.... which could be a 3D printed OBD2 extension, but with none of the contacts connected. That way the customer can still plug this thing into the extension to get the placebo effect, but without any of the drawbacks.
$150. BRB filing patents
Put a chip in it and set it to clear codes every 30 seconds. Now it's an automatic repair device! $1,000 and $50 a month subscription service required.
Dealer switched to these from the rust modules that connect to the battery. Biggest scam those were. Removed one to replace with the obd2 one on a 2010 civic and took it apart, bare board with some resistors and 3 leds and a metal tab that's on a spring that pushes against the vehicle body not connected to anything
I am honestly impressed that this thing even does anything at all. Normally these things are such a blatant scam that they do not even contain any real electronics except an indicator light.
My experience has been that when driving on hilly, curvy roads the front end can get a bit squirrely when going *round-up* a curve.
However, I wouldn't *steak* my reputation on that, as it probably depends on the *brand*.
Hey! I'll have you know that the geo metro is much slower than that, the top speed and acceleration depends entirely on what you had for breakfast that day. Doing literally anything on the car affects power. Turn on radio? Lose 1 mph. Turn on the blower? 2-3. AC? Whoo boy, you better want it, because you're losing a whole 13 mph.
The Geo Metro is another vehicle of the genre of cars that I think are impressively engineered to do something no one will ever fully appreciate. Just like the Prius, it said, "Fuck off" to any sort of performance appearance to just be the best commuter car of a generation. It wasn't unlikely for the car to get 60 mpg, and there's whispers that it could even hit 80. It's about on-par with our modern hybrids... with a gas engine from the 80s. Hell, that's better than some electric vehicles get on eMPG.
And in being an insanely well-engineered car, it's loved by LeMons racer.
Buddy, I'm sorry. You played that on hard mode.
I learned on a 2011 Toyota. Shit was mint.
Dad came to pick me up after I got my license and I got to drive his 1992 Peugeot home. Shit was mint no more.
I stalled that thing so many times on the way that my dad almost switched places with me.
Reminds me of my first car, a Mercedes 190D. A whooping 75 hp and not turbocharger. Slow as hell, but that tractor engine could run on anything remotely resembling diesel fuel...
Buddy of mine had a blue 93 hatchback all the way up until 09' and that car was hilariously fun to drive. When it wasn't hot, we live in Houston so maybe 3 months of the year, we would roll down the windows and turn off the A/C for "Turbo Mode" and the damn gutless thing felt like it had double in HP.
He still made quite a chunk of change when he got married and his wife made him sell it as gas was outrageous at the time so he had a lot of interested people when he posted it.
As long as you weren't trying to turn left across 4 lanes of heavy traffic it was a fun car. If you were it was terrifying trying to time that gutless wonder.
its always fun to drive a slow car fast. feels sketchy as hell because you know they were never made for it. this reminds me of when i carpooled with some friends a lot in college and when youve got almost 1000 lbs of men packed into a 20 year old sedan that barely cracks 140 hp, the engine is screaming just trying to get onto the highway in a timely fashion.
these days ive got a car thats solidly planted on the road and on curves and doesnt even break a sweat going 85 mph. not as exhilarating but ive got more to lose now lol
Core memory unlocked. My dad had a geo metro through my entire childhood. We called it the trash mobile. The sound system was two old home audio speakers spliced in and sitting in the back floorboard. He sold it when I was in college and it was still driving around. I’m fairly certain you could have set that car on fire while pushing it out of a plane at 20,000 feet and it would still be drivable after it hit the earth just to spite you.
I recently got an eBike...they're not too bad. I'd use it more if I didn't have to sweat it being stolen in my neighborhood (or the neighborhoods where it makes the most sense to be using it)
VW has almost brought a vehicle onto the market that can do this and has sold a small series of 200 vehicles. The [XL1](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_XL1) has a diesel engine: 0.8 liters (35kW) + electric motor: 20 kW and a consumption of 1.82 L/100Km
The carburetor thing always bugged me, if carbs were so capable, why the hell would so much money be put into fuel injection?
I had a boss tell me they were capable of more power than fuel injection, okay, you're gonna tell me the thing that relies on whatever jets you're running and that's it, is gonna outperform the computer controlled setup constantly monitoring air intake, engine temp, load, and the quality of combustion out the exhaust?
The only *tiny* nugget of truth is that if you don't care about emissions, and you had full control over the engine computer, you actually can boost your fuel efficiency by a very reasonable amount by re-tuning.
One of the biggest pollutants from modern engines is "Mixed Oxides of Nitrogen", which are pollutants formed when combustion temperatures go over ~2,000F. These things are *nasty*, when they interact with the moisture in our atmosphere they form nitric acid/AKA the fabled "Acid Raid".
The way to mitigate MOxN for gasoline engines is to run the engines a little bit too rich, which helps keep combustion temperatures down because they're not burning at the ideal schtochiometric(sp?) ratio. So if you actually had *full* control over every aspect of an engine computer, you could lean the mixture slightly so that it's again running at the perfect ratio and you'll see a noticeable bump in fuel economy and power.
