Hey!

Summary: Mazda 3 (2011) 116HP Diesel with turbo wants more power for.. fun and economics on sunday drives.

However, it's a jungle out there and a lot of crappy stuff, so I am a bit confused and not in good trust of whats out there, please help!

After some searching it seems the powerbox alternative (you add an box to a socket to/from your driving computer) is horrible and should never be used. So I'm thinking of chipping / computer tuning the whole thing. From the looks and promisses of other pages it seems like the engine easily can be tuned up to around 150(a little under)HP without causing too much problems. This I'm planning to do in Denmark from RH motorsports, which seems like a serious bounch of guys.

So, some questions:
1: With more power it will of course use more fuel on heavy loads, but since the engine is increased in power wouldn't it use less on normal road driving / cruising? Currently I'm around 0.43-0.48l. fuel each 10.km on various roads.

2: Will it result in a damaged engine over time?

Also, it seems like the new mazda 3 from 2013 and onwards comes with standard 150BP disel engines, so I'm wondering if that actually is the same engine as what is in mine, and therfor won't do any harm at all? In any case it means that my engine is down-tuned to 116BP to make it less costy since you pay for each HP.

Please help!

I'd forget the chipping and consider doing a simple engine replacement instead. For 610£ you could have this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Jagu ... M&hash=item3cd24fe8b7

Haha jesus christ what? xD You mean I should just buy a new engine?

You've got to realize that the notion that some dude in a garage can figure out a better engine maps than a team of engineers with experience in engine design and state-of-the-art testing facilities is ridiculous. Chiptuning increases power by cutting away some safety margins the manufacturer put there to make the engine take a lot of abuse and last long. If you do decide to have the engine modified, you definitely should take a good care of the engine and have it serviced regularly by the manufacturers instructions.

A properly done chiptuning hopefully won't end up destroying the engine, but if it's done sloppily it might. For instance if the fuel injection time is increased too much, the injected fuel doesn't have enough time to vaporize and the drops of cold fuel hit the hot piston head. This is not supposed to happen and pistons are not designed to deal with that so eventually the piston will crack due to thermal stress. Diesel engines in particular are prone to a "diesel runaway" kind of failure.

All in all the success of this process depends on the condition of the engine and proper maintenance. Chiptuning an engine with 200k km under its belt and dubious maintenance record is probably asking for trouble. Also realize that the car is not just the engine, higher power will put more stress on the clutch and transmission.

Since chiptuning pretty much is all about pumping more fuel into the engine I highly doubt that it will be more economical.

Yes, he's basically gone from the cheapest horsepower mod (chips), straight to the most expensive mod (engine swap).

It may only be a few hundred euros to buy the lump, but making it work is a lot tougher and more expensive than that...

Anyway, if I recall right the 150hp motor is the 2-liter, while you have the 1.6. The 2013 engine is also using the SkyActiv development.

Thanks for clearifying that, that it indeed is a different engine. Looked it up now and as you say it's a 2.0 compared to my 1.6.

When it comes to economy I think that more power (but to a certain level, somewhere the more power = less economic no matter how economic you drive) can help getting the eco lower. However to track that I would need to drive with the same speed at same distances / places I do now. Ideally I would have to use less trottle and the engine would have an easier time doing the same route, the second i desides to go bonkers with it it would eat petrol like a... well insert something here which suits that!

Also, I totally agree that some basment idiots can most likely never outperform compared to an team of engineers. However, a lot of new cars comes in different classes where everything is almost the same, but the engine is producing less power to fit in a cheaper class. Here in Norway you pay a pretty good amount for each HP on the car. It might just be speculations that the car manufactors reduce the power of the engines to fit the different price classes, but to me it does not seem too far fetched.

Nevertheless, I'm really thankfull for inputs and the discsussion around it. If it comes to the point where it would put the whole engine in risk with everyday driving due to a silly modifiction I would say feck it.
But these DK guys seems rather proffessional (again, not compared to an engineer, but at what they does) with how they make invidually chips for invidually cars aswell as several years varanty (IIRC). Price wise if I deside to do this it's around 800 Euros - and then after that I will have to re-register the car to make sure the papers and insurance is allright

I have no experience of cars but I think chip tuning just gives a perfect fuel/air mixture. Because of that the fuel usage should go lower. Also it definitely won't harm your engine, actually it might be even opposite.

