What is Chip Tuning ???

 

In the 80's of the last millenium electronic structures started to appeare in cars, which wasn't present until that time in the car industry and a classic carburator system of injection recieved a competion and it was an electronic injection system.
Firstly, the systems acted like carburators, but later the systems started moving in completely another direction. That's the way ECU(Engine Control Unit) was born. The Unit gets informations from a lot of sensors from engine and calculate how much fuel the engine needs in particular moment, and does delivery of the fuel. That was the first mision of the ECU, later the ECU started to control a moment of mass ignition, turbo charger preasure, and other innovations which are not the topic of our story.

After this story we can say that chip tuning is a procedure which changes original fuel delivery parameters, moment of ignition, as well as the preasure of charging and the result of these actions is increasemnt in rev momentum and engine strength. 
There are a few metods how to change the original parameters in ECU:

1. Old engines, until 1987, which had control unit, couldn't be tuned by chip tuning, they had electronic parameters which physicaly couldn't be changed. In fact they didn't have the chip, they had only one working program.

2. Most of engines, from 1987 to 1998, have, in DIL EPROM, informations about engine control.
EPROM is electronic memory which doesn't allow any modification, but it is possible to get out the original modul and put back new EPROM, and that is the way to change standard setup.

3. Some of engines, from 1994 to 1998, have new generation of EPROM placed in PLCC. 
The procedure is the same. PLCC EPROMs have little window on their body with purpose to clear informatio in it by UV light. They should promise better safety and speed of the chip.
As we already told, ECU must be opened to put a new modul.

4. Most of the engines, from 1998(9) have electronic memory FLASH type which is available for the change of parameters. Chip tuning, with cars like these, is called OBD, or tuning by cable.
This method doesn't open the ECU, modification is performed by software over OBD diagnosis connector. 
The only flaw of with this metod is that you can't get back to the standard setup without a chip tuning expert.

5. Some engines from 2003(4) must be done with BDM conector which is in ECU. That means that computer must be taken out of car, and that is the only way to read/put informations in memory. Despite of opening the computer, the procedure is completely safe if you use high quality equipment like we in SM chip tuning use.

6. Power box is an electronic structure which is placed between engine sensors and ECU, or between nozzles and ECU. It has a task to "intercept" the information from sensors (or nozzles), to change it and then pass it to the ECU or to nozzles, resulting in richer fuel/air ratio and therefore increasing the srtrength of the engine. In this method ECU is not disassembled and there are no OBD modifications of FLASH.
ECU stays standard. You can get it out and put to some other identical car at any time.
Bad thing is that there is no individually changes and setup, which is necessary with some engines. Other problem is very high price of quality power box.