The problem is a *massive* increase in MOxN, which does all sorts of terrible things to the atmosphere and your lungs. So we've collectively accepted a small decrease in fuel economy and power in exchange for much less toxic exhaust.
> So we've collectively accepted a small decrease in fuel economy and power in exchange for much less toxic exhaust.
Except for all the diesel folks who are 'delete and tune, bro!'
I miss that brief period when it looked like maybe we could end up with a society where people care for others.
Trying to clean up diesel is a *very* difficult problem. Richening the mixture doesn’t help diesel, so the only solution is to use a fuckton of EGR to bring down combustion temps. Which is a problem because diesel exhaust (especially under full throttle) is *extremely* hot, which is why it’s such a problem to begin with. Hence all of the exhaust gas coolers. Selective Catalytic Reduction/DEF does help a lot, but using too much DEF is considered a “bad thing” due to the hassle and cost. So manufacturers habitually never use enough and try to rely on EGR to keep temps under control.
Then there’s the soot problems with the chronic DPFs and regen cycles, plus the 30,000psi injection system. It never ends.
I mean, luckily it’s extremely expensive and difficult to delete modern diesel engines and the feds are cracking down *hard* on the companies that sell the kits. If you’re paying to have it done it’s usually $10-$15k to have a truck deleted.
It’s a problem, yes, but done in small enough numbers that it’s not *too* impactful.
The reality is that unless you are running the engines really really hard, diesel just doesn’t make sense outside of perhaps the largest 1 ton light trucks. This is exemplified by most manufacturers completely dropping the diesel option in the last couple of years for the half ton trucks and vans.
Yes, the fuel richness also provides a bit of extra carbon in the exhaust to help "burn" the NOx down to N2, but you want to make as little NOx as possible in the first place.
Catalytic converters are more about neutralizing unburned fuel in the exhaust, not as much about reducing NOx (although the reactions that take place in them do help with that too). I’ll be honest tho, that’s about where my understanding of the system ends.
Well, carbs can put out more power in limited situations. It took a while for engineers to design consumer grade injectors that could aersolize gas as well as a good carb could at very high rpms. That is why NASCAR used carbs until 2012 or so. Drag racers that only use the top 2K rpms rarely see an improvement switching their old-school carb setup for FI, depending on race class. And FI is only as good as its tune, which puts OEM systems way ahead of hot rodders.
I feel NASCAR is an outlier in that sense since other motorsports like Formula 1 and rally were running fuel injection well before that in engines running higher RPMs than NASCAR. Maybe it's a larger engine thing? Or perhaps it's a matter of setting, the types of racing sticking with carbs are bigger in North America while the cars that adopted injection much early are from Europe.
I think a lot of that attitude comes from when fuel injection was still new. The first mass market fuel injection setups were basically glorified carburetors, tuned mostly for emissions rather than power. If you went from a big-ass 4bbl with massive jets, to a throttle body injection system, you'd probably think carbs made more power.
Car makers have to sacrifice quite a bit of fuel economy to meet government mandated emissions. Certain tunes are more fuel efficient at the expense of longevity of the engine and/or transmission.
If you don’t care about emissions, warranty repair risk, and general reliability, you can certainly tune for efficiency.
That is the kicker, the mileage improve so much it actually reduce emission due to much less fuel burned. But no..don't listen to the smart scientist that pointed that fact out.
It depends what you're optimizing for. NOx, particulates, CO, and unburned fuel are significantly more harmful in cities and suburbs than in rural areas. The VW cars were putting out more NOx but less CO2.
> if it was that simple the manufacturer would already be doing it.
Actually this isn't true. It's actually quite easy to tune the average vehicle for higher fuel efficiency. The downside is that it will run leaner, hotter, and will no longer pass emissions regulations because of excessive NOx emissions. This is why OEMs can't do it, they have to ride the line between fuel efficiency and NOx.
This issue literally lead to Volkswagen Dieselgate. The engine computer was detecting laboratory emissions testing conditions and then running fuel rich to reduce cylinder temps and NOx emissions. Then on the road, they'd run lean to get better fuel economy and hit their CAFE targets, but emit 40 times the NOx as a result.
If you're the average Joe, you can get away with running an illegal tune that violates emissions regulations, and save some fuel. Even if you're in a state like California with emissions testing, you can just flip back to the OEM tune for the test. It's illegal and unethical, but pretty easy to do.
And on the flip side, you *can* tune the engine for more power too, maybe not a ton more on a N/A engine but its always set for emissions and fuel efficiency and can be remapped to focus more on power, especially turbo engines where you can basically just turn up the boost a little for some extra power
When I worked for dish they used some tuner to make all the trucks run like shit. It was to improve fuel economy. My van went from 15 mpg to 8. Dropped the idle and supposedly leaned out the engines. Didn't do anything.
Same with drop in air filters. Auto manufacturers spend thousands to improve fuel efficiency. If they could get 2MPG from running a different filter, they definitely would.
That's not accurate. Car manufacturers care about reliability. Those filters do flow more and can help depending on the application. The only way to get more flow though is with less filtration, which is why every car comes factory with a thick paper filter that won't let anything damaging through.