I have only experience of bikes but i think it works quite much same with cars.

I'd avoid plug in boxes. You cannot assume that the map in your car is currently the most powerful it can handle as cars are tuned for many reasons, such as providing sufficient safety margin to the lowest common denominator (eg quality of fuel, quality and regularity of servicing etc) and also to help differentiate between models (E46 Beemers from 323 to 335 used to all have 3L with only minor hardware differences except for the 335). My experience:

I had a 330d with 184hp. Met a chap called Colin in a carpark in Swindon. He plugged in diagnostics and tested the engine. He sent the results to his engineer in Germany whilst we went for a cup of tea. He sent back a map tuned based my engines diagnostic results - actually he sent three. Colin plugged in the most extreme map and we went for a spin to check the car was happy on it, not putting out a lot of black smoke etc. It was fine, so I stuck with the most powerful one and handed over the best 300 quid I ever spent.

The car was transformed. Lag was reduced, power was up across the range. In the old state, it would run out of puff at 4,000rpm, but it became very free after that and just kept building up to the redline. Happened to be running in convoy with a 330i after that and whilst I was still getting 40+mpg the 330i could not pull an inch on me anywhere.

Go for it, but just keep up the servicing because it does reduce the safety margins. I noticed no reduction in mpg (not using the computer, but tested by filling it up and driving my normal commuter route, just quicker)

Yeah the services will be as before, once every year to make sure everything is allright :]

But speaking of the 1.6L engine which now currently produces 116HP, is it withing reasonable margins "safe" to increase it as much as up to 150? (There seems to be even higher but Im not going to even botter about that, I don't want to ruin me car). The car is pretty new, from 2011 and I bought it in feb. Done around 20 000km's so far.

Lastly, on these regular services, wouldn't they find the chip, and then hand my ass over to the incuranse company? Or will they never check this? From what I'v understood it is close to impossible to be caught for tuning, at least here in Norway.

OM606 + a huge turbo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICqeREP8Je4

The hell, that is just wrong I just want a little more power, which will help the driving to some degree and save a penny here and there for fuel (with sensible driving), not a 500 beastmachine!

If you do go for a remap, be prepared for dual mass flywheel failure

Quote from The Very End :

Yeah the services will be as before, once every year to make sure everything is allright :]

But speaking of the 1.6L engine which now currently produces 116HP, is it withing reasonable margins "safe" to increase it as much as up to 150? (There seems to be even higher but Im not going to even botter about that, I don't want to ruin me car). The car is pretty new, from 2011 and I bought it in feb. Done around 20 000km's so far.

Lastly, on these regular services, wouldn't they find the chip, and then hand my ass over to the incuranse company? Or will they never check this? From what I'v understood it is close to impossible to be caught for tuning, at least here in Norway.

If you plug a box in, then simply remove it prior to a service or just after a crash . If the software is rewritten then I can only comment on my experience which is that BMW drove my car so knew it was there but couldn't find it.

Avoid anything that you plug in and leave there or splice in anywhere.
Either go with the chip that you physically open up the computer and replace the old chip with a new one or use a programmer to write a new tune into the computer.
The piggyback devices are pure CRAP and most of them are a scam.

With a diesel you can go as far as you dare with power and with modern computer controlled diesels you lose nothing if tuned right. You can still have them run without smoking but get TONS more power. You just need to know what is the weak point is and take it back a couple steps. My engine block on my truck will split if I go much over 500hp. Taking a 115hp Diesel to 150 is safe.

I do all the reprogramming and tuning on all my stuff and trust me, you can ALWAYS do better than a factory map on a production vehicle. My diesel truck is the perfect example. It started off with maybe 170hp and maybe 300 lb/ft of torque. Would not spin the tires in anything but snow and was worthless at towing anything heavier than a VW bug. I went in and ended up maxing out the injector pump flow rate and pulse width and played around with advance and a few other things until I liked it. Factory ran 5psi boost, now I run 25. No idea how much power it makes now but it's a hell of a lot more. Traction is an issue though.

I didn't gain any top end power in my Porsche but the first half of the gas pedal travel does something now and it has more low to mid range power.
I cheated with my Aprilia Supermoto and just used the factory racing map and saved myself a lot of time.

