Should i chip my diesel

Hey Simon are you able to refer to the article and make specific cases against any of the points? The engine with the higher rating will suffer a higher failure rate. The manufacturer accepts the higher failure rate because they are still able to make more money compared to developing an all new engine to compete in that market.

Exactly the same as genset manufacturers applying different ratings depending on the duty the genset is intended to operate in. In any case, the engines are almost always different. They are usually not exactly the same. Some components are different to combat the otherwise higher failure rate that would develop from the increased load.

In the example you give there is a clear physical difference in the engines — they are of different displacement. Have a read of the how failure works article to understand more:. So how does all this apply to a stock standard Isuzu truck 5. Now this is Isuzu remapping the same engine. So by your argument as these go up in rating they are shortening the life of the truck. Does this make sense? Not by my argument, but by the facts of physics, yes if the engines are identical the ones with the higher ratings will not last as long.

Unless isuzu have figured out a way to circumvent the laws of physics in which case we should crank them up to a few hundred billion hp and run the whole world off one isuzu engine. But then for their bigger trucks they go to a bigger engine.

Why do you think quoting manufacturer ratings offers any evidence about the nature of failure? Unless the manufacturer makes changes in the design between power ratings to help strengthen the weakest links, which they usually do.

As for the previous comments that higher HP rated engines that use the same blocks automatically have a higher failure rate I find hard to believe. Dealers tell me straight up that these engines that share the same blocks usually have only one difference, the chip in the ecm. The manufacturers want to sell the big HP because that makes them the most money with no real difference in the base cost to them. Blanket statements that performance modules increase failure rates seems hard to prove.

Safe travels. Hey Duane. So if you hit yourself with a hammer, then hit yourself a bit harder, would you find it hard to believe that the second time would hurt more? Put something under more stress and it wont fail more? But then what is the cutoff below which there is no increase in failure rate? Any and all increases in power output are governed by the same laws of physics. There is a contradiction. Every time anything is loaded, no matter the magnitude of the load, damage is done.

The higher the load the more the damage. Calling the physics behind failure a blanket statement is tantamount to labeling the theory of relativity a blanket statement. How is this relevant? I guess it demonstrates that reliability is still reasonable with the accessory fitted. But whether reliability remains reasonable or not is not the argument. The engines delivering more power will endure a higher failure rate.

Yes manufacturers can choose different parameters that yield different levels of performance. Read the article on how failure works which describes how specifications are built. Every engineering decision involves compromise. Engineering involves choosing a solution that is the best compromise for the application. Care to address any of the points on the how failure works page rather than repeating the same marketing stuff that I hear time and time again?

Nothing is for free! The amount of extra power a chip offer would not damage your car in the time you would be using it.. But buying a second hand vehicle lets say a model, making it already 8 years old, with lets say km on the clock, and you plan to drive it for another 4 years i would not recommend getting a chip. Ive just started having a read through of this. You are asking people to read your article and think for themselves but straight out disregard what anyone else says.

I wanted to ask something from the original article. The coefficient of friction is not changed. The friction is changed. Friction is proportional to velocity squared. How can you just read the article and then suggest that? I have a Nissan Navara D22 with the 2. As you stated there is a significant increase in power but your statements about no saving in fuel consumption is incorrect! I have checked this using my odometer and a gps just for good measure and check my fuel consumption every time I fill up.

So my data is ongoing and quite accurate. So I do take care of the vehicle. I use Nulon 5W30 fully synthetic oil. I have not changed my driving style perhaps I do occasionally get lead foot syndrome but only occasionally. What I can report from my own experience is that due to the increase in power I do not have to rev the engine as I would have prior to fitting the exhaust and chip, this difference is on uphills where I dont have to press the pedal in as much.

If you are going to make all these claims at least back t up with evidence even if it is your own personal experience. I have experience with a vehicle without a chip and with a chip, I can with out a doubt say that I will always put a performance chip on my diesel vehicles. But as usual I always spend a considerable amount of time doing the necessary research before I do this.

If I do find that the chip does decreases the engine life, I will let you know, and just for my own piece of mind I will have a chat with my mechanic to see if he has noticed any changes in my vehicle in terms of excess ware and tare — so far all reports is that the ute is performing flawlessly. Most of the forums I have read have indicated that just about every driver with a performance chip is happy with the product, I have yet to come across anyone whose engine has blown or had some catastrophic malfunction due to a chip or module.

