Chipped?
 

I was wondering if anybody has a performance chip in their car. I found some online but they don't seem legit because of the price. If anyone is, what do you have and where did you get it?

As far as I know, the aftermarket never came up with one for the Saturn S series of cars and I do not know for sure whether there is even a capability of using one. My MOPAR fuel injection conversion has nothing that can be unplugged thus nothing can be "chipped" as there is not way to plug anything in. And other than cursury, I have never looked for anything for the Saturn.

Okay. I found some online but it says it does a few things like hp and mpg, for $80. That doesn't seem really legit. It says its for Saturn S-series too.

Ayup - them advertisements on the InterNet say dammed near anything. Unfortunately, here's the bottom line in performance chips for your Saturn -- THERE AIN'T ANY

All that vendor can do for you, is make your wallet lighter

The only thing those things will do is lighten you wallet. I've seen too many people try them only to realize they've been had.

,buy hey if you buy four your car will be a AA fuel dragster.

Okay thanks for the advice guys. I'd rather not spend money on a piece of plastic that will do nothing for me, atleast I didn't spend money to buy my Saturn lololol :D

the turbonator TF (totally F'd) works wonders

I saw that, I forgot to ask about it. It looked pretty cool. It works like a turbo doesn't it? Somewhat like a turbo atleast.

it's complete crap and does nothing

Good to know.

Gotta go along with Derf. As said before, I have not run accross anything in the way of a performance chip for the S-series Saturns, as to other plug in type things you have to wade through the carefully worded hype to discover that the best of them, do little more than display some form of monitoring of fuel mileage or things of that ilk that you can keep track of and then change your driving style to optimise the results of them. I can think of a lot of equivelent things that over the years have been available at stupid prices that did pretty much nothing but it would be neat to have a couple of them around now as conversation starters.
Here is one, the Moto-meter. It was successfully sold for about 50 or more years. It's biggest attribute was cosmetic, but it monitored engine temperature.
http://www.prewarbuick.com/features/..._boiling_point
and
http://outlavws.blogspot.com/2011/09...emp-gauge.html

Would it be possible to have chip custom made? Just curious.

Your better off socketing the PCM if you want to go that far
however that is abit over the top for me

If I had to hazard a guess, probably. The odds are most if not all of the Performance enhancing "chips" came out of the aftermarket with some one reverse engineering something to come up with it. As the on board computor came on line as I remember there was a Ford application one that actually plugged into the diagnostic plug because there were no pluggable sockets available internal to the curcuitry. But all of that depends on the design of things and some knowledge as to how things should be configured and I do not know if anything was ever offered even in tiny quantities for the S cars. The early systems were rather crude compared to what they became too. But it all takes a ready market and money for development and the capability of the computor to take something like a chip and I don't think there was ever enough of the first two in order to justify making something and I have no clue at all about the last.
MOPAR (Chrysler) from about the same time frame of S cars did not have the capability and there is nothing (to my knowledge anyway) for them and no way to use it if there was. Either there are no sockets or the curcuitry is potted (encapselated) with a plastic or rubber like material to keep it from being damaged by the environment. My fuel injection conversion uses a 1994/5 mopar based engine control and it can be mounted under the hood as it is water proof and there are no chips at all available. It is a speed density system rather than one controlled in part by a mass air flow sensor and has a certain amount of flexibility to compensated for engine modifications. But if you build a radical engine I would have been better off trying to build one around a GM unit that could be modified.
But being an old school hot rod builder my personal stand would be to buy and use aftermarket cams for the single biggest bang for the buck. They are also almost the most labor intensive thing to install.
As I remember early on the S car had a brief moment time in small sedan SCA small sedan racing with heavy factory backing but it was not to long before they were overpowered by the competition. It seems (as I remember) there were borderline successful but a bit heavy and the competition built stronger motors and Saturn did not so what ever edge that they had if any, dissappeared. That left most if any of the aftermarket modifcations to the car being something that gave the illusion of perfromance but did little on the street except present Bling.

ain't gonna happen

Well-written there, UnclJon ....

He's hit the answer on the head - nothing more to be said.

This thread makes me wonder why?
The performance Economy switch that controlled the automatic transmission in the 1994 model and I am not sure what other years was not more popular. The transmission being electornic controlled rather than by hyrdraulic and was (if I am right) dead solid reliable and about the only electronic one that was. Turned the car into a mini-street racer.
By allowing the car to start in 1st gear and altering the shift points so the engine would twist a bit tighter actually gave the illusion of a quick 4 cylinder street racer. Quick enough to frighten Mustangs and Camero's untill they started developing some serious hp. The economy setting keeps up with traffic and is more user friendly for sure, but that is what it is supposed to be.
I dunno. mine has so many little features in it that have proven to be both fun to own and reliable to run that to this day I fail to understand why they were not better accepted than they were when newer.
Oh Well.
I have decided. As long as nothing catastrophic happens, I am going to re-paint mine again and hang on to it some more.

The reason no chips work in S-Cars is because no chips or controllers can be installed into the computer. The computor needs to tuned and no-one was able to crack (break into) it. Take my cars for example. HP tuners has a program used via laptop and the car (computer) can be tuned. NO chips work in the ION, Solstice or most any cars built today.

I guess I have not been around whatever is current in that area for a while. I could not really afford the tools required to play that game earlier and don't have the coins to do it now either. My almost only effort to build a computor controlled fuel injected engine from scratch although proved to be successful in the long run, went through a long growth interval with a performance related problem that the tech support was totally useless on. I think the support group was Howell and they are still out there. And the root of the problem had nothing to do with the fuel injection at all, it was directly related to torque converter dynamics and how the programing worked in recognising the torque converter. So yes, it was the computor problem, but soft ware not hardware. It was also costly. I had about 3 grand tied up in it at the time. To my way of thinking, 3 grand could have been spent better. I suspected that there was no "Chip" capability and certainly no "tuning" capability. Too old a basic design and not enough popularity to come up with alternatives for S cars.
That leaves us back yard mechanics stuck back in the old days of modifying what you got. I have pretty much found there is a fair amount of lattitude in Speed Density Systems and a bit more in something that uses a Mass Air Flow Sensor to dial in some serious street hp increases if you don't get to wild and step outside original design tolerances.
Far to many people who subscribe to the rules of Mores Law buy and install stuff based on the premise that if a little is good, more is better and when it runs like crap blame it on what you bought.