Thanks for the input
How does it perform on the clutch? From what I'v heard it's a big risk that the clutch goes to shit if you upgrade the engine

Quote from MadCatX :

You've got to realize that the notion that some dude in a garage can figure out a better engine maps than a team of engineers with experience in engine design and state-of-the-art testing facilities is ridiculous. Chiptuning increases power by cutting away some safety margins the manufacturer put there to make the engine take a lot of abuse and last long. If you do decide to have the engine modified, you definitely should take a good care of the engine and have it serviced regularly by the manufacturers instructions.

Which you should already be doing anyway.

Every guy I know how owns a gen 5 or later GTi has it chipped for at least 20 to 30 more hp, it's not really a big deal and totally reversible modification at a minimum cost.

Quote from The Very End :

Thanks for the input
How does it perform on the clutch? From what I'v heard it's a big risk that the clutch goes to shit if you upgrade the engine

Check if that gearbox is shared with other more powerful SUV/Sedan from the same company, if yes then the box is certainly capable of the level of power those are putting out.

Quote from CardsetCrazy :

I have no experience of cars but I think chip tuning just gives a perfect fuel/air mixture. Because of that the fuel usage should go lower. Also it definitely won't harm your engine, actually it might be even opposite.

This is perfect! LOL!

Take this advice from an obvious expert... or not...

Chip tuning will give you more power. It won't kill your engine in the next 50'000km. Your engine will not live as long as it would without the additional power.

As said above by another person. Big car companies sepnd millions of euros on development and testing. Chip tuners spend ZERO euro for the same thing.

Personally, i wouldn't do it.

If you don't care much for the car and don't plan on driving it for a few hundred thousand kilometers... go for it!

PS: The 2.0 ECO engine in my speedster has 200hp in stock form. Mine is "chip tuned" to 260hp and 450NM torque... so don't listen to me!!!

Quote from jibber :

This is perfect! LOL!

Take this advice from an obvious expert... or not...

Chip tuning will give you more power. It won't kill your engine in the next 50'000km. Your engine will not live as long as it would without the additional power.

As said above by another person. Big car companies sepnd millions of euros on development and testing. Chip tuners spend ZERO euro for the same thing.

Personally, i wouldn't do it.

If you don't care much for the car and don't plan on driving it for a few hundred thousand kilometers... go for it!

PS: The 2.0 ECO engine in my speedster has 200hp in stock form. Mine is "chip tuned" to 260hp and 450NM torque... so don't listen to me!!!

Pff.. I was talking about getting right fuel/air mixture. I don't have experience with cars but i have experience with bikes. Right mixture makes your engine run smoother and healthier since it doesn't run too lean or rich. Lean makes too much heat and if it runs too rich it makes "dirt" to the engine and also it doesn't run very well.

Okay, I was wrong with the chip tuning. I didn't know it just gives some random new fuel mixture. I think you should re-map the car for perfect fuel mix.

E: And that was basic info about petrol engine. You can correct me if something doesn't match with diesel engines.

Quote from CardsetCrazy :

Pff.. I was talking about getting right fuel/air mixture. I don't have experience with cars but i have experience with bikes. Right mixture makes your engine run smoother and healthier since it doesn't run too lean or rich. Lean makes too much heat and if it runs too rich it makes "dirt" to the engine and also it doesn't run very well.

Okay, I was wrong with the chip tuning. I didn't know it just gives some random new fuel mixture. I think you should re-map the car for perfect fuel mix.

E: And that was basic info about petrol engine. You can correct me if something doesn't match with diesel engines.

Sorry, don't take it personal please.

But you showed the perfect example of a chip tuners mindset... no experience... i think... it will not harm your engine...

They don't invest that much to get something right. The main goal is more power, and that the engine will not explode in the next 50'000km.

For gods sake, they copy some "tune" they didn't even make themselves in most cases to some cheap chips and sell it for 1'000 euro a piece...

PS: Did you know that most chips for NA cars do pretty much NOTHING regarding power increase? Did you know it's really hard to gain power from most NA cars with ONLY chip tuning? Guess why that is... because despite the popular belief, engines are actually power efficient in most cases and there is no "50 hp safety margin" that you can quickly free up from the engine to gain power with just a little "software adjustments". Do you know which cars can be easily made more powerful with chip tuning? The answer is cars that are turbocharged... do you know how they do it? They increase boost pressure.

