Looking at fitting a demountable chip to a new BMW, has anyone done this and recommend a good company to buy from.

I am looking for increased power and fuel efficiency.

I did see one who had a very good website with videos on how to install, but cannot find them again or remember what they were called, think they had a grey and red layout. Chip cost was about £300 I think.

If you want a ‘chip’ I’d look at Bluefin or something like an STS box type thing. Or just get it tuned properly – not sure who is meant to be good in the BMW world though…

If it’s a turbo, then go for it. Otherwise the gains are going to be fairly negligible.

As for the chip itself, you’re way better off going to a specialist garage and having a chip tuned to your car than just chucking a generic one on. Particularly when it’s a new Beemer.

I’d be cautious of doing it to a new one, as the on board computer will know it’s been there and that’s your warranty out of the window.

However, if you still want to go ahead, go to the DTUK website – their tuning boxes are very good and don’t just boost fuel pressure like cheap chips. It piggy backs the cars ECU and takes over, altering the injector timings – and learns, like the real ECU. They work really well – I had one on a Ford Ranger. Fitted in 10 mins too and loads of different map settings, from economy to full black smoke!

DTUK

I had a £70 crtech one on my 118d, worked fine, I never went higher than 5 or 6 on the settings as that was enough for me, I dont know the ins and out comparing a £300 box to a £70 one as I thought they all plugged into the common rail injector and worked by increasing fuelling….I am now deciding whether to do the box or remap on my fiat multijet engine as with a remap they can alter the turbo boost etc and(correct me if i am wrong ) but I think the boxes mainly increase the fuelling

You don’t want a plug in box, a remap of the engines ecu is much better and specific to the vehicle
Viezu do some good remaps.
They can be done via a remote box that you plug into your cars obd port, but this is not the same as the cheap plug in boxes that basically just increase fuel

There are two types of ‘Chip’ really…

Ones that plug into the OBD and rely on flashing the cars systems or the ones that simply plug in between the fuel rail and alter the cars fuelling.

The first one is detectable by BMW as the flashcount on the ECU will go up and down but they are normally the most refined these days and offer good gains.

The latter isn’t as detectable as most are plug and play modules that can be removed if wished but don’t offer as good gains.

Edit.. Beaten to it!

It will be the 318 diesel turbo engine so I believe the work quite well on these?

Emaps or dms are your friends!!