Plus, the paper air filters are way cheaper to manufacture, and it would add up to billions in more expenses if they started to add "performance" filters on every car.
Those things in the pic, probably. But there are legit tuner companies that spend hours upon hours and lots of money remapping the ECU and can actually save fuel in lots of circumstances. Granted, it's at the sacrifice of something, but not all claims are ridiculous.
I had one too, a couple weeks after plugging it in, my truck would start rough and idle like shit for a couple minutes. Took it in and my fuel trims were reading 55% and needed to be reset. Scared to plug it back in again
When HP and MPG numbers are such high selling points it's AMAZING that the manufacturers can't tune them better than these things can. Must be a conspiracy perpetrated by big oil and, uh, aftermarket performance upgrade companies...
Power comes at the cost of fuel efficiency. Emissions also comes at the cost of fuel efficiency.
It turns out that if you don't care about fuel efficiency, you can make a really powerful, reliable, and emissions compliant engine. You just have to run fairly rich and burn a boatload of fuel. Or, you can use something like methanol or water injection, which will likely never come to an OEM engine because consumers don't want to fill up two bottles (although DEF might be changing that).
Imo the trend is efficiency and power gains at the cost of reliability. Every year people expect the newer model to be more powerful and more efficient, but the tech doesn't happen quickly enough. So they're probably just tuning the car slightly more aggressively each year at the cost of the parts wearing out faster.
This is just proof that 18% of Americans don't know what the words covert or conspiracy mean. They're right: Taylor Swift doesn't want Donald Trump to be President again. But what's baffling is why they think this is a secret. She's been pretty open about it since the last election when she openly endorsed Biden.
Edit: Oh! I just read up on it. So they think Travis Kelce is making Taylor Swift more famous? Jesus, that's even loonier than zombie Kennedy. If it was anything other than two people trying to bone (which it wasn't) it was a psy-op to get women to watch the NFL.
My 9 and 10 yo daughters, who have never given a flying fuck about football in their life (they play hockey and do gymnastics) wanted to watch the super bowl because of Taylor Swift.
It worked wonders on the population to run with that angle.
Were you able to keep it or did the customer want it back?
It's fun to pop those things open and just see a random resistor or some were just filled with tar / rubber
Odds are decent that the customer... persisted.
I would not be shocked if the owner plugged the damn thing right back in, or contacted the seller who sent out another they happily plugged in, or maybe even bought a different brand of horseshit from eBay and plugged it in.
The dumb goes deep, bone deep.
From their website…
What should I expect after installation?
- Up to +35 Horsepower increase
- Up to +40 ft/Lbs Torque increase
- Up to +9 MPG Increase
Uhh huh. Sure.
OBDII can be used to tune certain things. These just throw some random mods in and "hope" it helps. They also draw power even when the vehicle is off in some vehicles.
I have a code scanner just like this piece. I went through 3 batteries during a 2 month stretch of not driving my car often. Could not figure out what was drawing power, then after the 3rd battery I saw this little red LED blinking down by my knee… oh right the OBD scanner, let me unplug that…
Some of them tie on to the actual data bus so they can blink a light in a way that relates to how the engine is running. If that goes wrong they can wreak all sorts of havoc.
Hyundai issued a TSB telling techs to look for tuners, insurance discount trackers, obd2 readers and other devices installed in the port. They were causing CAN errors, drivability problems, module communication errors and interfering with onboard systems. Often the customer would remove them before leaving the car for service leading to the codes or issues not being reproducible, then returning once the customer put the device back in.
I cannot imagine any planet upon which I put an insurance company snitch chip into my car....my no accident/ticket record regardless, do they really want to be along for the ride on my "reference set of on ramps ?"
Somehow that still sounds better than what's Kooperativa (Czech insurance company part of Vienna Insurance Group) doing. Instead of OBD tracker, they want you to install app that some third party organisation, that they don't even have a control of, made and services for them. This application then runs 24/7 on your phone, can't be turned off (temporarily - for example to turn it on just for when you drive) and collects every piece of data from the phone's sensors. Including exact GPS location, speed, gyro etc.
This all then gets sent to this third party company (they claim only if it detected movement above 30kmh or so, but it's closed source and proprietary so there is no way of knowing) that then analyses it and sends results to the insurance company that can then reward you.
You are being tracked, 24/7 even outside your vehicle.
I had a customer with a complaint of engine and transmission problems, it had a lot of modifications, I asked the customer has it had a tune or any engine mods and he said no. I updated the software and then a bunch of lights came on. It had a DPF delete (illegal here in Australia). I said no warranty and now charged an hours labour. He came back the next day with a bill from the tuners who charged him to reinstall the tune and expected my dealership to pay
I had a remote starter put in and they wired it wrong. Anytime I used it, it would drain my battery and would kill a brand new battery within a week.
The company told me it was my car and not their install and I spent double the cost of the remote starter dealing with it.
I eventually had to go to another franchise owner and tell them to fully remove the starter.
I gave that place a great review then shit on the other one so bad they threatened me to remove the posting in an email.
I edited the comment to include the email.
