quandary

Well this turned out to be unexpectedly contentious. I wasn't trying to start a war with my comment, I just think it's prudent to know potential consequences of what you're doing. And just to rule out the 'the piggybacks preserve built in engine safeguards' argument, check out the case of a Racechip tune melting pistons on a new block... http://www.mercedescla.org/forum/18-...m-mileage.html

Astolfo

Quiet man! MB will never know unless they do a lot of "digging" as in scrolling down in the diagnostic page...LOL...


Tuning is like buying a stepladder rated for 200 pounds and while working in your light bulb you fall on your fat face. Then wanting to sue the manufacturer...minor omission you weight 300 pounds.


Yeah sure there are "millions" of people that have no issues with tuning....until they have and call foul on the car manufacturer or screw the innocent person buying your used ticking bomb.


Karma..

TMC M5

Keep up the straw man arguments...

TMC M5

There is always risk in any aftermarket endeavor...and there is also risk that parts were defective from the factory. How many un-tuned, completely stock cars have blown an engine? It happens.

My point was originally that a piggyback is much less apt to be discovered and does not leave physical or software evidence (yes, it will leave logs of data that can show irregularities, but not a line of actual software code would be touched) and the dealer/manufacturer are less likely to hassle the owner and flag the car BEFORE anything goes wrong. That is not true for Audi and now BMW owners with ECU tunes where owners are being flagged by just being hooked up to diagnostic tools and/or a physical inspection of the ECU.

But yes, there are potential consequences and if something catastrophic happens and the piggyback tune is at fault, the manufacturer should not foot the bill. But the manufacturers should also follow due process and not just conclude that it was the tune's fault without actually investigating and proving it. And that goes for both ECU and piggyback tunes. And as Forrest Gump said, and that is all I got to say about that...

TTMerc

My racechip came today. Going to infect my car with the evil aftermarket brainwashing later tonight. 2nd day I had my car the cats were off it so I guess it's been infected since day 2 lol

10speed

Cool can't wait! What is your exhaust setup ? Can you post a sound clip thanks

TTMerc

Exhaust is just cat and resonator delete stock everything else.

Amg63-

Are you going to dyno it? Really curious to see how this compares to a full ECU tune.

arcticfox

perchek

I like the arguments back and forth. It helps people like myself who want to tune but are worried about warranty issues etc. I've looked into the piggyback for that reason so it's good to see what people think about that. Would also like to see results of the racechip from people who have installed them!

ajs76

I'd love to see some before and after dyno graphs also. I think that if you tune it's a pay to play situation pretty much. The engines in these cars are so expensive that once that repair bill goes over 5k, MB is going to start digging to make sure that it wasn't your fault.

No one gladly shells out that kind of cash and you're going to have some serious questions to answer.

So I think we assume that a tune won't matter in the case of minor unrelated failure (i.e- window actuator) and I suspect that you'll lose in the case of extreme failure like catastrophic engine damage, so the question is...will a piggyback give you more plausible deniability where there is fuzzy ground.

i.e- an O2 sensor failed or something small.

I'm guessing if the repair is sub 1k and semi related to the tune, they won't bother to give it the full deep dive analysis whereas they MIGHT glance for drill holes in the ECU in the renntech case because it's a 2 second check?

Total conjecture here, but you shouldn't tune unless you are willing to pay for a new engine out of pocket.

jrosa

In all that discussion about voiding warranty or not, I believe that it is a matter of risk management. I understand that a piggyback offers less risk than flashing the ECU, and so on...

I will install the RaceChip when I get back from my vacation trip, so expect to hear about the Dyno run by mid March.

ajs76

So your thread got me thinking on the tuning thing, so I did a quick search and the ONLY thread I found on racechip was this:

https://mbworld.org/forums/w212-amg/...-racechip.html

Suddenly I had about a million questions (curse you forums)

1) Is tuning really black magic? I mean, EC, AMS, etc etc are all going to try and convince you theirs is the best. If you compared their tunes, would they really be THAT different. RaceChip..same question. Is it seriously a matter of "MOAR BOOST MOAR AIR MOAR POWER" and everyone just does that to the max and then dials it back a bit for safety?

2) Is that dinan video really just sales FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) so that people woulnd't buy JB4 piggybacks?

TMC M5

The funny thing about Dinan is that the encryption on the new BMWs became so difficult and time consuming to crack the ECUs, they instead started offering their own piggyback tunes.

ajs76

LOL. I love that. They just FUD'd themselves. So I'm going to assume that video is mostly garbage.

