Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Hi
Thinking of chipping my 944s2
anyone got any chip preferences as they vary in price so much is it worth it on a high mileage car
Thanks for all the feed back on the chip
will probablt get it dyno tested first

Hi, welcome to the forums.

My S2 was chipped before I bought it (a decade ago) so I've never known any different. Our recent dyno day saw it make pretty much the same numbers as other S2s, but they had higher mileages and other mods e.g. de-cat.

I was thinking of upgrading my S2 and one of the items I was considering was an ECU chip, I have read some good, bad and indifferent stuff about chipping N/A cars. I must admit most of the good stuff was from the chip manufacturers so still unsure best advice I read was to try and get a reputable chip second hand then you don't risk losing a lot of money of it doesn't offer any improvement.

I am thinking of starting the old fashioned way improving the air flow in and exhaust gas out by fitting a K&N panel filter (before someone says it I don't want a cone filter), then looking at replacing the cat with a free flow box. Already done the obvious stuff like new HT leads, Distributor / Rotor arm and plugs plus good quality oil and filter.

Just finding it hard to justify replacing a perfectly good exhaust for the sake of a few horses.

So to conclude if I could find a reputable chip going cheap I might try it but I would not expect huge power increases, think these are much more effective with the turbos.

The S2 is pretty good to start with. Unless you put it on the dyno any improvement would be marginal. A proper remap on the rollers. (With someone who knows what there doing.) would be less hit & miss. The exhaust is the most cost effective way to improve these. ( If all that I've read is true.) Dansk full system should be worth 7 to 10. (Gave me 5 on a lux) Dumping the cat gets you back a few that you've lost. K&N no difference. Stock air filter is good. If power is your goal then get it on the dyno & see if you have all the horses youir meant to have. Then you can see the improvement after messing with the exhaust & fueling. But it's all a waste of time unless your engine is fit!

Ye speaketh the truth

Cheap chips are a waste of money in my opinion.you need to spend upwards of £300 to even make a small difference and on a high mileage engine you could be just bringing the rebiuld date closer!! Re read JJs post above.

Rubbish to use the technical expression. The price of the chip without programming is around £2-3. Therefore what you're paying for is dyno development time (if any!). We have a guy locally in Kent who chatted to us at one point & he said that the 944 development costs are covered long ago so was doing the chip for around £50. One of our members has one fitted but did it before driving the car so can't give any comparative figures or even feedback.
Personally I fail to see where any HP is going to come from. The fueling will remain the same pretty much, there is no boost to fiddle with & increasing the rev limit won't make a difference. Possibly if mapped on 98RON e.g. V Power you could increase the advance curve but it will make a minimal amount of difference & the bottom end is going to suffer & the pistons if you get any form of high speed detonation. And this is borne out by the fact that I've never seen any actual figures before and after from an independent source which show any improvements worth the cost. Bear in mind that 2-3BHP could be lost or won by the weather on the day, different tyre pressures, RR driving techniques etc.

Agree with the comments regarding any real increase by chipping on a N/A car, I changed my air filter for a K&N panel filter not so much for any power increase rather to have a washable filter with the possibility of onger filter life as changing is a bit of a pain. Also agree the easiest if not cheapest route to a few more horsepower would be to replace the Cat and fit a free flowing exhaust, the existing ECU map should be able to cope with any mixture changes if all the sensors are working as it does when you swop between 95 - 99 RON fuel. I swopped my filter last night for the K&N and other than some improvement in the way it runs due to clean filter I haven't noticed any real performance difference but as I said that was not what I swopped it for.

Would also agree that if you have a few 100K miles on the engine and don't know its history, probably the last thing you want to do without a rebuild is put it under any more real stress

I think the best thing you could do is make sure it's serviced properly, maybe invest is some new HT leads and distributor cap. I was amazed at the increase in power that James May from TopGear got out of the 3 ltr V6 Renault engine by just a good service, a gain of 40 HP!!
I think they said he changed the fuel injectores also, which is a bit costly, but for 40 HP a bargain.

Somewhere like Emerald can clean and refurbish your injectors for not a great deal...

well my point was that surely it would be better to spend your money on improving or restoring your engine before you start messing with new chips.surely if you increase the perfomance with a different chip you are going to increase the wear on an already worn engine.As regards prices I only know of Promax s prices which are expensive but £50 seems reasonable Jim. Im shocked to hear that JJ was only getting 112 when he first got his car.I need to get mine on a dyno to find out what its really doing!

Quite agree, a head rebuild & refresh for £300 is money better spent. And will probably reclaim lost HP. A bespoke Chip done after a RR session may give a little BHP but the cost is likely to be quite high, around £3-400 or so depending how long it takes.
The only area you can really influence is in timing & advancing the timing is very hard on (old) pistons & bearings.

with all these so called performance chips the first thing you need is a healthy engine as a base, if you're after max performance you'll be using all the rev range and this wiil soon show up any weaknesses, so as on top gear a good service with leads, dissy, rotor etc is a good start

I have a ProMax chip in mine had it Dyno'd no other mods and was producing 5BHP more than the other S2's there on the day. My engine had done 90,000 at the time.

hi, sorry too but in but what mods were made on the S2 SE ? 220bhp compared to 211bhp .
neal