Hey Blayne thanks for your comment, interesting info. Also lots of people unhappy with engine lights and limp mode being triggered by their chips. A good example of how unreliable anecdotal evidence is, is people who have cleaned their EGR valve after it became blocked with soot report improved power and fuel efficiency. At the same time people who block their EGR valve with a blanking plate also report improved power and fuel efficiency. They substantiate their claims with data similar to you but the conclusion is both blocking and unblocking improves power and fuel efficiency.

Clearly there is a problem with the data. Do you believe that blocking and unblocking the EGR can simultaneously improve power and fuel economy? Similarly practically everyone reports improved fuel efficiency with bigger exhaust yet universally accepted exhaust physics predict poorer fuel efficiency with a bigger exhaust but improved high end power output.

All this data suffers from poor experimental method, lack of control of variables, inaccurate measurement methods, confirmation bias and placebo. Software changes are cheap relative to re-designing hardware. To me this is a massive hurdle for the pro chip advocates and any attempt to explain it has been complete rubbish. The task a chip performs is so simple and so easy to implement in the standard ECU program.

A chip is not an ingenious device that cleverly manipulates the engine control system. ECU software is a form of process control. I know that time is constantly invested in bottleneck analysis, optimization and enhancements because the returns on the investment are good since there is no hardware design or capital investment required. Can you explain why automotive industry would be any different to every other process control design?

Manufacturers have vastly greater expertise and resources compared to some small company making chips that trick the ecu into dumping more fuel. This is typical of after market vendors. They lack clarity in any claims. To me this indicates the claims are exaggerated or non-existent. Data is not required to prove this. Read the article on how failure works to see why. I did put in some maths of how failure relates to load cubic. This is well established science and can be verified with some googling.

Any design involves tradeoffs and any change to any design also involves tradeoffs. I also understand the physics behind failure etc. However how does this modelling relate to eg. If you apply 0. Has this stress increased the rate of failure?

Or what about 0. Twice the stress must have some effect surely? Has anyone done this? Hey Adam a few good reasons why I doubt the reported improvement in efficiency: poor experimental method, placebo and confirmation bias.

How can you confirm his results are accurate? Are you making shit up or have you reviewed his experimental method and data? Can you explain how he measured fuel consumption and distance and accounted for variables like ambient conditions, traffic, load, speed etc? Can you explain what method he used to isolate the human element from the experiment? The specifics of what fails and how are irrelevant. If you significantly increase power then you significantly increase failure rate.

The engine will last significantly less than a few hundred thousand km. The only group in the world who have modeled failure and done countless hours of real world testing are the original manufacturers. Outbackjoe, Thanks for putting in the effort to explain to all what i have been saying for years. Better fuel economy can ve a result of so many different variables eg wind direction, longer drives, better fuel quality hard to prove this on diesels different driver habits, tyre pressure and alignment etc etc the list goes on.

I manage the vehicle fleet for a company and we keep logbooks from new on all our vehicles, some of these vehicles are chipped others remapped and some are standard. And guess what the vehicles that return the best fuel economy are those that do longer trips and driven by the older more mellow staff.

So the biggest influence on fuel economy from our fleets perspective is the foot controling the throttle and longer trip distance. I have chipped one of my personal vehicles and remapped the other.

Regards TechHead. The most effective way of testing the performance of an after market bolt on item, is to test where the result is available to be printed on paper, in the case of engine performance it is obviously testing a dyno where the gain in torque and HP results can be printed out and you can change the chip setting you use, this change up or down the range is then up to the driver.

PS… I do dispute the fuel usage could go up — or down, it depends as you say on how the car is used and driven. What is the normal standard range of the metal count in a vehicle of the same milage as your vehicle, given to you by your testing company?

Question — what mileage has the high metal count car done? What brand and type of oil is it using for a direct comparison? Hi Paul no one is disputing that chips make more power. Techhead was not talking about an individual vehicle. If you increase power you increase wear, verified by oil samples. Oil sample results can be presented on paper. Does that satisfy your robust criteria for effective results? Melted down a piston. I says ok, gotta be a dead injector in the replacement secondhand engine, so got them checked, also the one out of the melted down pot- all tested no good, but the melted pot injector was actually better than all the others even though twice the km.

So, put a set of new ones in, started up and…. I did a check to see if it lit up and guess what? I put in the bridge to put it back to factory and she runs sweet as a nut.

Is yours a manual or auto transmission? Presumably, you can up shift sooner with a more powerful engine and save on fuel through the gears? Also, what was your consumption with the camper trailer before your modifications?

