Re: alfa-digest V9 #437

[Stacy Faught <onethumb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 I have been seriously considering doing just that for my '87 Spider Quad that I picked up last fall to restore.  Of course first I need to rebuild the suspension, paint the car, and then pull the head off to send to Sperry, put in Motronic pistons, electric fan, slightly hot cam,  re-dye or replace the carpet, repair or re-cover the seats, fix the crack in the dash, replace all the rotten air hoses....Ok you get the point :) It doesn't seem to make sense to do this unless you are "finished" tinkering with the engine.  Since the chip is apparently optimised to your car, once you change something (like a cam..), the engine will no longer produce the maximum power.  Of  course you could head back to the dyno, I suppose.... At any rate---as an engineer formerly in the auto industry myself, it looks like what they claim is within reason for a normally aspirated car.  If they were showing 20% or more gains then I would dismiss it entirely,  but 10% is not far-fetched, considering you can get half of that just by tinkering with the AFM (from what I've heard...).Also, if you have trick cams, headers, higher compression, ect.., then you will probably need something like this (or replace the whole system with an aftermarket one) to get good power from all the mods.  The stock ECU was *probably* not programmed to operate under those conditions.My feeling is that if you are willing to spend at least $2000 building a hot engine, you would be silly not to spend $500-1000 to help the ECU.   The nice thing about the unichip is that you can have multiple programs on it, hooked to a toggle switch.  So you could essentially switch the engine into "fun" mode when you have a bit of open road to carve up, and then go back to "economy" mode when sitting in traffic or when the smog nazis want to sniff your exhaust. At any rate, I won't be doing this for quite a while yet---car being painted in June, with suspension rebuild scheduled for summertime.  I will probably be tearing the engine apart this winter, so it looks like Spring '04 before I will be looking at the unichip. Hopefully someone else on the digest will do this before me, and post the results  :) Stacy Faught'87 Spider Quad 

alfa-digest <owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided> wrote:------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 23:42:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dio Genio 
Subject: UniChip

Hi Bill:

Thanks for your good comments, and I too am generally
skeptical of "easy gains" in anything from
bodybuilding to V6 HP. I am not an experienced tuner
as you are, but the technical arguments proposed by
The Racers Group do seem to make sense to me as an
engineer: 

http://www.theracersgroup.com/theprogram_unichip.html

Granted, a turbo car is a much more complex system
than a normally-aspirated one, but that does not
necessarily preclude the latter from benefitting via
alterations in engine operating conditions. Nobody
would argue that a different camshaft or carburettor
jetting can produce drastically different results in
an engine, so why can we not expect manipulations of
the engine management system to produce similar
effects, within certain technical limitations? Just as
the cam, or carbs, or whatever can alter operating
conditions, so can a digitally-programmable ECU such
as the UniChip. 

Although Alfas are generally designed to be
performance cars, there were other engineering
considerations besides performance when the old V6 was
being tuned for production. Being able to reliably
pass smog checks--even after the car has become
old--is just one of the compromises that Alfa had to
make. Back in '87 the technology available mandated
that performance would have to suffer somewhat in
order to achieve broader goals. Other engineering and
production goals were repeatible performance from car
to car, reasonable fuel economy, reliability, and
uniform performance over a wide variety of driving and
environmental conditions. Since the L-Jet is rather
primitive by todays standards, Alfa was forced to make
significant compromises in ultimate performance in
order to make the V-6 a commercially-viable engine.

For the Alfa enthusiast, some of those commercial
considerations become moot (like passing smog check)!
In this case, we are at liberty to alter engine tuning
to obtain the last degree of high RPM power, while
ignoring emissions byproducts, smooth idle or fuel
economy. Can't have it all at the same
time...especially when using an L-Jet for control.

The UniChip, if it works as claimed, allows us to
change the rules a bit. By altering fuel/air map and
timing at numerous RPMs and load conditions, one (in
theory) can tailor the engine's performance to one's
personal preferences--be it increased HP, or at the
opposite end of the spectrum--for lower emissions and
greater fuel economy!

Personally, I do not know how many HP gain one can
expect from UniChip tuning, but if it's even 8 - 10%
at the dyno--hey, that is a significant gain (10%
seems to be their average gain for normally-aspirated
cars of many types)! Prices appear to be at the
discretion of the tuning shop, but the very highest
I've seen advertised is $700 for hardware,
installation and a full day of tuning a twin turbo
Porsche. I've also read accounts of the entire install
package costing under $300. My friend paid about $200
for his WRX UniChip package, but did a self-install.

I'm really hoping that somebody gets up to the UniChip
distributor in Sonoma to give this thing a whirl. I'll
remain hopeful on this concept until failure proves it
otherwise. Let's wait and see...

Diogenio 
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