Thread: p38 after market chip

what year is the P38? i.e. GEMS (1995-1999) or Bosch (1999-2002)? if it's the former, do a search on this site for chip upgrades..there's a fair bit of info

the pinging is also possibly due to faulty knock sensors....

have you tried running it on 98 octane to see if that makes any difference?

Originally Posted by Hoges

what year is the P38? i.e. GEMS (1995-1999) or Bosch (1999-2002)? if it's the former, do a search on this site for chip upgrades..there's a fair bit of info

the pinging is also possibly due to faulty knock sensors....

have you tried running it on 98 octane to see if that makes any difference?

i always run on 98 its a 99-02

Bruce Davis (Davis Performance Landys) does a chip upgrade. I have one in mine.

thanks heaps Ron... by the way where bouts are they n how much?

Having been frustrated with the performance of my MY99 (Bosch) P38, I went searching for a solution: To the best of my knowledge there are no chip upgrades available anywhere for the 99-02 Bosch EMS. The design of the Motronic 5.2.1 system which replaced the GEMS made it too difficult. The upgrade Ron refers to is for the GEMS system.

If you search for Bosch Motronic 5.2.1 on Range Rovers in the P38 forum there's a detailed explanation on this. In short, the BMW engineers who developed this with Bosch went to great lengths to make it a 'proprietary system' and in doing so made it virtually impossible to remap. And even if the system is remapped you can only make a max. of 12 changes and then it "locks" (= stuffed... ).

The motronic 5.2.1 was also used on the BMW318 series engines and has caused frustration to tuners in Europe as the 318 is/was popular for classes of touring car competition there.

There may be some "piggy back" systems which operate in conjunction with the existing system but none of these to my understanding bring about the significant changes one can expect for example from tweaked turbo diesels.

Hence the periodic enthusiasm for a GM LS1 conversion (the "holy grail") or more recently the availability of a kit from the UK enabling D3/D4 TD2.7 /TD3 engines to be transplanted into the P38.

There are a couple of supercharged 4.6 P38s around...which to me seems like a reasonable way forward given the low comprsssion of the standard motor.

sorry for the long post...!

The haltech was a useful addition to my GEMS and would enhance the BOSH as well (piggyback system). It brought about 30KW at the wheels after a Dyno tune. There are some graphs on this site somewhere that P38rover put up.
Cheers,
Remy

Hi Remy, wish that were the case, regretfully however there appears to be no Haltech listing as yet for the Bosch P38 even on a piggyback arrangement
http://files.haltech.com/downloads/i...ist15nov08.pdf
cheers

EDIT: for a comprehensive write up of how BMW and Bosch engineers did their darndest to protect the Motronic 5.2 system from tampering see http://www.318ti.org/notebook/motron...ing/index.html

I cannot argue with that after reading the article. Thanks Hoges. However, after rewiring the haltech recently and going through the ECU wiring diagram for the GEMS it would be interesting to test this as it wouldn't surprise me if it could be made to work. The haltech does nothing to the original tune or the chip from the ECU perspective, rather it takes the output signals from things like the fuel load, MAF, and spark timing etc and outputs a different tuned version to the car after the ECU i.e the computer thinks it is delivering the correct sensor values and is still receiving the correct engine values from the various sensors. There is no flashing or changing the tune in the chips etc. Anyway cannot really be sure but....

Also haltech themselves don't offer a map for the Gems but i have downloaded mine should anyone ever want it.