I guess I'm stumped because I'm seeing a way to add significant hp to our cars for like 600 bucks and no mailing around ECUs to be drilled and NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT.

That's odd right? this isn't like that "supercharge any car by stuffing this piece of metal in your air intake!"

TMC M5

It is kind of a crude and simple way of tuning. It relies on the factory safeguards and fueling parameters. So it is by no means a perfect or ideal solution. It is definitely a compromise.

But I have done piggybacks in the past and they all worked on forced induction platforms. I do vbox testing on my cars. My '15 Audi S4 did a 0-60mph time with launch control of 3.6s with just a piggyback (set at a moderate boost setting) and an intake...that is it. My F10 M5 picked up 5+mph in trap speed at the track.

I think people are reluctant to try a piggyback on a Mercedes platform because Mercedes is actually less likely to void warranties like Audi or BMW just because there is an ECU tune. I think part of that is because tuning is much more pervasive across the lower model lines of the 3 series BMWs and Audi A4s than they are for the comparable C-class. This has caused those other companies to address what they believe are increased warranty claims by being more proactive in identifying aftermarket tuning. I am not saying Mercedes doesn't do it themselves, just not with the procedural regularity that the others do.

ajs76

So i just spent the better part of an hour researching this racechip thing and I'm super skeptical. I won't link to other forums in case there are rules like that here, but I read like 10 pages on an M5 forum, read on a mini forum, read on some lower end mercedes forum...

Net net - people were either like "spools up faster, wayyy better"...and then 0 objective evidence of increased power.

Other guys tried to dyno it and it somehow didn't work or provided no gains with some kind of sketchy explanation of wiring harnesses not working etc.

I'm half convinced this thing is just a sprintbooster.

Jrosa or TTMerc- if you try this thing out and actually dyno it you're going to be one of the first people that ACTUALLY has evidence that it works. You'll be famous!

To be super clear - I had a JB4 tune in my 335 and a OBD2 flash in my 911, so I'm not afraid of tuning...just want to get what I pay for I guess?

TTMerc

I've had a race chip on my previous car which was a cls550 M278 Biturbo and the results were night and day. Never dyno'd the car but did go to the track a lot. I put the racechip unit on my current car 14' CLS63 S. All I can say is wow. I have played with the S2 knob quite a bit and you really can tell the differences on how it brings in the power. Install is very easy and straight forward. Packaging, instructions and support was there just as it was the last time. For those who havent done any research on the differences between all these boxes the Racechip Unit has two switches on the inside that can be adjusted. Here is a brief over view.

My first hand experience is that the more you turn it up the "Hotter" it runs. To much and you can tell its not making anymore power so theres kind of a sweet spot. I'm heading to the track (1st day open) tomorrow to do some testing. I know I need an engine mount but hopefully wont effect anything to bad. So far its worth every penny. I'll post a thread on it when I have the results. I will end up dynoing eventually as well for all you dyno queen bench racers! lol

ajs76

Oh man, that YouTube is sooooo German.

What setting did you make it up to?

TTMerc

It was shipped on 1 bc I had downpipes. I noticed a big difference from stock at that setting I am currently on 5.

DirtyVegasMB

I had both on my Audi 4.0TT.

VR was terrible right out of the box, I pulled it out as soon as I test drove my car with it installed. I have no idea what it was doing but my engine started to make some weird noises. Power was also weird and inconsistent.

Race Chip was better, in fact - it was great. Until about 3 weeks into ownership and my engine started to consistently go into limp mode. It also was not smooth and power delivery was almost off/on. I ended up returning the unit at a loss.

Since then my Audi was flashed with a proper tune by APR and I could not be happier. I need to have it removed/reinstalled every time I make dealership visits.

PeterUbers

this seems painful to have to flash/reflash for any dealer visits ... they can't detect there was digital activity at the dealership? My understanding is that Audi is very aggressive about looking for tunes

DirtyVegasMB

It is the only option for us Audi guys. APR software is worth it and the way it brings stock tune back on seems to also bring back stock ECU reflash counter from what I understand.

There are piggy back systems out there that are good and work with the ECU, however they are expensive and the two this thread discusses are not it IMHO.

PeterUbers

gotcha ... good info

subzero05

APR has nice stuff. I too have used their products on a previous Audi I had.
I see Dinan also has sport piggybacks for those as well now. wonder if they will have a full warranty deal like their BMW stuff for an upper level audi and MB tuners soon?. that would be cool!