Your thoughts/feelings after installing the mountain chip...

[ESM]

Ray

The mountain chips don't really make any difference at all at low throttle openings. The reason for this is that the chip operates by modifying the control of boost from the turbo. There are two underlying factors

1) The ECU sets the boost target based on throttle position - you get the power if you want it or economy (relatively) it you prefer. The boost target scaled proportionately with throttle opening from 25 to 100% (in other words the boost target will be zero at 25% throttle opening, 0.45bar at 62.5% and 0.9bar at 100%). I could program it to come in harder but why spin the turbo really hard against a partially closed throttle? Its stressing the system for no reason.

2) Turbo are spun up by exhaust gasses and you produce greater volumes of those with a lot of flow through the engine i.e. high throttle and rpm. A turbo can not produce much pressure without a reasonable amount of throttle opening and revs.

So below 2500rpm or so and maybe 60% throttle don't expect any material difference. Above that you start to notice it and at high throttle openings its very apparent - the AB comparisons enabled by the switcher really allow you to appreciate it.

[RayD]

Thank you for that Alan,

Ray

[GeoffSmith]

As you can see Ray, it's a pretty sophisticated bit of kit, unlike the offerings that go by such names as BBR and MBC - these are put together from the part bins of various plumbers and electrical merchants.

[RayD]

I’m sure you’re right Geoff, and having the skill to manufacture them is nothing short of a miracle.

I understand how it improves performance at the top end... over and above what it’s already doing.

My confusion came from people saying how it had ‘transformed’ the car, as though when you set off you would instantly see a difference in acceleration, and you’d continue to see a difference all the time, regardless of what you were doing, when in truth I think you need to be knocking on a bit before the extra power becomes evident.

Round here the opportunities of driving flat out are few and far between.

The ElanScans will be interesting to compare... I wonder if a chip sometimes makes up for a falling off in performance as the engines deteriorate with age.

I also wonder if turbos generally come into play when the throttle is disproportionally opened. If they do it will account for me never seeing much activity from mine.

Ray

[Elanlover]

Personally, I think it can be summed up like this:

Driving normally around town, on the highway, etc. = little to no difference at all (good as it doesn't decrease gas mileage)

Drive with foot to the floor at any time with the RPM above 3K or so = "transformed" car (acceleration and power is significantly increased)

[algirdas]

Dear All:

My car is back on the road after the air conditioning ordeal of a lifetime. During the prolonged downtime period, I also installed the mountain chip and switcher and pre-cat eliminator. My car currently has the Elysium (at least I think it does) chip, switcher, PCE, Dave's short shift and a 2.25 inch PECO exhaust (but I think it is defective since it is really, really quiet). It is a California Fed.

Keep in mind that all of my comments are based on operating the vehicle at 5,000+ feet above sea level. Routinely the car is up around 6,000 to 7,000 feet with passes at 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Could it be? Mountain chips in the mountains?

After the hiatus, on the maiden voyage, the car was boosting (as indicated on a very suspect gauge) WAY past one bar. I didn't think the gauge could physically go up that high. After the ECM finished trudging up its learning curve, the boost settled back down.

The car starts easily when cold. Idles normally and is very docile at low speed. Full throttle in a low speed turn will break loose the fronts. Mid-range is very beefy. Third gear is very entertaining. In all of the gears, you need to watch the tach since I found myself getting up around 7,000 rpm much faster than before. It is no exaggeration to say that the mountain chip has contributed toward a profound change in my car's performance (in conjunction with the PCE, exhaust and K&N filter).

In sum, the engine's mid-range is much beefier now. It pulls much harder than before. Passing on two lane road is a blast. Just come up behind some hairy-legged, granola munching, Birkenstock wearing dame driving a Volvo wagon (estate or shooting brake), drop it into second, mash the throttle and enjoy the look of utter disdain on her face as it gets smaller and smaller in your rear view mirror.