Quote from jibber :

Sorry, don't take it personal please.

But you showed the perfect example of a chip tuners mindset... no experience... i think... it will not harm your engine...

They don't invest that much to get something right. The main goal is more power, and that the engine will not explode in the next 50'000km.

For gods sake, they copy some "tune" they didn't even make themselves in most cases to some cheap chips and sell it for 1'000 euro a piece...

PS: Did you know that most chips for NA cars do pretty much NOTHING regarding power increase? Did you know it's really hard to gain power from most NA cars with ONLY chip tuning? Guess why that is... because despite the popular belief, engines are actually power efficient in most cases and there is no "50 hp safety margin" that you can quickly free up from the engine to gain power with just a little "software adjustments". Do you know which cars can be easily made more powerful with chip tuning? The answer is cars that are turbocharged... do you know how they do it? They increase boost pressure.

Oh, that was my mistake. I actually didn't remember chip tuning isn't just changing fuel mixtures. I knew NA engines don't gain almost any hp from chip tuning. I should have get more knowledge about those chips before posting anything. 50hp gain from fuel mixtures sounded impossible anyway

Well, now my opinion is i wouldnt chip tune car which is that new and for everyday ride.

Quote from jibber :

Your engine will not live as long as it would without the additional power.

This.

Quote :

Personally, i wouldn't do it.

If you don't care much for the car and don't plan on driving it for a few hundred thousand kilometers... go for it!

And that.

I did this to my current car;
http://www.skn-tuning.de/de/pr ... ie=781&id=536741&

(Your equivalent; http://www.skn-tuning.de/de/pr ... ie=781&id=547942& )

Which is only a very mild chiptuning primarily to take the acceleration dip out of it which it had during 3rd/4th gear acceleration. And this way it also met my previous E46 specifications.. Although it still was faster due to better gear ratios, better engine design etcetc.

I on purpose didn't choose for massive chiptuning, already killed too many engines with that. The engine seriously suffers durability, what they basically do is remap and in case of heavy 'tuning' simply boost the turbo pressure which isn't that great in the long run.

The upcoming car is not going to be chiptuned at all. Its with stock values already dangerously enough and would like to treasure it for at least a few years. But ehh if you are not planning to keep that Mazda 3 until it reaches 160.000 km/100.000 miles then you can maybe take the risk. And take care of it, no revving with a cold engine, certainly not a chiptuned one.

So you mean that chiptunning seriously will lower the lifespan of the engine? It's a car I want to drive a lot, and hopefully will have til it dies (it's economically and I like it) (and I though 300 000+ km was/is a good range for a car) :/

Quote from The Very End :

So you mean that chiptunning seriously will lower the lifespan of the engine? It's a car I want to drive a lot, and hopefully will have til it dies (it's economically and I like it) (and I though 300 000+ km was/is a good range for a car) :/

Look after it and it will look after you. The clutch / flywheel is probably the component under most additional stress.

One thing all turbodiesel drivers should do, chipped or not, is to let the car idle for 30s to 60s before you switch off at the end of a journey (let the turbo cool) and for the love of God do not rev the engine then switch it off.

If you want to "chip tune" the only sensible option is to get it to an experienced tuning shop and re-map it on dyno.
You'll have to research first, not all dyno operators and tuners actually are as professional as they advertise.
Reliability is mostly the result of the tuner, if it's properly mapped and they know their stuff it won't be affected. Of course if you would go and push the limits of the engine this would be different but I doubt 150bhp from a 1.6 is pushing it unless the engine has an unique weak spot.

The power increase comes from adding more boost and the appropriate amount of fuel and typically retarding spark to avoid detonation. Since you are talking about diesel there's no spark but anyway wanted to say this still (I have experience mapping petrol engines).

Most probably you wont gain any fuel economy, at least not if the factory map isn't too messed up. If fuel and timing on partial throttle situations are sensible from factory the tuner won't probably touch these areas of the map at all. So you only make more power when full throttle and the desired boost is reached. This will be a lot cheaper too because you wont spend the whole day on the dyno going thru the whole of the maps, but instead just take the time what is enough to get the performance gain. This is usually quite fast and straight forward because you only do few power runs on the dyno and adjust the tune in between.