they don’t know the information off the top of their head, they know where to look to find it.

They’ll be able to recommend the best tuning modifications to get more out of your vehicle without harming your warranty.

Engine Chip Tuning: Is it Legal?

Engine Chip Tuning Legalized Or Not

The right performance chip or engine control unit can change the software in your engine’s computer, giving you more horsepower or more efficiency. In theory, it’s your vehicle, so you can do whatever you want to it.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers would like to change that. This group of 12 automobile manufacturers seeks to prohibit car owners from changing the software in their cars. But do they have legal grounds to make that claim?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

It all comes down to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Passed in 1998, the DMCA was designed to specifically deal with issues of copyright and intellectual property in the digital age. At the time, it dealt with music, movies, software, and other digital products.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is petitioning to have the software within the car’s computer covered under the DMCA. They claim that they have a copyright on the software. Like software companies, they’d like to limit the ability of the consumer to copy or modify the software. If the petition is approved, then it could prevent car owners from performing any modification that changes the software.

The Argument for Limiting ECU Tuning

At first glance this push against chip tuning might seem like it’s out of left field, but there is logic behind the Alliance’s case. Early engine computers might have only determined one thing, such as the fuel/air ratio in the fuel injector. Modern cars can have over 80 different computers or chips scattered around the vehicle. They can control everything from the engine to the anti-lock brake system to the steering to emissions.

When a car leaves the factory, the software is carefully set to very specific parameters. Some of these ensure that the car meets emission standards. Others ensure that the car meets safety standards, efficiency standards, and more. If someone changes these settings without knowing what they’re doing, the results can be damage the vehicle, and may even lead to accidents.

The Argument Against Limiting ECU Tuning

Opponents and car enthusiasts are aware that there are risks to any customization, but contend that these risks are actually very minor. To put things in perspective, they’ll point to classic cars. For example, a car from the 1950s will not be up to modern standards, no matter how well maintained it is. Even if adding performance chips to modern cars makes them slightly less safe, they’ll still be safer, cleaner, and in more compliance with standards than older cars.

But the biggest argument they have against limitations is the infringement of ownership rights. Placing remapping or other software modifications under the DMCA means that car owners only have a license to the software, rather than full ownership. This would mean that the car companies would own part of your car, and have a direct say in what you do with it. Opponents are also concerned about it being a slippery slope. For example, a different set of rims changes the parameters the software works with, and could then no longer be allowed.

Before you get any performance chip, chip tuning, engine remapping, or other software work done, it’s a good idea to check with a pro. They’ll be able to give you the most recent updates on the progression of the debate to help you make your decision.

Risks of Engine Chip Tuning

Engine Chip Tuning

Engine chip tuning, also known as engine remapping or simply chip tuning, can be a great way to get more out of your car. It’s a relatively small modification that can drastically change how your engine runs. But those changes can also have a downside. Here are a few risks you take when you tweak the ECU or engine control unit.

It Can Push the Engine Too Hard

One of the most common engine remaps is to get more power out of the engine. The right settings for the fuel/air mixture and timing can get your engine functioning at a higher speed and getting more power with every stroke.

But that extra power can push the engine parts beyond normal stress limits. At the same time, the increased heat and repetition lead to higher wear levels. Both of these factors can combine to increase the risk of catastrophic engine failure. This is why engine tuning can often void your powertrain warranty unless it’s done with the right gear by the right person.

The Engine Can Be More Susceptible to Changes

The default chip parameters are set by the manufacturer to make the vehicle as versatile as possible. After all, consumers are all over the globe, and most of them just want a reliable car they don’t have to worry about.

When chip tuning brings out more power or efficiency, it often comes at the cost of that versatility. This means that the engine can be more susceptible to factors like a bad tank of gas or higher air temperatures.

It’s Easy to Make Mistakes

The ECU controls a lot of different systems, and most of them are vital to how the engine works. Many of these systems are interconnected. For example, the fuel/air mixture is tied to the spark timing which is tied to the transmission. Tweaking one of these settings without changing the others accordingly can actually make the engine perform worse than it did before.

The wrong adjustments can do more than just lower the quality of the engine’s performance—they can actually cause the engine to break down entirely. These breakdowns can cause irreparable damage, so it’s important to know exactly what you’re doing.

Other Parts May Need to be Replaced

Changing the tuning of your ECU will give your engine and vehicle better performance, but all of the stock parts are chosen with the manufacturer’s default settings in mind. So they might not give you the best results after tuning.

Parts that directly concern running the vehicle are hit the most by this. Things like spark plugs, distributors, wires, and valves should all be replaced in order to get the most out of the tuning. This risk is probably the least of all the others, but it can be a hefty hit to your budget.