Right now I am truly content with my car's level of performance. At altitude I have no worries about boost creep. But the writing is on the wall should I ever head toward the flatlands. Porting the wastegate is "on the list".

In closing, Alan's chip project is a worthwhile upgrade to any Elan. The instructions are spot on and installation was very easy, even for a ham-fisted bozo like me.

Sincerely,

Algirdas

[XiPHiAS]

Yesterday I went out with the Lotus Club for a nighttrip (with roadbook). This event was organised by Lotus Ostend (B). It was my first with the "mountained" Elan

At after ~30min we need to stop for a train and the person behind me stepped out his car, came to me and said
"Damn, what did you do to your car... I need to try & go VERY hard to can follow you"...

Detail ... the car behind me was an Exige S MKII

At the end point the owner of Lotus Antwerp came to me and said : "Man you go fast with your Elan ... that car is not normal"...

So I think ... the mountain chips are "worth it"

[rip]

I previously had a stock setup & had never touched the ECU before.
The chip has been in there for about a week. It was a real breeze to fit:- It took me about 45 minutes including mounting the switch, routing the cable and cutting a slot in the ECU's case. Mine has a round cable instead of a ribbon so I could not just jam it in.

I have only tried out the V4.5 settings so far. At first, it seemed very hesitant on boost above .65 bar, so I checked my base timing & found it needed advancing by 6 degrees. Once corrected, things improved enormously. On Kilimanjaro setting, the boost is much more progressive and easier to control. Because the boost cuts in more smoothly, it did not feel hugely quicker than the stock setup...until I looked at my speedo I am having enough fun with Kili at the moment to not experiment much with the Everest/Elysium settings (although I have tried them). I don't always drive with my foot hard down either, but still Kili is a huge improvement.

I have one of the new switches, with small buttons to move between settings rather than the rotary switch. This is great for my 1499/9929 hybrid chip because, when I fit my O2 sensor, I can make the open loop settings unavailable by re-programming the switch (which is quite easy).

Even if you don't want more boost or the ability to switch mappings, the extra controllability provided by a Kili or Everest chip is still a great upgrade.

[XiPHiAS]

so I checked my base timing & found it needed advancing by 6 degrees. Once corrected, things improved enormously.

how, where and when do i change that ?

[rip]

so I checked my base timing & found it needed advancing by 6 degrees. Once corrected, things improved enormously.

how, where and when do i change that ?

Clicki the Wiki

[CJ101KT]

I was looking at getting myself one of the highly recommended Mountain Chips for my Elan. I loved the idea of increasing the boost from stock 0.65 to 0.80 or 0.90 pushing the power up to a lovely 200bhp.

Thing is after taking the car out today I managed to catch the boost gauge reading and on full throtle it is already hitting what seems to be 0.80 ... a smidge over the 3/4 marking on the boost gauge.

Does this mean that the ECU has already got an upgraded chip as its unlikely to have a receipt in the service book as it is appears to be a fairly simple DIY job. Will ElanScan tell me what chip type is being used or will I need to acutally take out the chip from the ECU to find out?

[Doug]

I'll guarantee you that you can use ElanScan to make a "prom dump" to a file, and ESM can tell you exactly what chip is in your car from that file.

You could have a chip already or you could have an inaccurate gauge on the dash. ElanScan can also tell you the true boost the engine sensor (different from the dash gauge) is seeing to see if it is truly increased or not.

[GeoffSmith]

I'll guarantee you that you can use ElanScan to make a "prom dump" to a file, and ESM can tell you exactly what chip is in your car from that file.

You could have a chip already or you could have an inaccurate gauge on the dash. ElanScan can also tell you the true boost the engine sensor (different from the dash gauge) is seeing to see if it is truly increased or not.

It's worth checking for a manual boost controller as well Chris.

[rip]

Elanscan will give you a PROM id. If you can post that, one of us will tell you what chip you have.

