Rolling road shoot out

[Dan F]

Sorry, MY 2000. :)

[don kalmar union]

Good day Dan,

Firstly, I have to say that I will have to apologise to you and others if you ever see the 300bhp figure which I am quite convinced is not obtainable with just a 'chip' upgrade.

And, to respond to your thoughts on an 'industry standard', my understanding is that it is near impossible to create and police.

I have been running my small business for only eight years and have limited contact with the longer established and larger suppliers who specialise in aftermarket work on bigger brands than Volvo. Those that I have some relationship with say that the case of some suppliers making false or exagerated claims has allways been a problem.

The only course of action, other than litigation, presently open to customers who eventually find that the actual outputs are not those that were originally stated by their supplier is to try and get Trading Standards involved in their case. They are usually very interested in tackling the worst excesses of the Motor Trade. If the goods or services have been paid for by credit card then I understand there may be another possible solution there.

Playing Devil's advocate, a complainant would be hard up against all the already well aired excuses..... wrong fuel, wrong ambient temperature, worn car components, incorrect specs. and other settings......and so on and so forth.

As you have said on a few occasions, maybe it is best not to get too bothered about it and enjoy the very usefull tangeable gains that have been achieved.

Regards, Don.


www,kalmar-union.com

Dear Mr Norchi,

In response to your quote...

"Playing Devil's advocate, a complainant would be hard up against all the already well aired excuses..... wrong fuel, wrong ambient temperature, worn car components, incorrect specs. and other settings......and so on and so forth."

What you need to understand is that these aren't excuses - these are facts! When you install a remap designed for 98 RON fuel, and you run 95 or 97 RON, the ignition will retard and the car will be down on power. That is a fact! If you have worn components such as turbo, you may not be able to flow as much air and therefore the car will be down on power. That is a fact! If you have a faulty MAF sensor, the air flow readings will be wrong and therefore the fuel trim will be wrong, and hence the car will be down on power. That is also a fact! Same goes for worn plugs and blocked filters. The ambient air is fair comment, as most modern dynos can correct for ambient air temp, although ambient air temp DOES affect the power - laws of physics here!

We actually ensure that our customers are fully aware of these facts, and when a car is not performing to spec, we diagnose and fix the problem.

If you fully understood tuning, surely you would realise that these are not excuses, but rather pre-requisites!!!

Adam.

Relax Guys , this will always be a delicate subject (and all others),particularly when two excellent companies specilaise in similar tuning methods and products . What about talking about
"Brake upgrades"...........ok sorry.


Paddy-Jason

[noiseboy]

Dear All,

This thread has degenerated to precisely the kind of #### on this forum that keeps us old boys off it.

I know (as many will remember) that arguing the case about BHP figures is a waste of time - too many variables, too many opinions.

Bottom line - You pay your money, you buy a chip (or another tuning product or whatever), the car goes quicker, everyone's happy! ? ! ? Who cares about the numbers as long as the end client is happy with spend vs performance gain.

Please - can we have some civilised conversation back?

Phil :(

PS: Paddy-Jason, buy the APs ;)

Agreed!

Adam.

I have found this a very interesting thread with people expecting one thing and seem to be getting something completely different (or not what they expected).

I had a Volvo V70R AWD with 42,000 miles on it, had it chipped with a RICA and cat back exhaust and uprated air filter. The car was very quick and very responsive with my butt dyno telling me this has got the 310 bhp as stated. Then went on the Power Engineering Dyno day - printout showed 267 bhp and a whopping torque of 426 . I went away somewhat very disappointed at this as it was way below the expected bhp figure.

But the car went quick.

Then upgraded to new 19T turbo, new front downpipe, new plugs and a RICA remap and the car had just been serviced. Went on Power Engineering dyno. This time 299 bhp, but torque was lower at 411. The car had its power run at about 10:00 am with no cars before me.

What the actual bhp figs were did not really matter as I was happy with the drivability of the car and its accelleration. However specification can determine which product the consumer buys and consequently many a manufacturer has come unstuck when a really determined purchaser is not happy.



All I say is this - the car went very quick indeed but the power figures did not seem to match up to the basic spec of 310bhp with just chip upgrade EVEN with all the extra kit I had bought.


Karl

[Dan F]

I would be interested to know if the VW owners who buy the 150BHP cars and then get them chipped by Jabba motorsport and the likes, to 230BHP, are actually getting what they pay for?
That is a lot of extra horses (80HP extra) from just a chip, but they all seem to think it is a real figure.

Dan.

Thats a very good question Dan ,would be very interested to know also , the Torque figure on Karls car is huge is that 410 ft IBS of Torque on NM ? If it is IBS what mods have you done to produce that type of power?????????


Paddy -Jason

The torque was Nm - it was about 100 Nm up from std.

Karl