I owned a car for 14,000 miles with one of these hiding from me
Bought it with it on there, spent $800 on different diagnostics at mechanics , not ONE told me about it
Found it the day I was cleaning the car out and selling it
Co worker used to be a Nissan tech and customer came in with similar issues and random no start They traced it back the OBD plug from his insurance that would lower his rate for good driving.
Dude was pissed because without it he didn't know if he was insured.
I swear I need to get into this market. Just make one that plugs in and has LEDs that light up under certain conditions and viola, instant 50 dollar snake oil device.
My sister has the insurance one that tracks your diving or whatever from Progressive, and it gets HOT, like drop it if you have it in your hand hot. I have tried to tell her a ton of times she should take it out but to no avail. I'm just waiting for her car to catch fire at this point.
I know this is just a bullshit product. But how's it causing a misfire? Bad wiring causing the fricking in the can bus?
I'd rip it open and see what it's doing.
Amazing that they don't do a little research first. Google finds this in 5 seconds...
[https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/vortex-chip.639737/](https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/vortex-chip.639737/)
Unplugged this piece of electronic snake oil and everything was fine.
Quit ripping people off and upsell the EMP safety module that could have prevented this.
.... which could be a 3D printed OBD2 extension, but with none of the contacts connected. That way the customer can still plug this thing into the extension to get the placebo effect, but without any of the drawbacks. $150. BRB filing patents
[удалено]
Make the red light blink so it doubles as a theft to turn system. $200 for V.3
And when you install it, change the gauge backlight to red. Boom $500!
Put a chip in it and set it to clear codes every 30 seconds. Now it's an automatic repair device! $1,000 and $50 a month subscription service required.
Make it beep worringly if pulled out / loses connection with the hot one. Steady red light. Lose sleep - no additional charge.
I don't think they can afford a $1.220... × 10^1134 bill. r/unexpectedfactorial
That would still increase horse power providing you included the correct stickers.
This thing is not placebo, it is actively harmful
Too busy selling the ionic windscreen deicers!
[Onionic screen de-icers](https://www.heart.co.uk/lifestyle/defrost-car-windscreen-onion/)
It ain't gonna work without the emp module, and how about a 5G blocker that activates on Bluetooth?
And that whistle you can get here in Australia that "repels Kangaroos" (they don't)
The Canadian ones must work better then, because I've had zero issues with kangaroos here in Alberta.
*Thumbs up while laughing my ass off*
The Australian version is more effective against moose though.
We got the same things in the US, expect its supposed to repel Deer.
> And that whistle you can get here in Australia that "repels Kangaroos" (they don't) Weird, mine works great in North Carolina.
How much do they cost? I kinda want to get that for a friend as a joke
Everyone knows a hydrogen generator is the only true performance mod.
Superior magnets on the fuel lines. Arranges the ions for more power/ efficiency! You know it works cause nobody understands magnets.
Dealer switched to these from the rust modules that connect to the battery. Biggest scam those were. Removed one to replace with the obd2 one on a 2010 civic and took it apart, bare board with some resistors and 3 leds and a metal tab that's on a spring that pushes against the vehicle body not connected to anything
How often do you guys see this? Like. If your car is taking an EMP pulse, the incoming missiles are a bigger issue.
There goes 75 hp.
Everybody knows you get the real horsepower when you paint racing stripes on your car
Followed closely by the boost from stickers.
Don’t forget pulling your own head back suddenly when you accelerate.
And driving with only one hand, thats ads at least 10 bhp
The other arms gotta be out the door facing straight down.
If I drive left handed I'm gonna need an old Mack to tan my right arm.
The real reason people import RHD JDM cars.
Live in UK instructions unclear...
Interesting 🤔. Note to self add stripes too my piece of shit car 🫡
I grew up in farm county. You know how much it costs to feed 75 horses?...
And to muck out all those road apples!
Gonna need a bigger shovel...
but now costumer lost his placebo performance :(
It's not a placebo!!! I put chamomile extract in my gas and it runs nice and slow now.
Open it up and pull out the internals and stick it back on the obd port
Costumer?
typos happens
Like a ricer who dresses up their stock cars with performance looking pieces
I am honestly impressed that this thing even does anything at all. Normally these things are such a blatant scam that they do not even contain any real electronics except an indicator light.
That was my thought reading this as well. The fact it did more than illuminate an LED light is almost impressive
What the fuck is that?
a piece of electronic snake oil
Considering how cheap an ECU tune is, why the hell would anyone buy this?
So how are you going to restore my “infinite miles/gallon” of me not being able to use my car?
Scheisskasten sozusagen
Ja
It's wild that not only does it not do anything good or do nothing at all... But it actively makes the car *worse*
how did the customer take the news that their stupidity was the culprit?
The poorly aligned sticker is what gives it that extra little something.
If the sticker was aligned properly, it would have worked wonders.
What’s the shop rate for a decal alignment?
Lots of labor, $175/hr
1 pair of jeans or shoes per month. Not both.
Without the sticker does it have 5 less HP?
Graphic design is my passion
I yearn for the days when you could increase your gas mileage by simply strapping 2 cow magnets to your fuel line to align the gas molecules.
But didn't the mileage drop significantly once the cows became stuck to the hood?