Hi John I have a manual. Hello outbackjoe Just wondering if you have a background in diesel engine design, diesel engine service or anything of the sort. You make a lot of statement regarding chips here many true but some that are not. As any blog one is free to say what they please however I would be interested in understanding your background so I understand how technical I could get with things.

FYI I have been in the diesel engine, turbocharger and diesel fuel injection business for more than 35 years. My background is electrical and process control design. Part of my study involved statistics and the relationship of load with failure rate. Hello Thanks for that. As well as I sit service chair of the Bosch Diesel Service Council, chair of the ag and heavy duty technician board at the Lethbridge College a trade college here in Canada.

I lived and breathed diesel engines for more than 35 years and have a great passion for technology. To your question yes you are correct to a certain degree however I would like to add some points.

This may take several submissions since I am currently in Europe having just completed several days of Bosch Service Council meetings. The first point I would like to make is that engine design, manufacturing and production has changed a huge amount in the past 15 years. In the past the manufacturers would make say 5 different power output for a particular displacement engine. This was all done in an effort to meet emission standards of the particular power output of the engine when still using mechanical fuel injections systems.

Then 15 year ago the electronic pumps and then 10 years ago common rail fuel injection came alone in an effort to reduce emission output. This all happened over time called tiers. Tier 1, 2 …. The reduction in emissions has really been astonishing. T4F European and Asian diesel pass car engines are now considered Near Zero Emission in the state of California, the toughest emission standard region in the world. These engine are much cleaner than the petrol counterparts.

This has mostly been accomplished with incredibly fast injections systems with precise control and with the exhaust treatments.

The treatment being first the filter for the soot or carbon particles and second the urea dosing unit to reduce nitrous oxide or NOX. The manufactures spent billions developing these engines and one of the benefits of all this development is they are now able to product a range of power outputs without changing any hard parts in the engine.

They simply can modify the engine management system and get a range of outputs. I would like to speak about industrial and ag engines first.

When you buy a piece of equipment today you are buying something to do some work. The more work the machine can do the more the manufacturers charge for the machine. In years past the manufacture charged a price based on several factors. That formula is gone. The manufactures now charge based as I said earlier on what the machine can accomplish in a given time for the task it was designed for.

You pay for how much work a machine can do. If it can do more in a hour, day or week you pay more. Sometimes much more. They make machines that have 50 hp to hp. In over different models of various machines they use 4 engines 4. Let take the 9L for example. Power output from to hp I know I am from Canada we are still dealing with horses We have studied these engines at length. From to output not one single hard part in these engines change!!!

Not one. The only thing that is different is the software that operates the systems, fuel, air turbo controls and exhaust after treatment. This is very important for the manufacturer, less parts to make and stock.

Better quality control because you are building the same thing in more volume and much lower costs. Build 1 million of the same widgets rather than of 10 different widgets. However when it comes to selling the machine with the engine they charge much more for more power. The cost to build the 2 different machines???? Exactly the same. When a potential customer wants to buy one of these machines, which ones do the manufactures try to sell???

WAY more profit because the cost is the same. As stated before in the past each of these machines were quite different, today identical except for the decal on the side with the model and the software.

How do I know this. You can simply go to the manufactures parts websites and look up a machine and compare one with another to see the different parts.

It is much cheaper to manufacture them all the same to withstand the highest output then to make a bunch of different parts. The other way you can tell if a machine is different is the weight. Build a tractor with hp out put and build one with output in the same family with the same wheels tries etc. They have identical shipping weights. If anything were beefed up they would weight more.

When you buy a lower output tractor these days it really is very overbuilt for the output. The other issue is emissions. Believe it or not the manufactures only have to certify the highest output of an engine displacement family. The theory is that all the lower output engines will be cleaner than the highest since there is less fuel being burned.

This again is not true but somehow the manufacturers get away with it. We have documented proof from the Emission testing department of both the German and Austrian governments that show with a module installed on a low and mid output tractor engine from several manufacturers the engine produces less harmful emissions than from factory. Further we have documented government testing done on the C15 Caterpillar that shows the same thing less emissions with more output. To your comment regarding the higher the output causing increased failures.

The answer is yes and no. If you increase the output on the low and mid output engine and take them to the level of the highest output the failure rates will be no greater than the highest output engine, gearbox etc etc. If you increase the output of the highest output engine by a large amount then yes you will most likely be outside the parameters of the design of some of the hard part components.

