To chip or not to chip?

Ah, the promise of power. Many a good man has fallen on the path to get there. Then again, considering the seemingly endless routes available, it would be quite difficult to not get intoxicated by all the tempting, if not sometimes outrageous claims floating around backyard shops, tuning houses, Internet forums and racing paddocks.

So what does one choose? Ah, therein lies the rub. There are of course the traditional methods like turbocharging, supercharging, blueprinting, increasing bore and stroke, shaving cylinder heads or just hiring a bunch of goons in an old Patrol or AUV to tail you with their hazards lights on to make sure everyone stays away from you. 

But those are all quite extreme and very costly solutions, so if you’re not that hardcore, or you’re the type of person with, umm, breeding, who feels that the whole rent-a-thug thing is as classy as Gangnam Style will be next year after it would have been done to death in every office Christmas party, you may want to look at ‘chipping.’

Chipping is basically a term given to placing a device about the size of a pack of cigarettes that plugs into your engine’s management system and remaps the ECU to send out more aggressive instructions to your fuel management system. The theory is that by simply intercepting the signals from the sensors and throwing out new instructions, the chip manufacturers can claim up to a whopping 30 percent improvement in power, with some even having the audacity to suggest a fuel saving in exchange for the privilege. 

Sound far-fetched? I agree. Which is why I decided to have my diesel pickup done after the warranty ran out. And here’s what I learned.

I went to a place called Berrima Diesel, which is the exclusive distributor for DP Chip in the Philippines. I was assured that this is a perfectly harmless, safe and cost-effective solution that is untraceable. This is very important because, while Berrima Diesel will personally pay for any engine or transmission replacement that has been damaged as a result of their chip, the manufacturers in the Philippines will not honor your warranty if they know you have one.

Berrima Diesel have been chipping diesels in their Australian head office since 1997 and are brave enough to offer to pay for your new engine because they claim to have never had one come back for warranty. Seeing my pickup was three years old and was no longer covered, I figured I had nothing to lose. 

The owner, Andrew and Reinhard Leimroth, were not in town during the installation, but once again, I was assured that this would be a 10- to 15-minute painless procedure. 

An hour later, there was still half a torso buried deep under my hood. Confused, I asked what the problem was and it seems that they couldn’t seem to squeeze more than 3 horsepower more from the box. As I was running late for a meeting, I decided to just take the car anyway and return when I had more time.

Now, I would be lying if I said I felt any gain. But I know of people that swear by these things so I figured that I should go back when Andrew was back in town and see if that would make any difference. Two weeks later, I did. 

Once Andrew started tinkering around with it, I started seeing gains of 10, 15, 20, then 25 horsepower with an equal jump in torque. More importantly, though, is that the power curve was massaged into a shape I prefer—which is more urgent at the start with a gradual tapering off as I build up speed. 

But I don’t drive a dyno to work, so everything had to translate to the road and as pretty as the graph looked, I wanted to know if anything was lost in translation. Thankfully, nothing was. Where I didn’t feel anything before, this time around I had a much crisper throttle with a fatter torque curve that helped launch the truck with smaller inputs from the pedal. This translates to two things: a full second (1.2 second to be precise) improvement on 0-100 km/h when you’re driving like you stole it, or a slight improvement in fuel economy (I averaged 9.5km per liter) when driven like you have a raw egg under the gas pedal.

I chose a safe setting, which left me with about a 15 percent power gain, which is well within the manufacturers tolerances; just the way I’m comfortable with, but the potential to go as high as 20 percent is very realistic.  

After driving it around for several months, the performance was consistent and I saw no plunge in economy—although be prepared to pay dearly at the pumps if you see every dash between traffic lights as a quarter mile strip—but the experience taught me a couple of very important things.

First, do not believe that this is a plug-and-play system. As easy as it is to install, to get the most out of it (or anything in some cases) the parameters need to be tweaked and tested. Yes, they all have presets for Navara, Hilux, whatever, but you could say the same about a massage, a haircut or a suit. And if you’re paying 35,000 pesos for this, you’ll want some personalized treatment.

Secondly, just as you wouldn’t ask the driveway attendant to put 500 bucks of gas in your tank by sheer feel, do not install one without a proper dyno test. Berrima diesel have a four-wheel dyno, as do some other shops, and as my first attempt proved, it made all the difference. It is easy to get phantom improvements where you can actually talk yourself into believing that there was a gain in performance, but without a proper calibrated reading, it becomes about as subjective as guessing how many pieces of Lego they used to make a life-size F1 toy car. 

It may not work for everyone, but as far as bang for your buck goes, a power chip is probably the most cost-efficient ways to buy power and performance. Because while there are always other ways to get tons more, as they like to say in tuning circles, speed costs money—how fast do you wanna go?

Contact the author at facebook.com/mr.counterflow.