Little '99 C230K still has it in her

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golden1245

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Joined
Sep 6, 2011
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211
Car
1999 C230K Sport
Smoked a e46 328Ci convertible by about 10 car lengths on the freeway coming back home today! Easily pulled away from him from 70-100, not sure if my car would have done so well if it wasn't chipped.
 
Where did you get it chipped and what was the performance improvement ? I may be interested :)
 
AFAIK chipping a supercharged engine is the same as chipping a normally aspirated one ... minimal gains (compared to chipping a turbocharged engine).

To get more boost you need mechanical changes (pulley etc.) to spin the supercharger faster.

:dk:
 
You can chip the 230k engine :D but it means ECU surgery on the early cars, you have to open up the ECU and piggy back another chip in, you gain about 10% BHP improvement so takes it to about 215 bhp, if you do the pulley mod at the same time then you are touching 230 bhp. Pounds for power its a questionable mod as would cost you ~ £875 for 33 bhp :dk::dk:
 
Hey! To answer your questions, I chipped my car through a company called "Upsolute". I did this modification about 5 years ago.

What I remember them doing is copying the information on my ecu into a memory and sending this piece of information to the Upsolute company in Germany? or Austria? and then they sent it back and the guy reflashes my ECU with the new settings. The technician asked what other modifications I had on my car, and all I said was a free-er flowing panel air filter.

I felt an immediate difference after a few days with the chip along with the KN filter. The throttle was much more responsive and held the revs longer before shifting, and also shifted quicker. According to their website, for the 2.3 liter C230K, Upsolute claimed that the chip increases torque to 230 lbs/ft and horsepower to 200. I thought that this was far fetched at first but they also claim that the chip is much more effective on forced induction engines. What sold me was my friends audi and VW gti's 1.8 turbo engines that saw medium sized gains after only getting a chip. I did this when my car had about 50,000 miles on the odometer.

I never dynoed my car afterwards, but the "throw-you-to-the-back-of-your-seat" acceleration was a marked difference from before, so I felt it was worth it. 0-60 on the stopwatch back then gave me a time of 7.3 seconds. (course my car has no spare tire, no heated seats, and no driver side electronic seats. It's really a barebones C-class) For $500 (at the time) i felt like it was a good mod for the price. Fuel economy stayed about the same and only suffered a very small decrease. The Kleeman and ASP pulleys ($2000) were too expensive and required relocation of the airbox etc and the headers were just out of the question ($800) Of course with a pulley and headers, the 230K is capable of nearly 230 horsepower and making it to 60mph in the mid/low 6's.

I do wish I installed the pulley and headers back then (I mean i spent $3000 on other things eventually anyways over time),I think it would have made the C230k a true sleeper, able to even compete with the newest bmw's and mercedes. But with mileage so high (145,000) now and the fact that they don't even make pulleys for this car, modifying the engine doesn't make much sense =X. I'd rather just spend money on maintaing the internals and its appearance. My car needs so much preventative maintenance soon uggh.

sorry for getting off track, feel free to take a look at the Upsolute site at:

www.upsolute.com

Now the company claims an increase for the C230K to 220hp and torque to 260lb/ft. I think those are some very lofty claims, but who knows =X
 
I did my chip through upsolute aswell... what a coincidence :)

My car was slightly quicker than e46 330ci's. There was a time where I had a run in with a 630ci and We were completely equal up to stupid speeds, but i think his engine was a strong one
 

I contacted Upsolute in the UK and was told to expect
+15bhp and +25Nm.
with the remap. Anything more needs a pulley upgrade.

They would come down to my house to do the job and it would take about 2 hours.



 
+15 bhp is about 7%? Would you really notice that?
 
Get a group buy going :p

I thought Upsolute had stopped 'chipping' and just did flashing now ?
 
Unless anyone has some hard factual data, I don't believe any of these claims for chipping.

I reckon you've all been skanked.
 
For forced induction cars, it works. For N/A it is a bit of a waste of time imo - but you can get better throttle response.
 
If you don't do any modifications getting a supercharged engine chipped is not really worth it... DM is right

I had quite a few mods going on mine before I chipped it, and I told them about it too so they didn't use the generic file. They monitored a few things on my car before altering the EMU values, essentially a 'live' map, it did take them a long time, because my 230k was an old one so they needed to remove the EMU and replace with a new one.
 

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