[Monty]

If you`ve got a bigger bore exhaust then that`ll give you more boost

[Doc Fizzix]

For what it is worth, I am most likely the only person that did not like the chip but this is in no way meant to diminish the work that went into making the chip or the chip its self. I had a CA version ECU and I was never happy with the performance of the chip in my ECU and I am not sure if it was just because of my version of the ECU or just the chip its self. I prefer the feel of the mechanical boost control value. The strangest thing I can comment on had to do with combining the chip and the MBC in my car, the chip by its self in my car did not work very well but the chip combined with the MBC was a rocket. Doug burned me a couple test chips to play around with and I tried to find out why my chip was not working well but I never could isolate the problem. I started thinking I had a problem with my ECU and that was causing the problems I was experiencing with the chip. I may have to try the chip again on my new ride and see if I get any different results

[F1 LOTUS]

After fitting an early prototype version of the Everest chip to my otherwise stock CA car, the performance increase was barely noticeable even though the boost gauge (and elanscan) showed increased boost, after fitting a 'squish-free' exhaust downpipe, porting the wastegate and unclogging the 140K mile-old precat...it's a different car

[John_W]

Just to confirm what F1Lotus has said about fitting a Mountain chip not necessarily leading to maximum possible performance if there's something else wrong with your car.

All the chip does is produce extra boost. OK, it does it in a cleverly-determined safe and controlled way, increases the fuel cut-out level and (in the V5) also alters the air:fuel ratio, but what I mean is that the chip's main job is to provide increased boost, and if Elanscan shows that it provides this then it's done its job. To make use of all this lovely extra oomph and allow the Mountain chips to deliver their potential, the rest of the car's set-up needs to be correct. Just fitting a chip does not magically fix all that's wrong with your car.

To add two further examples to F1Lotus's:

a) My own car saw little performance improvement after fitting one of the early UK SE chips. Elanscan showed that the chip was producing the boost exactly as it should, however performance improvement was marginal. The main problems were base timing and plug gap. Once they were correctly set, it went like s**t off a shovel. Following an increase in exhaust size from the standard 2" to 2-1/4" it went even faster (as Monty says).
b) Andrew Ennis's S2 also showed stifled performance although again Elanscan showed the S2 chip to be producing boost levels far higher than normal. In this case the problem was a precat which was well and truly clogged with 11 years of claggy grot. The solution was cleaning it out (of everything); Again, a larger exhaust produced further improvements.

I don't mean to imply that any of the above were the cause of Doc's disappointment, as I'm sure he's been around Elans long enough to know what to check to optimise performance, but I wanted to add to Brian's comments.

John

PS: Nice to see the word censor's back in business. It doesn't like "s**t". Hmmm... wonder if it's worth trying "shite" instead. And can you still say cockpit?

[Doc Fizzix]

I don't mean to imply that any of the above were the cause of Doc's disappointment, as I'm sure he's been around Elans long enough to know what to check to optimise performance, but I wanted to add to Brian's comments.

All good points. I did have the pre-cat problem corrected but the main-cat was original along with the pipes all the way back. I was planing on putting on a 2.5 system all the way back but sold the car before the work was done. I would like to try the chip again on my new Elan and it is also another CA version ECU, this will give me a good comparison to form my conclusion.

[CJ101KT]

I'll guarantee you that you can use ElanScan to make a "prom dump" to a file, and ESM can tell you exactly what chip is in your car from that file.

You could have a chip already or you could have an inaccurate gauge on the dash. ElanScan can also tell you the true boost the engine sensor (different from the dash gauge) is seeing to see if it is truly increased or not.

It's worth checking for a manual boost controller as well Chris.

Cheers guys ... I will run ElanScan and see what I can achieve. Hoping to have a little ASUS Eee Pc laptop to run ElanScan on this week ... will be so much easier than my large full blown laptop lol. Will let you know how I get on.