superchip

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stevenlizuk
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superchip

Post by stevenlizuk »

hi all
can anybody give me some realistic advice? i have seen chips advertised claiming to give my 2.1td another 30bhp. all well and good, but will my engine love me for fitting this chip or am i condemning my car to an early "company car forces sale".
any advice welcome
steve k
steve kerr
alan s
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Post by alan s »

Steve,
The only diesels I've owned and driven have been of the variety that politicians speak about when they are looking for an excuse to jack up the taxes on diesel fuel; smokey, gutless & noisy. Where I am we see very few diesels of the standard you guys are lucky enough to have access to so in many ways I probably shouldn't be making any comments, although I know from experience that many claims are made regarding power increases that are questionable in results.
This claim of increasing power by 30bhp in a diesel to me would have to be one. Pardon my ignorance, but what could a chip control on a diesel that could almost stick a 2CV under the bonnet for extra power? I really am genuinely intrigued.
Can anyone shed some light?
In the meantime, have a poke through this site regarding power increases; you just may decide to save your money.
http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/mainmenu.htm
Alan S
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Post by hardmanm »

I don't really doubt whether the superchip increases the power output, I presume it does this by raising the turbo boost pressure. The Xantia 2.1TD has full engine management so changing the programming to increase the boost is theoretically possible.
The question is whether your engine life will be shortened, consider this : The 2.1 turbo already runs at 1.2 (I think) bar boost pressure, which is pretty high. Increasing the boost pressure still further is bound to shorten engine life and increase the risk of head and head gasket failure, turbo failure, etc etc.
Leave it alone unless you've got a lot of money to burn!
Mark
RichardW
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Post by RichardW »

Alan,
30 BHP or more is easily achiveable by chipping a modern diesel engine. Diesels do not need to run at 14.7:1 air:fuel ratio that petrol engines run at - hence they do not have a throttle. This also means that the only contstraint to how much diesel you can burn is how much air you can get in so that you do not get clouds of black soot (partially burned diesel). Now, in a modern engine, the max turbo boost (formally controlled by the mechanical wastgate) is controlled by the ECU, as is the size and duration of the fuel injection. As the mass of air injested increases as the boost pressure increases (this is why tuning a TD engine is so easy - tuning is all about getting more air in, and this is SOOOOOO easy with a nice big compressor to play with), you just plug in your laptop, download the fuel / tubo boost map, get the car on a dynometer, and fiddle around till you smooth out the curve and get the power and torque peaks you want. Then either burn this down onto a new chip and swap it out on the ECU, or flash upgrade the ECU if you can (later models can do this, so the manufacturer can download a more economical programme if they want to). Tuning companies do the complex bit with the laptop, and then you just take your car along and hand over about £500 and they plug in the new chip, and you don't stop smiling for a year! If you want to go a stage further, then you go down the porting the head route and installing a bigger turbo and intercooler, faster cams etc, and then back on the dyno for more tweaking of the programme.
Of course, what Mark says about engine longevity has got to be considered - VW now extarct 150 BHP out of their 1.9 TDi unit, but they have had to significantly beef up the pistons, conrods, bottom end, block head er, the whole engine actually! IIRC they're running 1.3 barg boost pressure standard. Having said that, however, you are not likely to use all that extra power all of the time, and the engine will probably last at least 100k miles without a murmur - if you rag any engine hard its life will be drastically shortened.
Interestingly, if not driven hard a 'tuned' engine may be more efficient than a stock one!!!! This is because the thermal efficiency goes up at higher boost pressures. Compare the 90 and 110 BHP Xantia HDi's - in stock trim, the 110 returns better MPG than the 90, becuase of the intercooler. Begs the question why bother buying a 90 really.....???
Richard
stevenlizuk
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Post by stevenlizuk »

dear richard and others
thanks for the advice. i am still tempted but worry about the fact that my car already has 100k on the clock. having said that it hasnt been driven hard and my last emissions test was sweet.
still thinking
steve
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Post by NiSk »

