What is the best brand of performance chip to purchase for my 2004 Grand Prix GT with the 3.8L engine? If I could gain 3mpg I can save $5 per tank. Better performance would also be a plus being that I am lead-footed. There are several out there and I don’t have the knowledge or your years and years of experience to make a good choice.
Thanks for the help!
First off, your car is OBD-II compliant so you would probably be using a hand held tuner, not a chip. The “chips” you see on Ebay for like $25-$60 are simply one cent resistors and they are a scam. A hand held tuner will run you about $350-$500 and you would see very little (if any) benefit in using one with a stock or mostly stock car. Generally speaking aftermarket tunes are made on moderately or heavily modified cars to get the most out of aftermarket modifications.
You can’t achieve better performance and better miles per gallon. If that were possible all the carmakers would have the chip installed before you bought the vehicle.
None of them…cars don’t use ‘chips’ now. The web sites promise what they can’t deliver. There are (expensive) ways to reprogram the computers, with the help of a dyno. If the manufacturers could get 3mpgs with a cheap chip, they would!
Don’t waste your time or money on this snake oil. If you improve mileage, you sacrifice performance and vice versa.
If you touch the chip and get caught think federal charges. These chips are not legal for street use unless they are certified. These are really rare. In cal my related uncle busts people with these street chips all the time. Just think at this, a 120 chip vs 30 days jail plus costs. These are illegal for street. For those who say you can’t change the chips, welcome to the new age old fart. You can but you do this for no real reason.
Actually most cars made since 1996 use hand held tuners to reprogram the ECU, futhermore every one of these hand held tuners ships with canned tunes that are 50 state legal. It is possible to produce your own tune, but you need extensive knowledge in ECU programing in order to come up win one that actualy works yourself. How can your Uncle effectively bust people for having a chip or different than stock ECU tune? Does he go around with a laptop and have a database of all stock ECU tunes for all cars?
Also if you have a moderately or heavily modified car, there are absolutely very good reasons to have a dyno/aftermarket tune. If I tried to drive my car on the stock tune, there would be catastrophic engine damage in very short order.