Owning a car has been a big deal from the moment they became widely available to the common folk. Similar to other expenses and the latest in machinery and technology, owning a personal vehicle back in the day was reserved for the richest and most influential. In the third decade of the 21st century though, it is anything but. These days anyone can get their hands on a car. Of course, among the many different manufacturers and models there is something for every price range and not all of us can afford them all. Still, if you want a car to help you get from point A to point B and to make your life easier, there are numerous options to choose from.
Living the Car Owner Life
While all of that may be true, getting your hands on a car and using it every day is not the end of the story. Sure, the person is considered a driver and a car owner, and they are. But a lot more can be done if you properly take care of the vehicle and give it the love it deserves. Car maintenance comes in a variety of ways and it is often not enough to simply wash it frequently and take it to the mechanic every once in a while. If you truly care about your vehicle and consider yourself a car head, you should think about chip tuning.
One Modification to Rule them All
Treating your car with a chip tuning will allow it many things and improve its performance. It is among the most sought after procedures that garages and mechanics are asked to perform on vehicles. Whenever a car owner is for some reason dissatisfied with how their car’s performance on the road, how well it accelerates, handles, and generally behaves, they think of how to improve it in the most practical and optimal way. Well, you will be happy to know that all you need is for your car’s chip to be tuned and you can be on your way in a vehicle that feels much more capable. Keep reading this article to get familiar with this and be sure to check out this website for more info.
What Does It Do?
Before talking about fuel consumption specifically and whether or not it can be improved with chip tuning modifications, we have to give you an overview of this technique so that you have a better general understanding. Chip tuning represents a method of modifying a read-only memory chip in a car’s electronic control unit, or ECU for short. This memory is erasable and programmable, which means it can be changed. Different altercations can be made in the ECU, but chip tuning is typically used to “unlock” the car’s full potential and give it more superior performance, something it was already capable of. Manufacturers lock the car’s true potential and place electronic controls for safety purposes and road legality issues at play.
Now, the reason why most car enthusiasts and gearheads want to play with their ECUs and have their chips tuned is quite well-known. They want their car to be faster, gain more horsepower, and be more fun to drive. Tuning the chip is not always advised, at least not by car purists and those overly worried about safety. What is more, if done poorly it can ruin the car in many ways. Some cars may get their ECU damaged beyond repair while others could become more sensitive to the quality of fuel and require more frequent service trips to the mechanic. Technology does advance and it is more and more common for people to get exactly what they want. Still, mishaps do still happen.
Could Fuel Economy Be Improved?
Apart from more superb performance and unlocking extra horsepower, chip tuning can also give the car cleaner emissions. More importantly for this article, it is said that it can actually give you more fuel efficiency. So does chip tuning actually help you save fuel and require you to visit the gas stations less often? Fuel prices have skyrocketed in the recent months and it is not looking good for the next period either. Saving up on gas would do us all good. Can it be done with chip tuning?
While playing with the ECU allows you to control things like spark timing and fuel injection, it is not really about actually saving money on fuel. Your car will still need to be refilled regularly and you will not really feel any difference when it comes to your wallet. In actuality, you will probably need a more high-octane gasoline mixture in order to avoid pre-ignition detonation. It is possible to change the fuel map in the electrical unit, as most stock settings are made to maximize emissions efficiency and give good fuel economy already. However, this limits the performance which is the reason for the chip tuning in the first place.
As you can see, changing the settings of the chip in order to save money on fuel is not really viable. In short, the answer to the titular question is no. Fuel injection of your car is already made to be the best it can possibly be. There would be no winners if the car would be purposefully made to require less fuel and therefore offer less mileage per single full tank. Gasoline efficiency is a big selling point for most customers. It means less spending to own and drive the car and fewer emissions and therefore caring about the environment. If you really want to increase the mileage, you need to change the hardware of the car along with the changes made in its software. Getting a tuning chip does nothing of the sorts because all the parts remain the same and there is nothing the software of the ECU can do to get more out of the fuel or tell the car to consume less of it. For a more optimal driving experience including less fuel consumption on a regular basis you need proper modifications, not just a tuning chip.
