Any such thing as a "safe" chip

[vermoeide_zwerver]

I have a 97 F-250 7.3. It is out of warranty on the years but only has around 90k miles on it. I am not really a performance nut, and generally am suspicious of chips and reprogramming in general. That said, I am kinda in the mood to get a little more juice out of my truck, but I don't want to go hog wild on it. Any suggestions on what kind of chip could do this without engine modifications such as exhaust or injector work. Maybe it does not exsist, but I wanted to see if anyone knew of one. I also would want one that would store the factory program so that I could reinstall it whenever if ever I wanted to. Thanks

 

[ISurvivedNMU]

You have all kinds of options.... and the best way to have a safe chip is not to have you right foot on the floor.... Give John a call at DPS, he handles many different chips, and has a money back guarantee.. You cant go wrong...

 

[wanderer]

Before you can run a chip, aka more fuel, you need to open up the exhaust with an aftermarket downpipe, and lose or gut the cat. More fuel, equals more heat that will burn your exhaust valves. It's not just that easy to plug in a chip, and not expect something to burn up. You have to get that heat out. 1300° is the magic exhaust gas temperature, and most people install a pre-turbo pyrometer to monitor it. I've been running a mild chip, and combined it with Swamp Donkey's babies, and enjoy the thrill.

 

[Swany]

To answer your subject line question (are there any "safe" chips), the short answer it no.

Your truck was made to the specifications that the factory recommends and you could lose your warranty (doesn't really pertain to you) if you mod out your engine.

That being said, if you decide to "chip" your rig, take some precautions by opening up the intake, the downpipe and exhuast. Get some gauges, egt/boost/tranny (for auto's) and consider some transmission mods (like transgo shift). Or, just get a BTS or Suncoast tranny and call it a day if you want to put down some serious power!

Personally, I think going the injector route is far beyond just "chipping" it, that's a pretty serious mod and somewhat expensive to achieve. Might as well juice it up if you're going to play with the injectors (propane)!

 

[wanderer]

To answer your subject line question (are there any "safe" chips), the short answer it no.

Your truck was made to the specifications that the factory recommends and you could lose your warranty (doesn't really pertain to you) if you mod out your engine.

That being said, if you decide to "chip" your rig, take some precautions by opening up the intake, the downpipe and exhuast. Get some gauges, egt/boost/tranny (for auto's) and consider some transmission mods (like transgo shift). Or, just get a BTS or Suncoast tranny and call it a day if you want to put down some serious power!

Personally, I think going the injector route is far beyond just "chipping" it, that's a pretty serious mod and somewhat expensive to achieve. Might as well juice it up if you're going to play with the injectors (propane)!

Actually, injectors are quite easy to install. Nothing to it, and propane does have its' drawbacks, as in pistons and rods not holding up to the punishment. The short answer is to not chip it without letting the motor breathe better.

 

[Duke]

I have a 97 F-250 7.3. It is out of warranty on the years but only has around 90k miles on it. I am not really a performance nut, and generally am suspicious of chips and reprogramming in general. That said, I am kinda in the mood to get a little more juice out of my truck, but I don't want to go hog wild on it. Any suggestions on what kind of chip could do this without engine modifications such as exhaust or injector work. Maybe it does not exsist, but I wanted to see if anyone knew of one. I also would want one that would store the factory program so that I could reinstall it whenever if ever I wanted to. Thanks

Like the guys said:

Gauges first. Then do your chip. if it runs too high EGT's, add a larger, free flowing downpipe, muffler & exhaust. You can live with the stock airbox, but a free flowing box would help get some more air in there.

 

[Mike]

V_Z

So far everybody is right on the money here, you can do some small time mods to the engine that will enhance performance as well. Dont discount the 10K mod. Just yesterday I read a dyno graph on a 94-97 class 7.3 and the owner of the truck had ONLY the 10K mod done. He dyno'd twice, once with it on, once with it off. SEE GRAPHS . As you can see he picked up 25 hp and nearly 50 ft lbs of torque with the 10K mod in action. Not to shabby for a 10 cent resistor from Radio Shack. Note that this fellow dod have his exhaust unhooked ( straight out the downpipe is what I was lead to believe) for both runs.

I would recomend an open element air filter set up, if you are half ways handy you can build your own or for less than 150.00 clams you can get the real deal from TYMAR. Doing the downpipe again is minor money, about 120.00 or so depending on which one you choose. But these two mods will keep your egts in check. If you still have the stock air box I would highly recomend you get it off there. Even in the 97's after the upgrade came out that box is cheesy at best.

Then for a "safe" chip you can go two ways. Just a single page chip with a 50hp tow mode or one of the Tuners that are on the market. The single page chip will be a one time install, you open the PCM up and stick the chip in it and you have increased fuel to the injectors. The tuner (SCMT or Edge) is a plug and play type of deal. You plug into the receptacle under the dash and it unloads the stock program and stores it in the tuner and then you choose which level you want to load back into the PCM. A single page chip is cheap, dirt cheap nowadays and a tuner will run you around 300.00 new but remember tht some tuners (like the SCMT) allow you to pull diagnostic codes if you need to.

Those are the "safe" ways to go about it with out having to invest alot of money into injectors, tranny's, intercoolers etc etc.

Hope this info helps, good question btw......

Mike

 

[vermoeide_zwerver]

Thanks guys for all the responses. Looks like I am at least going to need to enlarge the exhaust and get a new air filter system before I chip it. I am going to do some research on how to do that stuff. I like to work on my truck, but I am not to good on modifications.

 

[Super_Duty_John]

I have a 97 F-250 7.3. It is out of warranty on the years but only has around 90k miles on it. I am not really a performance nut, and generally am suspicious of chips and reprogramming in general. That said, I am kinda in the mood to get a little more juice out of my truck, but I don't want to go hog wild on it. Any suggestions on what kind of chip could do this without engine modifications such as exhaust or injector work. Maybe it does not exsist (SP????), but I wanted to see if anyone knew of one. I also would want one that would store the factory program so that I could reinstall it whenever if ever I wanted to. Thanks

Yes Higgins, the old Western Diesel Tow Haul chip (80 hp) is relatively mild.

I have one for sale ironically I'll let you have cheap. PM me and I'll send you the details

 

[jlayne]

Western Diesel

there is a reason they are out of business