Just curious if chips help the performance and mileage of these cars a lot? I've owned lots of cars, in fact I just sold my diesel f250 to buy my new 2003 x type awd 2.5 auto. I love it so far!

I'm just curious if chips help on these a decent amount, and who/where to get one.
Thanks all

Matt

 

None to speak of and not worth it anyway so don't be fooled by crazy claims that you may read.

 

I've heard thats some people swear by the SLR chip and I've heard lots of things about the arden

 

ive heard about the slr chip, but i just looked it up and it said that you will gain 50+ horsepower. i fine this hard to believe. Has anyone used this chip? Ive also heard about the arden chip but thats much more expensive than the slr chip!

 

Ya I've heard of the 50hp claim. I've read people on the boards saying it isn't THAT much (none dyno-verified that I've seen), but it def. gave them some improvements in speed and mileage. How much does the arden go for and what kind of power does it make?

 

i believe the arden goes for over $400 but i am not sure about horsepower gains.

 

Oh 400$ would be workable. I wish somebody knew what kind of hp/tq and mileage gains you get from it though

 

The Arden upgrade claims 23BHP but if I remember when I enquired it was over £700 ($1000+) when I had my 3.0 X Type!
Sorry to say normally aspirated cars dont benefit much from these upgrades given the expense whereas turbo petrol ones do benefit noticeably and turbo diesels like my XJ do even more noticeably!!
http://www.racinggreencars.com/moder...p?ProductID=64

 

yeah a gand for the arden which i would take over the slr, there was a guy on here who had the slr, and he said it helped but only very minimal. ALot of people ripped on him though

 

http://www.lexus.com/SEMA/ click on showcase winner. This car belongs to a friend of mine and he got 1000hp out of an IS300 and we cant even get 25 from ours. Although i guess by putting in a $100K we can probably get that power :/

 

BuckMR2 is correct. Normally Aspirated cars do not benefit from chips, but turbo'ed cars do. Don't waste your money, especially if you dont have a Dyno sheet to reference.

I'm a new member here but I do have experience with Turbo vehicles.

 

I've got lots of experience with turbo cars and diesels, I just thought there was some magic chip (lol) that would unleash a few ponies. Ah well, a beautiful stock car is what I'll be driving I suppose.

 

I disagree with that VERY general statement.

SOME cars (see my sig) DO make use of better tuning because OEM tunes are usually aimed at long life (to avoid warranty repairs), reliability, emissions etc. Besides, tuning also helps other systems other than the engine.

My C6 transmission tuning alone cut about 3/10 second off my 1/4 mile time (it probably also cut it's lifespan in half as well). It also makes the car a LOT more fun to drive. Chevy has loads of torque management programmed into their high output vehicles in order to save the drive train (and in some cases the driver). That's why they are adamant about voiding warranties on vehicles that have been tuned.

That being said, I don't believe for a moment the X has a whole lot more to give or that the transfer case can take much more. Even at 23bhp you're talking about a 10% increase in hp. That's HUGE... which also means I have trouble believing it can be reproduced on every X.

But I have documented proof (dyno and time slips) which proves tuning works wonders for the "right" naturally aspirated cars. Here's a thought... do a search and I'll bet you find tons of aftermarket tuning for NA cars that can actually make use of it and very little for vehicles (X-type, Yugo, RadioFlyer) that are already operating on the bleeding edge of their capabilities. Let's not group all NA cars together on this one.

 

Back to X Types...Its a claimed 23hp, by the time you take out the huge losses through the AWD transmission you'll probably not even feel the difference you get at the wheels.My X Type was dynod at 241.6 BHp at the flywheel and only 184 BHP at the wheels so the AWD sucks a lot of power (and my AWD had no problems,was smooth and no noises).
Save your money IMO!

 

That all depends on whether the 23hp is flywheel or to the wheels. I agree if it's flywheel you'll hardly feel it in the drivers seat. But 23 rwhp isn't anything to sneeze at when you're trying to get everything you can. I can't tell you how much I've spent trying to shave off a 1/10 sec at the track. Rule of thumb for rear wheel NA cars is 10hp per 1/10 sec in the 1/4 mile.

So while I totally agree it's probably not worth it for the X, you can't make the same statement for all cars. Under powered cars are usually under powered because that's all they can muster for the money. If there was anymore power, the manufacturer would love to sell it. But as HP goes up, so do failures. Once you get past the econo boxes and mid level cars, the question isn't "Can we make it faster",... it's "How can we warranty it for 36k?"

The only reason I bothered to make the argument is because I'm sure people here own other cars besides their X. Making a blanket statement about all NA cars doesn't fly in this case. If they own a V8, chances are the manufacturer left something on the table.

 

Even though we don't have a V8 in our cars I'm guessing Jaguar left a bunch of chewed up transfer case pices on their table.............

 

with the transfer case issues ...theses cars are meant for cruising in back windy roads...
this is just my opinion ...if you read the bourd a lot of people run into this problem by adding more power kabooooom goes your tc ...but it would be nice to have more power and that the drivetrain could handle it....in our case it wont...but good luck

 

You're right. I made a VERY GENERAL statement. But it is also a statement that applies to about 90% of Naturally Aspirated vehicles.

You said so yourself: "tuning works wonders for the "right" naturally aspirated cars".

 

"Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?"

I've done a good bit of work with turbo cars (mostly SAAB) and chipping is a viable method for many of them. I agree some NA cars/trucks can also benefit from chipping the engine and/or tranny for specific applications such as towing or in the situation mentioned above by C5.

As has been beaten to death, the X is what it is as far as power goes. I'm happy if the transfer case can handle what it already has (been through 2 already). Enjoy the fine handling and AWD mountain goat traction and leave it at that.

Take the $ you were going to spend on a chip (and the replacement tranny and transfer case) and plunk it down on an old F body or a Mustang and go have fun.

 

You can't beat a fox body in terms of price per performance