Chipping the ECU
 

has anyone chipped their 2.0d from 177ps to 210ps. was it worth it?

I noticed this on another site E90 post; Although it relates to a 120d would it be as effective inan E83 X3

have been running a Spider tuning box on our 120d M-Sport for the last 6 months.
I have always had remaps on my cars, and would be happy to use any of the usual suspects that everyone else on here uses.
However, I sold my 335i just before a 3000 mile trip in the Summer down through Germany, Switzerland, Italy and back home through France, this was with a week at the bottom of the Alps at the Italian Lakes, obviously not being able to take the 335i was a real bummer. So as the 120d had to step in I thought it better to get the thing singing before setting off.
I spoke to a couple of the guys to see if fitting me in that week was possible but they were all booked up, so I started looking at tuning boxes that were available, I have used Tunit before on a 320d and a 1.9tdi A4, both seemed OK, added a little bit of pep but no where near as good as a remap, not as smooth and used a lot more fuel overall unless really taking it easy. Also had to have two units replaced because they were faulty, but think that was just bad luck as I have not heard of any other problems. I looked at the boxes from the big companies like Hartge etc. but they are £1000+ and don't seem to offer anything different to the others really.
I had heard good things about Spider from my father in law, he said the lads on his forum had seen good results and were very impressed, so I called them and had a long chat with them about what it does and doesn't do, their box has a nice little feature that when the car is not under load and cruising it cuts fuel back a little, but as soon as you press the throttle all the extra gains kick in, so when you are just pootling about the consumption climbs quite rapidly, I will believe it when I see was my initial thought!!

I ordered the box on the Tuesday night at 4pm and it was here by 9am the next morning, I went outside and fitted it, took no more than 2 minutes, it snaps in top the factory harness, nice and easy.
There are Jumpers on the unit, which allow you to adjust the settings, or you can leave it where it is which is in what they call their "Adaptivscan" mode. This monitors RPM and load and puts it into economy mode, as soon as you plant your foot it switches to performance mode (0.01 second delay).
Driving the car this is completely seamless, the only way you can tell it is in economy mode is by looking at your MPG computer.

I have always been a little disappointed with the 120d Auto for consumption, around 34mpg round town, and no more than 40 mpg on a run. I set off on my trip for Italy the next morning and had a steady run down to the Tunnel, sat pretty much at 80 mph all the way down there, with 3 of us and a fortnights worth of luggage the car returned 47 mpg.
But most impressive was the performance from 30mph onwards, overtaking was a complete breeze, once you had your foot down the whole car just felt so much more alive, it had gone from a nice little sporty hatch into something a bit special, even with the family in the car laden down with the essentials needed for a holiday sat by a lake, like first aid kits, cans of food in case of emergencies, hair straighteners, shoe trees, step ladder and all the other crap women insist on taking with them, the car still felt a lot lighter on it's feet than it had for the previous 9 months of ownership!

Once in Italy I went out on my own, empty car and sat nav was all I needed for a fun day out, up into the mountains and you realise just what a great car the 1 series is, it is so well balanced, the seat position is just perfect and the weight of the steering and the big chunky wheel suddenly make complete sense when you a darting round the mountain passes. All this greatly enhanced by this small black box plugged into the car, the car is so nimble with the extra bit of poke, it really did feel seriously impressive, I had a nice little 10 minutes with a Swiss guy in a new S3, we stopped at the bottom of a pass and had a bit of a chat, he was amazed I was in the little diesel and thought I must have been in a 130i as he was having trouble making any distance on me, although his S3 was going to be remapped when he got back from his trip so he wasn't loosing too much sleep!!

The impressive thing for me was when just driving normally it is as smooth, if not smoother, than with the car in stock form, it feels like there is more torque but you never feel the car is a little twitchy like I have done with other tuning boxes, it feels more like a proper re map.

I have now had this thing on for over 6 months, seriously impressed, I see 38/40 mpg round town, so up around 5/7 mpg, and easily see 47/50 mpg on a run, up around 10 mpg.

I know some people will always go with a remap and I totally understand that, but some people want the option of not playing with the ECU, being able to put a lease car back to stock etc. etc. and for those people I can't recommend this unit enough.
I bought a 320d (177bhp) Sport Touring this week and spoke with Mike at Spider asking about a box of tricks for this car, he said they have just sorted it out and it was using the same PCB and connector as I am using now, so for £30 I can send it in and he will update the software for the new car, which is superb!
There is also a 5 year, transferable, warranty on these units which is also excellent for when you want to sell it on.


I never usually recommend something in case others are not as impressed, but a couple of people have driven my 120d now including a BMW tech and they have all given a big thumbs up, so I thought I would.
After taking the car in for a service and not having the unit on for a few days made me realise just how got this thing is, the car felt heavy and lathargic in comparison. I love

http://www.dieseltuning.co.uk/diesel_tuning/car.html