How to tell if chipped.

Hi, I've got a P38 2.5 DSE and I was wondering if there's any way I can tell if the previous owner has chipped the vehicle.

I'm asking as I've had many comments from passenger about the vehicles ability to take off and get up to speed. With all things being relevant and my previous car being a v12 5L BMW I never even gave it any thought.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this, and if needed I can do a few time test.

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Woogoo

woogoo said:

Hi, I've got a P38 2.5 DSE and I was wondering if there's any way I can tell if the previous owner has chipped the vehicle.

I'm asking as I've had many comments from passenger about the vehicles ability to take off and get up to speed. With all things being relevant and my previous car being a v12 5L BMW I never even gave it any thought.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this, and if needed I can do a few time test.

--
Woogoo

Click to expand...

On my DSE you can tell its chipped as there is a little blue box on the top of the passenger side wheel arch under the bonnet. This has a cable that plugs into where the fuel injection pump would plug in. The pump then plugs into the other end of the cable. It then has a tube coming from it which T's into the intake manifold pressure line.

Pics probably say it better than words...






There are other types of chip though. Im pretty sure you can get the type you actually plug into the engine management ECU as well. I think if you had a DSE without a chip you would know it. They feel sluggish and when I was searching for my P38 and we test drove one without a chip we found pulling away from junctions etc a bit interesting as the thing just seemed so slow to pull off.

HTH
-Wills

Well in all honesty I'd say mine is slow to take off until the turbo kicks in; but with that said in sport mode I can be doing 40 by the time i get to the lights on the other side of a standard x-roads.

Is this normal? I also feel I have to mention that this is the first ever diesel car I've ever owned (or driven) so I've nothing to gauge it by.

I have a little blue box on the N/S inner wing on mine and have allways thought it must be chipped because it pulls like a train ,in my old discovery 200tdi i never overtoke any thing but tractors , but my DSE will over take boy racers in tuned up saxo`s and if you talk to those lads they all do 0 to 60mph in 6 seconds .

Well I've had a look under the bonnet and there's no obvious blue box or any other colour for that matter, so I'm assuming that it's maybe a replacement chip in the ECU but again I've no way of telling (even if I knew where the ECU was!).

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Woogoo