Ya know, I did a bunch of searches, figuring that this topic had been covered extensively. Unfortunately, I couldn't find squat that helped.

So here's my question. A chip has always been something that I've wanted, it just always got put on the back burner. I was a part of an APR group buy a while back (almost a year ago), but then the whole immobilizer issue came up, and APR was convinced I had one, when I knew I didn't. In any case, I didn't get one then. After that, tires were a higher priority, then when I had the money again, I bought a PhatBox instead.

Anyways, I expect to be able to afford a chip again this spring, so I'm trying to do all the math here. Obviously, a chip adds more stress to all the components of the engine. Of course, the extra stress is pretty much not an issue as far as we know, at least, when the chip is put in fairly soon after getting the car. But what about when the car has a significant amount of miles?

Mine has about 50,000 miles on it, and I expect to have at least 55,000-60,000 miles when I do finally buy a chip. Am I just asking for trouble by putting a chip in the car with that many miles on it? 90% of the miles are all highway driving with constant speed, but still, thats a lot of miles to be making major changes to engine management.

So, am I way off base thinking that this would be an issue? I have an extended warantee (to 100,000 miles), and I plan to do the whole "extra ECU" thing, so if a Turbo goes, I'm still covered. Still, I'd rather not blow up a turbo if its a possible problem.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

the argument can be made that all manufacturers have amargin of error built in to the motors.

Why can you slap a turbo setup on a VR6 and pretty safely run 15 psi (higher than our cars have stock) with stock internals?

The 1.8T was built as a turbo motor from the get go and has the appropriate hardware to handle boost.

IMHO, adding a chip is well within the safe limits of HP for these motors. There are guys running 400hp on a stock motor over on the vortex.

 

apr chips - they are too scared to push your turbo to the outer limits for extra few hp.

if you do lots of highway driving, i would recomend you get a turbo timer or idle your car to 3 min or so after you been doing 4k rpm.

the only way you break your turbo is if you get sky high EGT; when you are producing more boost but not actual HP. the rest of boost power just goes to heat, melting turbo and exhaust manifold..

to prevent this, you lower your boost or get a bigger intercooler - BUT our turbo is too damn small to even do this. (i suppose you could do it if we had no intercoolers and outside was extremly hot).

 

the turbo failed at 45,000 miles on my old coupe without a chip

 

Keep in mind, my concern is not *just* adding a chip, but adding a chip after an engine has been well broken in with a certain setup. For instance, I have a buddy who has a Porsche 944 non-turbo which had about 75,000 miles on it. He decided to supercharge it. His engine died 3,000 miles later. The technician claimed it was directly related to the supercharger.

Now, this is a very different situation, I know. The supercharger kit could have been at fault, the technician could have been wrong on the diagnosis, etc.

However, if you feel that mileage should make no difference on putting a chip in the car, then I'll go for it. I just wanted to ask the experts first, to make sure I wasn't doing something ludicrous. I had no problem with the idea of putting a chip in my car when I had 10,000 miles on it, since its still a very new engine at that point. I'm just jumpy right now because of the number of miles that my car has.

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it.

-Chris

 

With my S4, once i chipped, I told myself that the chances AOA would cover my turbo is 20%. Even with swapping the ECU, there are ways AOA can tell if you have been chipped or not. With my TT, I prefer to not even touch the ECU box. I may chip after 50k miles, because I am not worried that I am going to blow the engine or the turbo. I just want piece of mind while i have the TT under warranty.

 

I would not worry about it.

Cars these days last a long time and as long as the maintenance has been kept up (oil changes etc) there should be no reason why you should worry.

Would I give this same advice if you had 100K+? maybe not but your car is barely broke in!