I tell our customers all the time. There is so much work output in a machine. With more power you can do more work faster but in most cases the amount of work that can be accomplished over the life of the machine is very close to the same. With let power it will just take longer.

I have pleanty more to explain but I will leave this with you for now. Intermittent: hp; Heavy Duty: hp; Continuous: hp. The engines are specified for different duties. Duty is a massive factor in rating an engine or any component. Read my article on how failure works. So they can deliver a product with more power but still be within the constraints of their target failure rates. If you have an application where the engine encounters frequent high loading then the engine is rated lower.

If you have an application where the engine is fully loaded all the time then the engine is rated even lower again. If you use the light duty rated engine with higher power output in a continuous loading application then your warranty is void and the engine will fail prematurely.

Yes, the manufacturer does conform to the laws of physics. John Deere are doing the equivalent of in house chipping but they are taking into account duty to ensure adequate reliability. This occurs from any starting point, from any rated engine and for any duty. The light duty engine has a higher rating because the increased failure rate is offset by a lighter duty.

Put a chip in and you suffer higher failure rates. We do it in industry all the time. Production is so valuable that you accept the loss of warranty and increased failure rate. The extra production covers the increased failure rate plus some left over for extra profit. You need to accept an increased failure rate. The emission tests you refer to are covered below where you link to them. They are misleading, which is typical of after market equipment.

The comparison is not done at the same engine load. At the same load your chip does not reduce emissions. Joe I know all about diesel generators and understand standby and prime power applications.

However you have not addressed my comment about installing a module on a for example Continuous rating in your example of to Your theory is that the engine with a module will have a higher failure at than the factory has at ? Luck has nothing to do with the emission testing.

Do you know what TUV is in Europe? Look it up if you do not. This is not LUCK as you would suggest. The product is tested stringently and when installed meets or exceeds all Euro Bin5 emission standards. Not some isolated lucky test!!! The dealers would not sell it if they cars would not meet the stringent standards now in force.

We see it all the time. Lets take an Iveco engine In a truck application at hp it is geared to make max torque at approx rpm. When these trucks are running down the road pulling max GVW they are running at to rpm. Yet in an industrial application with the same engine we see the manufactures set the operating RPM at or Way more failures at higher piston speed.

The truck guys have pushed the manufactures to get more power with less fuel more than the industrial customers and to do this the manufacturers have slowed the engines down. The other thing we see all the time is someone buys a hp 15L engine to do a hp 12L job. Big pistons going up and down, friction losses on big parts.

In may cases we see higher failure rates on these engines. The engine does not make enough heat to make the systems operate efficiently. The exhaust after treatment systems get clogged because there is not enough heat in the catalyst system to burn off the particulates.

In these situations you can get something for nothing. In fact you can get something for less. This includes original cost, smaller is usually cheaper, fuel consumption, repair costs. This is where we need to be careful how we define load. So what's the difference between the two models? Should I inform my insurer if I chip my diesel?

Yes, although the product is totally undetectable when removed we can only recommend that you inform your insurance company of the modification. Will a diesel chip affect the warranty on my car? How to clean alloy wheels. Alloy wheels can get dirty pretty quickly. Here's how you can keep them looking fresh with an alloy wheel cleaner. Cheap car insurance for young drivers: top tips.

Our guide on car insurance for teenage drivers that could help save hundreds on your annual bill. What is a V5C vehicle log book? Rules for car buyers and sellers. Understanding the V5C log book and the rules around it, whether you're buying or selling a car. First-year motoring costs have risen dramatically over last decade. First-year VED road tax costs are higher by as much as per cent in compared with , while a VW Golf costs 72 per cent more. Most Popular.

As newly written tuning software has the ability to adjust all areas of the engines combustion system and can be altered to your requirements throughout the rev range. Neither of these options floating your boat? A few years ago, we teamed up with the good folks at Diesel Power Unlimited DPU who were developing tuning software at their headquarters here in Australia.

The DPU tuning software was being designed for all types of diesel engines; passenger vehicles, mining and agriculture to name a few. DPU was getting ready to launch a new type of system into the Australian passenger vehicle market and after getting our hands on one of the units, we decided to do some extensive testing of our own — the result is a stand out performance option without the inherent risks mentioned above.

The ECU piggyback computer is positioned in front of the factory ECU computer and simply adjusts all the incoming signals from the factory computer to the enhanced tuning software inside of the module.

The DPU module then feeds all of the engines combustion components instead of just one or two with the new and improved performance data. Meaning the whole system can be removed without leaving any trace of operation on the factory ECU…clever stuff huh?