Originally Posted by pelked1

I'll put in $20 for a dyno pull.

I had the Upsolute done in my red Crossfire, and I know something changed....it pinged like crazy in 110 Fahrenheit weather in Phoenix and 91 octane gas! (pinging stopped at about the 65 degree level) That is actually a good thing...it proves that the timing is changed and/or the air/fuel mixture was leaned a bit. I believed the car felt faster, but can't guarantee it.

A thing to also consider: My MPG went up by around 2 mpg, even with the summer-time pinging. This shows that the hp gain is more than just a peak event…it is an across the board gain. A quick calculation shows that this increase in MPG is worth about $2.50 per thankful of fuel...which works out to be a savings of about $70 per 10,000 miles of driving.

I do have to agree, though, that what I felt as being faster could easily have been a placebo effect. Even if a full 15 hp is realized, it would only amount to around 0.25 tenths in the 1/4 mile and 0.20 tenths in the 0 - 60 mph times, or thereabouts. This is not a *big* difference and the general rule of thumb (for cars in the 12 to 16 second 1/4 mile range, roughly) is that you need about a 0.3 tenths of a second to feel a difference.

For a reference to what 0.3 tenths would be like, you can achieve that difference by changing the air inlet temperature by around 70 degrees (1% hp change with every 10 deg F change), which is the difference you car would see from driving on a cool night in the spring vs. driving on a hot afternoon in the summer. Careful here, this difference is with the A/C off, so don't be fooled at first thought when you say, "Oh yeah, my car feels much faster in the winter than the summer!". I believe in general that most A/C units rob around 10 hp, so when you compare air conditioned summer driving to winter driving, the loss is probably close to 25 hp, which is almost twice the hp gain we are hoping the chip will provide.

For me, I felt the Upsolute chip was worth it (even though $400 can't really be called chump change). Even if it really wasn't that much faster, I did realize an MPG gain, and the possible placebo effect of the chip translated into an experience that felt real and I enjoyed every minute of it.