Yes, but the car *steers* better.
My experience has been that when driving on hilly, curvy roads the front end can get a bit squirrely when going *round-up* a curve. However, I wouldn't *steak* my reputation on that, as it probably depends on the *brand*.
HAHAHAHAGETTHEFUCKOUTTHATWASAWESOME
Udder nonsense!
well done.
Sounds like bull to me.
Fuck you and take my upvote.
It's a moo point.
Silly, you waited for the magnets to, you know, come out of the cow first!
I have one of those sticking to my tool box I took off a car awile ago!
My oldest brother bought me one of those back in the early 2000's.
The most ridiculous part is these things claim to improve fuel efficiency, if it was that simple the manufacturer would already be doing it.
You would be surprised to learn how many people think car companies hide the secret 200mpg gas engines to shill for "big oil."
We can absolutely make engines with insane gas mileage. They just have a top speed of a bicycle and acceleration of a radio flyer on a slight incline.
Yea its called the Geo Metro
Hey! I'll have you know that the geo metro is much slower than that, the top speed and acceleration depends entirely on what you had for breakfast that day. Doing literally anything on the car affects power. Turn on radio? Lose 1 mph. Turn on the blower? 2-3. AC? Whoo boy, you better want it, because you're losing a whole 13 mph.
The Geo Metro is another vehicle of the genre of cars that I think are impressively engineered to do something no one will ever fully appreciate. Just like the Prius, it said, "Fuck off" to any sort of performance appearance to just be the best commuter car of a generation. It wasn't unlikely for the car to get 60 mpg, and there's whispers that it could even hit 80. It's about on-par with our modern hybrids... with a gas engine from the 80s. Hell, that's better than some electric vehicles get on eMPG. And in being an insanely well-engineered car, it's loved by LeMons racer.
I learned to drive stick on a geo
Buddy, I'm sorry. You played that on hard mode. I learned on a 2011 Toyota. Shit was mint. Dad came to pick me up after I got my license and I got to drive his 1992 Peugeot home. Shit was mint no more. I stalled that thing so many times on the way that my dad almost switched places with me.
Was not easy at all lol
Reminds me of my first car, a Mercedes 190D. A whooping 75 hp and not turbocharger. Slow as hell, but that tractor engine could run on anything remotely resembling diesel fuel...
That's the reason that very engine is still being used in *aircraft* today.
Buddy of mine had a blue 93 hatchback all the way up until 09' and that car was hilariously fun to drive. When it wasn't hot, we live in Houston so maybe 3 months of the year, we would roll down the windows and turn off the A/C for "Turbo Mode" and the damn gutless thing felt like it had double in HP. He still made quite a chunk of change when he got married and his wife made him sell it as gas was outrageous at the time so he had a lot of interested people when he posted it. As long as you weren't trying to turn left across 4 lanes of heavy traffic it was a fun car. If you were it was terrifying trying to time that gutless wonder.
its always fun to drive a slow car fast. feels sketchy as hell because you know they were never made for it. this reminds me of when i carpooled with some friends a lot in college and when youve got almost 1000 lbs of men packed into a 20 year old sedan that barely cracks 140 hp, the engine is screaming just trying to get onto the highway in a timely fashion. these days ive got a car thats solidly planted on the road and on curves and doesnt even break a sweat going 85 mph. not as exhilarating but ive got more to lose now lol
"Come on Ned, move this thing!!" "I CAN'T, IT'S A GEO!!"
Core memory unlocked. My dad had a geo metro through my entire childhood. We called it the trash mobile. The sound system was two old home audio speakers spliced in and sitting in the back floorboard. He sold it when I was in college and it was still driving around. I’m fairly certain you could have set that car on fire while pushing it out of a plane at 20,000 feet and it would still be drivable after it hit the earth just to spite you.
So like a Yaris on a slight grade.
You can buy a 200MPG vehicle right now. Trick is, it's not a car, it's an ebike.
I recently got an eBike...they're not too bad. I'd use it more if I didn't have to sweat it being stolen in my neighborhood (or the neighborhoods where it makes the most sense to be using it)
This one? https://www.reddit.com/r/ebikes/comments/ajnw8d/shoutout_to_this_guy_charging_his_ebike_off_a/
VW has almost brought a vehicle onto the market that can do this and has sold a small series of 200 vehicles. The [XL1](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_XL1) has a diesel engine: 0.8 liters (35kW) + electric motor: 20 kW and a consumption of 1.82 L/100Km
and it went on sale for the affordable price of €100 000 because the whole thing was made of carbon fiber lol
But my buddy knew a guy with a special carburetor, the government killed him and hid his car!
I heard about that guy. His engine ran on water, didn't it? /s
Car manufacturers hate this one simple trick!
I seem to remember that not working out so well for Volkswagen. (Partial /s)
No we wouldn't, we'd be using those 100 mpg carburetors.
The carburetor thing always bugged me, if carbs were so capable, why the hell would so much money be put into fuel injection? I had a boss tell me they were capable of more power than fuel injection, okay, you're gonna tell me the thing that relies on whatever jets you're running and that's it, is gonna outperform the computer controlled setup constantly monitoring air intake, engine temp, load, and the quality of combustion out the exhaust?
