I bought the chip from Ebay, for US$70, shipment included. The seller has the Ebay username "sapporo".
The chip brand is called "Pro-formance".
The purchase went on very smooth. "Sapporo" shipped the chip promptly and well packged.
Note that the installation instructions are copied (word by word + page layout + pictures) from those published by Bavarian Autosport on their Web site, with the only difference that any text referring to "Bavarian Autosport" was replaced with "Proformance".
The power figures advertised by the seller were very unprecise: "10-20 horse power and 8-18 ft pound's of torque". In a post-sale email, the seller claimed that the algorithm inside the Proformance chip is more aggressive than Dinan and a little less than TMS (Conforti).
OK, I installed the chip in a spare used ECU I bought specially for chip tuning, as I didn't want to take the risk of ruining the original ECU, if something went wrong. Both ECUs were Bosch Motronic 0 261 200 059.
The installation was very simple. The car, now with the new chip, starts right away and the engine runs fine.
To make sure I am not influenced by the Placebo effect, I decided to run a comparative test, between the original ECU with the stock BMW chip, and the spare ECU with the performance chip.
The test was run on Saturday, September 20th, 2003, around 9:30AM, on a highway. The weather was excellent; it simply couldn't have been better. There were no more than 15 minutes between testing with the original ECU and then the chipped ECU (this time was required by the ECU swapping operation).
IMPORTANT NOTES:
a) Note that the exhaust set-up of my car was not stock. The lack of cat and O2 sensor might have reduced the performance improvment expected from the chip.
b) The tests were made using a stop watch. Therefore, the test results were likely to be subject to human error. For norrowing down the error, each test was done twice.
CAR:
ENGINE:
ENGINE CONDITION:
RELEVANT MODS:
TEMPERATURE:
WEATHER:
1986 BMW E28 535i. See more details at this link.
BMW M30B34KA 3430 ccm 185HP "green/US" engine (8:1 compression)
Good, the engine burns less than 1 US quart of oil per 2500 miles
Custom exhaust, no cat, no O2 sensor; M body kit
18 degrees Celsius
No wind, clear sky
Description of the test: The car was driven at 1500rpm in 2nd gear. At the moment I passed by a road kilometer post, I floored the gas pedal and started the timer. I upshifted through gears at 5500 rpm, 2nd to 3rd and then 3rd to 4th. After exactly one kilometer (at the next road post) I stopped the timer.
In order to minimize the human timing error, I decided not to test a standing kilometer (taking off from a stop), but a launched one. There are too many factors which can affect the timimg when you start from stand still: reaction time, how well the clutch was dropped, how much tire spin, and so on.
The test was repeated twice for each ECU (one with the stock chip and the other one with performance chip)
ORIGINAL CHIP:
PERFORMANCE CHIP:
28.6 sec
28.6 sec
28.6 sec
28.8 sec
Description of the test: The car was driven constantly at 60 Km/h in 4th gear. At the moment the timer was started, I floored the gas pedal. Acceleration times from 60 to 80 Km/h, 80 to 120 Km/h and 120 to 140 Km/h were measured.
The test was repeated twice for each ECU (one with the stock chip and the other one with performance chip)
60 to 80 Km/h, 4th gear:
80 to 120 Km/h, 4th gear:
120 to 140 Km/h, 4th gear:
4.9 sec
8.4 sec
4.3 sec
5.1 sec
8.5 sec
4.7 sec
5.1 sec
8.7 sec
4.7 sec
4.8 sec
8.9 sec
4.6 sec
TEST RESULT DATA INTERPRETATION:
(please consider the above "IMPORTANT NOTES" with respect to the test result interpretation)
1. TEST NR. 1 was very consistent in data. It brings quite bad news: practically there was no real-life difference between the original BMW chip and the "Proformance" performance chip.
2. TEST NR. 2 shows a similar conclusion: no noticeable difference for 4th gear accelerations from 60 to 80 Km/h and 120 to 140 Km/h, respectively.
Only the 4th gear acceleration from 80 to 120 Km/h shows an improvement of about 0.3 - 0.4 seconds of the performance chip over the stock chip. That's roughly 5% better (if the human error was not responsible for this "improvement", too.)
For additional information, please feel free to send me an email.