I have been looking into purchasing a ECU upgrade for my C230. My local dealer is also a Renntech dealer. I have been debating going with the Renntech chip or the Powerchip. I have been discussing this with the representative from the dealer about the Renntech chip and yesterday he said something about having to send my factory ECU to powerchip for the upgrade. Is the renntech chip and powechip the same thing? If so I can go directly to powechip and save about 200.00 bucks. I was under the impressions they were two different tuners.

 

Before you do that you should look into these guys.

http://www.upsolute.com/eng/index.html

I just got my slk 230 chiped and at a good price.

 

These chips are new air/fuel maps for your engine - but they only work in a sweet spot. When the air / humidity mixture is wrong then I have heard that chip enhancement can give you less power than stock.

Have you considered changing the headers + camshaft ?

 

Actually chips do a lot more than just changing the air/fuel maps. Tehy also adjust timing and raise the rev limiter (in some cases) and remove the V-Limit.

A well designed program, e.g. RENNtech or Evo, will not generate less power than stock. They use the stock maps as a basis, adjust the programming to richen or lean out the mixture as needed, make the timing maps more agressive. They operate on the assumption that only Premium Fuel will be used and take some of the 'float' out of the stock programs.

 

I have a renntech intake and eisenmann race exhaust on my clk430. What chip do you guys think I should get? I also plan on getting evo plugs and pulleys.

 

We are still having our sale on Renntech Items, i can do the Renntech ECU for 1799.

 

My personal experience with the Renntech ECU is great. Proven gains, top speed limiter removed, and depending on the car, if yours does not let you rev past 4k in neutral the renntech ECU lets u redline it if you wish.

 

try speedtuningusa.com. they have done my sl55 and others with success here. talk to oliver.

 

powerchip is great

 

PowerChip works well I'm happy with just doing that and the EvoSport pullies.

 

I love the speedtuningUSA for the price and performance on my SL55 AMG. Upsolute is awesome for Porsches and European vehicles as I had it done on a 2002 996TT, 6sp. Both have great turn around times, best value and you won't be disappointed with the VMAX removal, better driveability/idle, responsiveness and additional power/tq throughout the entire rev range, even a little better gas mileage of +1-2MPG. Afterall, ECU upgrades are just optimizing fuel/air ratios, timing, etc. for 91/93 Octane through a reflash of the the ECU.

 

I've the experience with MKB ECU.

1. Totally remove the speed limiter (no 2nd limiter,188 mph)
2. Redline lift up 400 more rpm in all gears.
3. Adapt to the S/C, Hi-cam & full exhaust upgrade.
4. a very unique timing map leads to zero detonation.
while other performance chips knocking a little.(though it's acceptable)
5. the MKB ECU is self adaptive whatever further mods are done, some other hard coding chip tuning may suffer those mismatch conditions.

 

I've read impressive results and engineering about MKB which I believe is based in England. There's actually an in-depth article on MKB stage I,II, & III on the SL55 in the current month's "Mercedes Auto Enthusiasts?" magazine out on the stands right now. They have tuned an SL55 AMG to 610 HP/690 ft-lbs TQ if I recall correctly, and the HP/TQ curves follow nearly the same plotting curvature as STOCK but producing much greater area under the curve (much stronger at every RPM). This means that driveability and surges of power/tq is nearly identical to STOCK but on a higher level. I just wonder how expensive their ECU upgrading.

 

Thanks for all the advice, I have a couple questions though. Why does renntech only claim 10hp from their chip and yet all these other companies claim 21-24hp? I like speedtuningUSA but MKB sounds like the best option to me so far (depending on price), do they have a website?

 

Its because the other companies usually don't ever even reach there numbers they claim and renntech is very realistic. The renntech ECU works great with the CF airbox.

 

blackbenzz:

SpeedtuningUSA also removes all speed limiters (no secondary level) which IngenereAMG can attest to since he's had his SL55 up to top speed a few times 202-203MPH. You can do a search on the SL55/SL65 section for peoples' inputs.

It looks like MKB is in Germany not England (my mistake). I found this site using Google though have not heard of a US distributor.

http://www.mkb-power.de/pages_en/index_e.html

I have to say that for the price and quality, speedtuningUSA is great from my experience. For a stock/nearly-stock Mercedes there isn't that much R&D for optimizing the ECU to justify $3K vs. say $500. If you saw how a tuner optimizes fuel/air ratio, shift points and timing advance/retard (eg. Vishnu performance for the EVO VIII) on a laptop you'd see that the price is mostly mark-up for a file with non-OEM parameters/data points. There are major discussions on the Porsche enthusiast forums and the $500 Upsolute upgrade is just as flexible and produces better overall power/tq vs. the Porsche specific tuners on modified 996TTs (dyno-proven throughout whole RPM range). I had Upsolute on my 2002 996TT, 6sp that saw 1.1 bar boost consistently. Afterall, it's just a firmware/software ECU flash.

Great Luck!

 

MKB is one Top tuner of Mercedes/AMG cars.
They don't do the ecu work alone,that's pity !

Once you mod a lot and wanna a capable tuner to take
care of the ecu, tcu...all software adaption to give your
investment a healthy & complete tuned.
MKB is very knowledgeable for such combination.
throw your crazy ideas to them, they justify & help.

They're a dream builder rather than a 20+ps chip retailer.

 

I have yet to see Dyno runs on an MB for SpeedTuningUSA.

 

I was unaware that any companies made '04.5/'05 specific W203 ECU's for the C230K Sedan in the US???

 

I talked to speedtuningUSA last week. They said they do custom chips for around 400 (If I decided to go with a supercharger). They are located very close to my house and I think I am just going to buy their chip by the end of the calendar year. I am ordering pulleys and ignition wires right now. Finally got my Carlsson RS replica bumper to fit (well almost) and it looks awesome!