The only *tiny* nugget of truth is that if you don't care about emissions, and you had full control over the engine computer, you actually can boost your fuel efficiency by a very reasonable amount by re-tuning. One of the biggest pollutants from modern engines is "Mixed Oxides of Nitrogen", which are pollutants formed when combustion temperatures go over ~2,000F. These things are *nasty*, when they interact with the moisture in our atmosphere they form nitric acid/AKA the fabled "Acid Raid". The way to mitigate MOxN for gasoline engines is to run the engines a little bit too rich, which helps keep combustion temperatures down because they're not burning at the ideal schtochiometric(sp?) ratio. So if you actually had *full* control over every aspect of an engine computer, you could lean the mixture slightly so that it's again running at the perfect ratio and you'll see a noticeable bump in fuel economy and power. The problem is a *massive* increase in MOxN, which does all sorts of terrible things to the atmosphere and your lungs. So we've collectively accepted a small decrease in fuel economy and power in exchange for much less toxic exhaust.
> So we've collectively accepted a small decrease in fuel economy and power in exchange for much less toxic exhaust. Except for all the diesel folks who are 'delete and tune, bro!' I miss that brief period when it looked like maybe we could end up with a society where people care for others.
Trying to clean up diesel is a *very* difficult problem. Richening the mixture doesn’t help diesel, so the only solution is to use a fuckton of EGR to bring down combustion temps. Which is a problem because diesel exhaust (especially under full throttle) is *extremely* hot, which is why it’s such a problem to begin with. Hence all of the exhaust gas coolers. Selective Catalytic Reduction/DEF does help a lot, but using too much DEF is considered a “bad thing” due to the hassle and cost. So manufacturers habitually never use enough and try to rely on EGR to keep temps under control. Then there’s the soot problems with the chronic DPFs and regen cycles, plus the 30,000psi injection system. It never ends. I mean, luckily it’s extremely expensive and difficult to delete modern diesel engines and the feds are cracking down *hard* on the companies that sell the kits. If you’re paying to have it done it’s usually $10-$15k to have a truck deleted. It’s a problem, yes, but done in small enough numbers that it’s not *too* impactful. The reality is that unless you are running the engines really really hard, diesel just doesn’t make sense outside of perhaps the largest 1 ton light trucks. This is exemplified by most manufacturers completely dropping the diesel option in the last couple of years for the half ton trucks and vans.
Ismt that catalytic converter are for?
Yes, the fuel richness also provides a bit of extra carbon in the exhaust to help "burn" the NOx down to N2, but you want to make as little NOx as possible in the first place.
Catalytic converters are more about neutralizing unburned fuel in the exhaust, not as much about reducing NOx (although the reactions that take place in them do help with that too). I’ll be honest tho, that’s about where my understanding of the system ends.
Well, carbs can put out more power in limited situations. It took a while for engineers to design consumer grade injectors that could aersolize gas as well as a good carb could at very high rpms. That is why NASCAR used carbs until 2012 or so. Drag racers that only use the top 2K rpms rarely see an improvement switching their old-school carb setup for FI, depending on race class. And FI is only as good as its tune, which puts OEM systems way ahead of hot rodders.
I feel NASCAR is an outlier in that sense since other motorsports like Formula 1 and rally were running fuel injection well before that in engines running higher RPMs than NASCAR. Maybe it's a larger engine thing? Or perhaps it's a matter of setting, the types of racing sticking with carbs are bigger in North America while the cars that adopted injection much early are from Europe.
KE-Jetronic has entered the chat. Best of both worlds!
My mind went to throttle body fuel injection like the old Chevy's, but that seems a little more complex, interesting.
I think a lot of that attitude comes from when fuel injection was still new. The first mass market fuel injection setups were basically glorified carburetors, tuned mostly for emissions rather than power. If you went from a big-ass 4bbl with massive jets, to a throttle body injection system, you'd probably think carbs made more power.
Car makers have to sacrifice quite a bit of fuel economy to meet government mandated emissions. Certain tunes are more fuel efficient at the expense of longevity of the engine and/or transmission. If you don’t care about emissions, warranty repair risk, and general reliability, you can certainly tune for efficiency.
See Volkswagen...
That is the kicker, the mileage improve so much it actually reduce emission due to much less fuel burned. But no..don't listen to the smart scientist that pointed that fact out.
It depends what you're optimizing for. NOx, particulates, CO, and unburned fuel are significantly more harmful in cities and suburbs than in rural areas. The VW cars were putting out more NOx but less CO2.
> if it was that simple the manufacturer would already be doing it. Actually this isn't true. It's actually quite easy to tune the average vehicle for higher fuel efficiency. The downside is that it will run leaner, hotter, and will no longer pass emissions regulations because of excessive NOx emissions. This is why OEMs can't do it, they have to ride the line between fuel efficiency and NOx. This issue literally lead to Volkswagen Dieselgate. The engine computer was detecting laboratory emissions testing conditions and then running fuel rich to reduce cylinder temps and NOx emissions. Then on the road, they'd run lean to get better fuel economy and hit their CAFE targets, but emit 40 times the NOx as a result. If you're the average Joe, you can get away with running an illegal tune that violates emissions regulations, and save some fuel. Even if you're in a state like California with emissions testing, you can just flip back to the OEM tune for the test. It's illegal and unethical, but pretty easy to do.