Hi Steve!
Don't worry about the milage of your TD12 - at 100K it's not even run in! The TD12 is an increadibly long-lived engine, my own (a '94 with the last of the mechanical injection pumps) has clocked up 450 000 km with out any trouble.
An increase of 30 h.p. is just what you need, especially as it's combined with a lot of extra low speed torque!
//NiSk
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Post by wilyoldtrout »

There was an article in the Caravan Club magazine (En Route) about just this topic last month.
A company (can't remember the name) was advertising a bolt on black box which offered 127bhp out of a 2.1 TD engine (normal output 110bhp).
The article asked the question "if it's so easy, why aren't Citroen doing it as standard?".
The answer is, apparently, that the standard ignition map setup needs to cope with the possibility of poor quality fuel and minimal maintainence.
A well maintained vehicle, fed decent fuel should be able to cope with the power increase with no adverse effects.
JohnCKL
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Post by JohnCKL »

When RichardW said,
"Interestingly, if not driven hard a 'tuned' engine may be more efficient than a stock one!!!! This is because the thermal efficiency goes up at higher boost pressures. Compare the 90 and 110 BHP Xantia HDi's - in stock trim, the 110 returns better MPG than the 90, becuase of the intercooler. Begs the question why bother buying a 90 really.....???"
Does this mean the 90 BHP Xantia doesn't have intercooler? I own a 1996 Xantia 1.9TD SX with 90 BHP but it is with an intercooler, why isn't it at 110 BHP?
JohnCKL
NiSk
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Post by NiSk »

Without digging into your car's technical make up, it's difficult to know what potential you have for increasing power output, but the reason why PSA have different power outputs from what is basically the same engine is purely marketing! And if they can acheive it without altering the engine hardware (i.e software changes) then they can cut their production costs by having unified hardware!
//NiSk
mseymour
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Post by mseymour »

The HDI engines are more efficient because of the extremely high pressure common rail fuel injection system, and full electronic management. The 90BHP HDI engine has a better torque curve, and better fuel consumption than the older engines. The intercooler improves this to 110, but there's some tuning going on there because those figures are too neatly rounded methinks.
The older TD engines have a 'traditional' mechanical injection pump and although the later DHX engines have some electronics, all they really do is control the cold start advance and the EGR valve. So the fueling, turbo boost etc is all still mechanical.
I recall that the TD was available without an intercooler and generated something like 82 or 85 bhp.
You can probably get more out of your engine by tightening the wastegate and fiddling with the fueling. But the danger there is excess strain on the engine and drivetrain.
Plus higher boost mean more heat in the air, less dense air, less effective. That's why the intercooler makes such a difference, but if you increase boost too much you tip the balance and end up wasting fuel.
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
When RichardW said,
"Interestingly, if not driven hard a 'tuned' engine may be more efficient than a stock one!!!! This is because the thermal efficiency goes up at higher boost pressures. Compare the 90 and 110 BHP Xantia HDi's - in stock trim, the 110 returns better MPG than the 90, becuase of the intercooler. Begs the question why bother buying a 90 really.....???"
Does this mean the 90 BHP Xantia doesn't have intercooler? I own a 1996 Xantia 1.9TD SX with 90 BHP but it is with an intercooler, why isn't it at 110 BHP?
JohnCKL
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>
Ooooh blasted citroens....
RichardW
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Post by RichardW »

When RichardW said,
Does this mean the 90 BHP Xantia doesn't have intercooler? I own a 1996 Xantia 1.9TD SX with 90 BHP but it is with an intercooler, why isn't it at 110 BHP?
Sorry, John, yours is the old XUD indirect injection, and not the shiny new HDi, so 90 BHP is your lot unless you screw up the turbo boost and fuelling on the pump. The 90 BHP HDi does indeed do without an intercooler.
Richard
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