Hundred Dollar Chips Are They Worth It?
 

I'm looking at some surge power chips for my gmc truck for about a hundred bucks and I want to know if it is worth a damn or not. One goes in the oxygen sensor and one to the computer. will this hurt my truck or will it help or will they just over ride each other?

Never heard of them myself

Never heard of them.

what they are is a "chip". lol well let me explain that for you. they (not refering to these guys but this type of product in general) use to sell these "chips" on ebay in a little black box with a couple of wires coming out of them and when the owner wasn't satisfied with it's performance, or lack there of, they would open it up to find out there was nothing but a resistor in there to trick the computer. now they got smart and are using accual chips, most are resistor packs but they look like a chip so they are. they tap off a couple of the legs and wire it up. these are mainly used for replacing the engine coolant sensor or the intake air temp sensor (unplug it and plug in the box) or inline with the O2 sensor. what it does is when replacing the air intake sensor will make the computer think it has colder air coming hence being denser and adds fuel. LOTS of it. the same with the coolant temp sensor though it isn't as popular as the IAT sensor since a coolant temp sensor can cause so much havocc on the whole closed loop open loop thing, but that's another issue all together. also with the added fuel from the IAT it also advances the timing a small ammount. will you feel the difference? prolly not.

the one that goes into the O2 sensor also will either lean the motor out or richen it up. it does this by changing the voltage output of the sensor making the vehicle think it is lean and add fuel or make it think it is rich and take away fuel. more than likely it'll lean it out. DO NOT LISTEN TO SOMEONE THAT SAYS "LEAN IS MEAN"!!!!! your truck is set from the factory to burn somewhat lean. prolly in the 14-14.5:1 A/F ratio. this is "ok" for the average driver that wants good mileage but can cause troubles if someone starts adding cheap boxes to try to get more pep. the optimal A/F to me is 12.5:1 . it's crazy safe, you won't have that annoying "ping" that is detonation under acceleration w/a load in the upper RPM's. 98% of stock vehicles "ping" because they are lean due to EPA and the manufactures leaning them out to meet EPA guidelines......


if it were me i'd save that 200, put 200 more with it and get a tune with either EFI Live or HPTuners. both are excelent for Chevy's. i dono where you are from but i know a guy in Tallahassee that can do it and you will get GOOD results.

BUT BEWARE!!!! if it sounds too good to be true then it is......


EDIT : i just noticed the name SURGE.... more than likely yer truck WILL surge with these boxes on them....

Thanks Benjamin.:U: He lives very close to me, a lot of the time the truck is parked in my driveway. ( Love ya Lucas:pals::pals: ) I should have got him to come down to Hooters that night when he called me and we were there.
Also, what are the thoughts to doing this on a truck with well over 200k miles on it?
The truck is very nice and sounds really good. No knocks pings or anything. It is in really good shape.

i'd tune the living crap out of it. shoot me a PM if he's interested in a Custom Dyno Tune and he'll even get a printout of his powah!!!


sorry if i got a lil long winded it just eats me the scams people do nowdays..... now to let you know SOMETIMES these do work, or are a temporary fix/bandaid. when i had first got my SCT tuner it had a slightly modded version of the stock software on it. i kept adding fuel with the software and still couldn't get it to stop pinging.... i put a resistor in the IAT sensor (i cheated and used my datalogger to see what temperature the computer thought it was) and was able to make it not ping under WOT but it smelled like it was floodin out at idle.... and when i mean temporary i only did it a couple of days till i could get down and let him put a custom tune on it. now no more ping, awesome idle, NO SPEED LIMITER!!!!! and i got a perty piece of paper with my HP numbers on it....

We got some local guys that do performance PCM tunes on LS1 trucks, here in San Antonio that are fairly well respected... Nelson Performance

They did my '96 454 and very happy with it.

thanks alot for the tips if i get these boxes and what ever ill let yall know how they turn out on my truck

i wouldnt waste the money on one of those crap things, get an HP tune for like 150-250 bucks and that truck will scream, i got a friend in ohio that has the HP Tuner software from Janetty Racing and he pulls his 6.0 chevy, it will turn 6500 plus going down the track, his old truck had had about everything besides a stroker kit and a supercharger, check out www.LS1truck.com for some tuning tips......

:iws: :nice:


What he said. Don't waste your money. Put it aside and save toward something that will have proven results.