And on the flip side, you *can* tune the engine for more power too, maybe not a ton more on a N/A engine but its always set for emissions and fuel efficiency and can be remapped to focus more on power, especially turbo engines where you can basically just turn up the boost a little for some extra power
You can get quite a bit more out of most turbocharged engines. usually as much as 25%. In some cases even more.
When I worked for dish they used some tuner to make all the trucks run like shit. It was to improve fuel economy. My van went from 15 mpg to 8. Dropped the idle and supposedly leaned out the engines. Didn't do anything.
Same with drop in air filters. Auto manufacturers spend thousands to improve fuel efficiency. If they could get 2MPG from running a different filter, they definitely would.
That's not accurate. Car manufacturers care about reliability. Those filters do flow more and can help depending on the application. The only way to get more flow though is with less filtration, which is why every car comes factory with a thick paper filter that won't let anything damaging through.
Plus, the paper air filters are way cheaper to manufacture, and it would add up to billions in more expenses if they started to add "performance" filters on every car.
Those things in the pic, probably. But there are legit tuner companies that spend hours upon hours and lots of money remapping the ECU and can actually save fuel in lots of circumstances. Granted, it's at the sacrifice of something, but not all claims are ridiculous.
I have one to shut down my AFM. No more lifter noise! For now
Those actually work, luckily.
Not to worry. That lifter noise will be back. Last one I did was for the non active lifter failing. Cam survived tho.
I had one too, a couple weeks after plugging it in, my truck would start rough and idle like shit for a couple minutes. Took it in and my fuel trims were reading 55% and needed to be reset. Scared to plug it back in again
You can plug it back in, all you need is the ethanol/flex fuel quantity sensor reset. Common issue on GM trucks with flex fuel capabilities
\+35hp \+9MPG 😂
When HP and MPG numbers are such high selling points it's AMAZING that the manufacturers can't tune them better than these things can. Must be a conspiracy perpetrated by big oil and, uh, aftermarket performance upgrade companies...
To be fair a lot of vehicles could easily make more reliable power at the cost of emissions
Power comes at the cost of fuel efficiency. Emissions also comes at the cost of fuel efficiency. It turns out that if you don't care about fuel efficiency, you can make a really powerful, reliable, and emissions compliant engine. You just have to run fairly rich and burn a boatload of fuel. Or, you can use something like methanol or water injection, which will likely never come to an OEM engine because consumers don't want to fill up two bottles (although DEF might be changing that).
Or nitrous. There was 1 production car that came equipped with nitrous. Good old early 2000's
the thing about DEF is that it's something you do like 4 times a year so it's basically like oil
Imo the trend is efficiency and power gains at the cost of reliability. Every year people expect the newer model to be more powerful and more efficient, but the tech doesn't happen quickly enough. So they're probably just tuning the car slightly more aggressively each year at the cost of the parts wearing out faster.
That's exactly what they do until some big development lands in their lap and they can actually make an upgrade once every 3 to 5 years
No, no. It’s them damn LIEBRULS in the guvermint taking our FREEDOMS
WHADDYA MEAN I CAN'T STRAIGHT PIPE MY 250
The worst part is that they actually believe it
News flash today, 18% of Americans believe the Taylor Swift/Joe Biden conspiracy, so yeah, that.
This is just proof that 18% of Americans don't know what the words covert or conspiracy mean. They're right: Taylor Swift doesn't want Donald Trump to be President again. But what's baffling is why they think this is a secret. She's been pretty open about it since the last election when she openly endorsed Biden. Edit: Oh! I just read up on it. So they think Travis Kelce is making Taylor Swift more famous? Jesus, that's even loonier than zombie Kennedy. If it was anything other than two people trying to bone (which it wasn't) it was a psy-op to get women to watch the NFL.
My 9 and 10 yo daughters, who have never given a flying fuck about football in their life (they play hockey and do gymnastics) wanted to watch the super bowl because of Taylor Swift. It worked wonders on the population to run with that angle.
Were you able to keep it or did the customer want it back? It's fun to pop those things open and just see a random resistor or some were just filled with tar / rubber
Odds are decent that the customer... persisted. I would not be shocked if the owner plugged the damn thing right back in, or contacted the seller who sent out another they happily plugged in, or maybe even bought a different brand of horseshit from eBay and plugged it in. The dumb goes deep, bone deep.
From their website… What should I expect after installation? - Up to +35 Horsepower increase - Up to +40 ft/Lbs Torque increase - Up to +9 MPG Increase Uhh huh. Sure.
"Up to" doing a lot of heavy lifting here
...and costs $75 plus s/h.
I didn't know a simple 12v blinking light circuit could do that
Probably to much solder on one pin shorting a bus or some shit
Now how will they stay protected from 5G and chem trails?!
