Tuner or chip

[gmtec16450yz]

Sorry grindstone but your information is wrong. Listen to minytrker, what he's trying to tell you and others is dead on correct.

I seriously doubt he's saying those things because he might make money off of you, he's saying them because there's so much misinformation out there. I've spent over 4 decades making engines run stronger, smoother, quieter, cooler, more efficient and MORE durable than the factories have.

The OEM's have their hands tied, just like minytrker tried to tell you. Some of the worst and most obvious examples were in the '80's. The OEM's put out some HORRIBLY "tuned" vehicles. It was pretty easy to make them run better. It was no different in the early days of EFI and Port Injection, a guy like me could improve power, gas mileage AND durability pretty easily over stock.

Then there were things like the GM Port Injection cars all dieing when coming to stops. They fought that problem for over a decade. I was fixing them from the beginning, which was the late '80's and early '90's. I told many different GM Engineers how I was fixing them and they flat out told me that it wouldn't work and to not do it to customer cars. It took 10 YEARS and one day GM came out with a service bulletin that gave MY EXACT PROCEDURE AND SETTINGS for the throttle plates and TPS sensor voltages. I lol'd for days! My manager actually saw the TSB first and came out screaming and yelling "They're finally saying it's ok to fix them the way you've been doing it for years!".

Yeah, the OEM's have their hands tied. Or they're just not that smart on how the real world of engine operation works. What seems like a good idea on paper or in a meeting room doesn't always work so well in Joe Smoe's truck after it's been beat on for 90k miles. I could give you a thousand examples of how the OEM's got it wrong for a thousand different reasons.

The facts are this... SOME aftermarket tuning and "tuners" are dangerous and can blow an engine in minutes after loading a new calibration. But in the right hands, almost every single car, truck or RV powertrain can be improved upon over OEM calibrations with aftermarket tuning hardware and software. It's an extremely powerful tool. So please don't spread the false information that anytime anyone touches the OEM calibrations that terrible things will happen and that nobody can improve on the OEM setups. That's simply NOT true.

[Itchytoe]

Originally Posted by 100amp

what is the difference if any between a tuner and a chip

Nothing really. Nobody is going to sell you an actual chip that you can use to replace circuitry. That's just crazy. What you're asking about is software changes, not hardware changes. They are all just a way to change how the engine handles air to fuel ratios, or spark/injection timing, or other similar parameters.


What these tuners do is plug into your OBDII port and either hijack the signal being sent to/from your ECU, or rewrite the programing on the ECU to make the vehicle run differently.

[gmtec16450yz]

Originally Posted by 100amp

what is the difference if any between a tuner and a chip

The actual answer to this question is it depends on what particular year/model/make/engine you're talking about. In the OBDI days, the ECM's had "proms", which were technically EPROMS or EEPROMS. These were also called "Chips", which is where that term came from. When GM wanted to update the engine calibrations for emission or drive-ability reasons, they would send you a new prom with the updated data on it. I used to throw the old ones in a bucket under my bench, at one point I probably had a few thousand of them. So in those days the guys doing aftermarket tuning would pull out those proms, erase them and then program them with their own data.

Those days are pretty much gone. If you want to "tune" a newer vehicle, you're talking about using some sort of OBDII hardware interface and a software program to read, manipulate and then re-load the data. There are also some aftermarket companies that sell modules that plug into the OBDII port that alter the data coming from sensors to the ECM. Those are usually pretty basic in what they effect and don't really work that well. There are even modules that plug inline between sensors like the pedal position sensor that alter the signal before it gets to the ECM. Again, they're not a very good way to change ECM operation.

The best way by far is using a hardware and software solution that can actually edit the calibration tables directly. When you do that, the ECM itself will still work the way it was designed, just with different values in certain look-up tables, conversion tables, PID controllers, etc.

So the short answer is basically "chips" or "chipping" a vehicle is the past, "tuning" or "calibrating" a vehicle is current technology. The end goal of manipulating OEM calibrations is basically similar.

[Mr_D]

On my '02 Dutch Star with Cummins ISC 350 I installed a Banks kit. New control module, new wiring loom, new turbo housing and wastegate. Made a big difference and was still on the rig when we traded it off.
Yesterday I installed a Banks tune on my '14 Jeep Wrangler. It copied my OEM setup to it's memory, deleted what was in the Jeeps system and loaded the new programming. I took the lowest mod that kept 97 octane. Gives quite a kick at about 5,000 rpm and my fuel mileage is up although that may change.

[minytrker]

Originally Posted by grindstone01

The big difference is that I don't make a income from doing tunes! I was not aware that OEM's had their hands tied on things like HP and better fuel mileage. In fact the EPA required vehicles get improved MPG and auto companies spend a lot of $$ and testing trying to improve the MPG by even .1 MPG. My new 18 Duramax is rated for 445 HP and it went through some major design upgrades to achieve that increase.


"The new engine block incorporates larger-diameter crankshaft connecting rod journals than the current engine, enabling the placement of a stronger crankshaft and increased bearing area to handle higher cylinder loads"
https://media.gmc.com/media/us/en/gm...ax-sierra.html

Im not trying to sell anyone anything, just trying to educate. Most of the incorrect information about tuning is from people who have zero first hand knowledge of tuning. We do tuning for several GM dealerships and they are the worlds worst with misconceptions on tuning and then that gets repeated to customers. We have all the OEM programming software that the dealerships have and can do any factory program a dealership does but also have another $75k in other software, equipment and in licensing that the dealership doesnt have and they cant use. Im not saying I am better then the oem, I just have a huge advantage in the programming they do vs what I do in what I can and cant do.

The oem's cant change certain tables by law I can. They are developing a tune that works for every vehicle. When I do a custom tune I am tailoring it to your exact truck and dialing in your engine and trans tune based off data logs, the oem doesnt have the luxury of dialing in each vehicle individually.

Your truck for example can be turned up in the ecu through custom tuning 50-100hp and it will tow better and get better mileage. With a 100 more hp if you floored your truck everywhere you went and drive it like you stole it I think it would possible decrease transmission life but less than the 1% could or would drive like that.
We tune cars that race at the Texas Mile and are held WOT for a mile which isnt practical on a public run and they run faster than stock wit no engine issues.

[macstonedude]

Done anything with a Cummins ISC engine?