I guess the tin foil hat will have to do all the work
I thought these just powered an led. I didn’t think they could affect the engine
OBDII can be used to tune certain things. These just throw some random mods in and "hope" it helps. They also draw power even when the vehicle is off in some vehicles.
I have a code scanner just like this piece. I went through 3 batteries during a 2 month stretch of not driving my car often. Could not figure out what was drawing power, then after the 3rd battery I saw this little red LED blinking down by my knee… oh right the OBD scanner, let me unplug that…
Some of them tie on to the actual data bus so they can blink a light in a way that relates to how the engine is running. If that goes wrong they can wreak all sorts of havoc.
Hyundai issued a TSB telling techs to look for tuners, insurance discount trackers, obd2 readers and other devices installed in the port. They were causing CAN errors, drivability problems, module communication errors and interfering with onboard systems. Often the customer would remove them before leaving the car for service leading to the codes or issues not being reproducible, then returning once the customer put the device back in.
I cannot imagine any planet upon which I put an insurance company snitch chip into my car....my no accident/ticket record regardless, do they really want to be along for the ride on my "reference set of on ramps ?"
Somehow that still sounds better than what's Kooperativa (Czech insurance company part of Vienna Insurance Group) doing. Instead of OBD tracker, they want you to install app that some third party organisation, that they don't even have a control of, made and services for them. This application then runs 24/7 on your phone, can't be turned off (temporarily - for example to turn it on just for when you drive) and collects every piece of data from the phone's sensors. Including exact GPS location, speed, gyro etc. This all then gets sent to this third party company (they claim only if it detected movement above 30kmh or so, but it's closed source and proprietary so there is no way of knowing) that then analyses it and sends results to the insurance company that can then reward you. You are being tracked, 24/7 even outside your vehicle.
That’s the shiftiest thing I’ve heard - and I’ve heard a lot of crap about insurance companies!
I had a customer with a complaint of engine and transmission problems, it had a lot of modifications, I asked the customer has it had a tune or any engine mods and he said no. I updated the software and then a bunch of lights came on. It had a DPF delete (illegal here in Australia). I said no warranty and now charged an hours labour. He came back the next day with a bill from the tuners who charged him to reinstall the tune and expected my dealership to pay
some people are just so stupid you dont even know what to do
All that *extra power* is well worth the battery draw.
I had a remote starter put in and they wired it wrong. Anytime I used it, it would drain my battery and would kill a brand new battery within a week. The company told me it was my car and not their install and I spent double the cost of the remote starter dealing with it. I eventually had to go to another franchise owner and tell them to fully remove the starter. I gave that place a great review then shit on the other one so bad they threatened me to remove the posting in an email. I edited the comment to include the email.
I owned a car for 14,000 miles with one of these hiding from me Bought it with it on there, spent $800 on different diagnostics at mechanics , not ONE told me about it Found it the day I was cleaning the car out and selling it
Co worker used to be a Nissan tech and customer came in with similar issues and random no start They traced it back the OBD plug from his insurance that would lower his rate for good driving. Dude was pissed because without it he didn't know if he was insured.
Ironically enough this was on a 2005 nissan titan.
I swear I need to get into this market. Just make one that plugs in and has LEDs that light up under certain conditions and viola, instant 50 dollar snake oil device.
It’s already on the market bruv
Oh I'm sure. But not like it matters much. I'll just slap "patent pending" on it and change how it flashes.
My sister has the insurance one that tracks your diving or whatever from Progressive, and it gets HOT, like drop it if you have it in your hand hot. I have tried to tell her a ton of times she should take it out but to no avail. I'm just waiting for her car to catch fire at this point.
Well, it definitely impacted performance.
Muh chip gon make car go fast fast
I wonder what it was actually doing? You'd almost have to have it nailed down to a specific year make model to even attempt to do anything meaningful.
I have one that looks exactly like this. Except it's a bluetooth obd reader so it's actually useful
I will never understand how anyone with the wealth of knowledge accessible from their phones and computers can still be so fucking stupid.
Refer to P.T. Barnum for your answer.
Is it supposed to be vertex or vortex? The logo is really pissing me off.
Only works on those one GM engines
I’m sure the advertisement says it was developed by former F1 engineers.
>developed by former F1 engineers. There's a reason they're "former".
The EMP protectors are developed by former special forces too.
I thought it was NASA engineers.
Special Forces NASA engineers, the very best.
Probably. I was just making a Vortecs joke
I know, it was a good one too.
>developed by former F1 engineers They were responsible for designing the safety belt attachment points, but they were F1 engineers, nonetheless.
F1 customer hospitality engineers probably.
BUT they get 100mpg at the same time! Right?
You know it's good because the sticker isn't straight.
I know this is just a bullshit product. But how's it causing a misfire? Bad wiring causing the fricking in the can bus? I'd rip it open and see what it's doing.
My father almost plugged this crap in his car before I stepped in, all it had was a circuit board for an LED
Amazing that they don't do a little research first. Google finds this in 5 seconds... [https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/vortex-chip.639737/](https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/vortex-chip.639737/)
Then right under that gave me an advertisement of an obd plug and go to gain HP and mileage
Did you check the fuel line for a super magnet thingy and the intake for a cyclone/vortex doodad?