Blast from the past

[STF420@comcast.]

Found this going thru some old Turbo Mags.

 

[STF420@comcast.]

 

[STF420@comcast.]

 

[Red Sector 7]

Back in the early 1990s I tried all three of those chips. The Pitbull, Eastern's 'Street Lethal' and Kenne Bell's 'Hi-Lo Pro. The Street Lethal had a crap ton of timing and would only allow maybe 16# boost without audibly knocking. The Pitbull was slightly better but it too had a lot of timing [around 26* I believe]. The best one in my '87 GN was the KB 'Hi-Lo Pro'. I could run 18-19# of boost on pump premium with it and it really hauled the mail. Bell did not alter the timing curves on his chips with the notable exception of the 'Hot Flash'. I found his chips to be very smooth and the car liked that Pro chip. Back in the 1980s-90s the gasoline was a hell of a lot better than it is today in terms of what the cars could tolerate for timing/boost on 92-94 octane. The stock chip with the boost turned up worked fine on the street. About 25 years ago the US Gov mandated the gas companies to reformulate their gasoline. Previously they used high quality stocks and added extra aromatic hydrocarbons to that to bring up the octane. It had a lot better knock resistance for turbocharged and supercharged cars back then. After the reformulated gas came in the aromatic hydrocarbons were dramatically reduced and other chemicals began being added to increase octane and for clean air like ethanol. That allowed the gas companies to use low quality stocks for low octane fuel and just add the minimum they needed of other chemicals to meet the higher octane fuel ratings. With NA engines this was not that big a deal, but for the GN it really hurt the engines' ability to make higher boost on even Chevron 94 [best I have in my area]. These days with a stock chip [not that many use it] and 22* timing 14-15# boost is about all you can get before audible knock. The 1990s was a great decade to have a Buick.

 

[chris romani]

In 1988 I was 17 I had a Monte SS and bought the Hypertech chip I couldent wait to put it in .I paid the Chevy dealer an hour labor to do it (I knew nothing then)and I remember how disappointed I was on the way home with zero improvement.Good Times.

 

[edfiero]

In 1988 I was 17 I had a Monte SS and bought the Hypertech chip I couldent wait to put it in .I paid the Chevy dealer an hour labor to do it (I knew nothing then)and I remember how disappointed I was on the way home with zero improvement.Good Times.

The Monte still had a carburetor. I'm surprised a chip was even available. Yep would not expect it to do anything.

 

[edfiero]

That is a cool ad from ATR, but even with all the info provided, they don't make any HP claims as to what the chip would do for you.

 

[TurboTGuy]

I had the Eastern Performance chip in my '86 GN. I loved that car. Got stolen in '96. Never heard anything after that about it.

Insurance company was pissed because they had insured it as a regular Regal and thought they would pay out like that. When I told them to look at their records again, they found a quote from me that the guy who wrote the policy had written down in the file, " Faster than a Corvette". OOPS!

They ended up paying me as much as I paid for it originally. $19K.

For once, the little guy won.

 

[1986 Buick GX1]

That is a cool ad from ATR, but even with all the info provided, they don't make any HP claims as to what the chip would do for you.

I believe the info is general changes to the Pit Bull line.
I had a Pit Bull street chip and loved the cold start and overall drivability of it.
On long trips with little boost I’d get almost 25 mpg. With lots of boost all the time, maybe 10. Lol

 

[chris romani]

The Monte still had a carburetor. I'm surprised a chip was even available. Yep would not expect it to do anything.

Yep a quadrajet 4 barrel was a nice looking car wish I would have kept it.

 

[Red Sector 7]

The Monte still had a carburetor. I'm surprised a chip was even available. Yep would not expect it to do anything.

I believe the carb and the distributer were both computer controlled. The ECU controlled the secondary metering rod action through oscillation and advanced and retarded the timing. There was probably *some* gain in HP, but hard to quantify unless you took it to the track before and after. Maybe 10-15 HP, as a guess.

 

[THensley]

The SS claimed 180 hp the Buick claimed 245 was there any truth in any of these numbers. 10% gain would be hard to measure with a BUTT Dino
11.30 @ 125 that's rolling out the back

 

[1986 Buick GX1]

The SS claimed 180 hp the Buick claimed 245 was there any truth in any of these numbers. 10% gain would be hard to measure with a BUTT Dino
11.30 @ 125 that's rolling out the back

Supposedly, in development the engineers tested the Turbo 6 at 245hp.
When the 230hp rating of the ‘86 Corvette came out the manager of engineering at Buick released the 235hp number.
In ‘87 the Corvette waited to the last second to release the 240hp number to out do the Turbo 6, however, knowing the Buick was good for 245hp that’s the number they used.

When Kenne-Bell and ATR (Applied Technologies and Research) did their baseline testing, they came up with 264hp. I’m not sure if they dialed everything in before the runs, but that’s what they started with when informing (bragging) us how well their upgrades did.

 

[GNVenom]

I was heavily into chip hacking back then. In 1987, I produced the thumbwheel chip "Ultrachip" for the turbo Buick market. Eight chips in one became a very unique offering. That was the start of Caspers. When that ATR ad came out, it was instrumental into hacking the current chips on the market for me - those claims from ATR were verified thru hacking and the specific data locations were found and noted. This actually helped improve the thumbwheel product. I was fortunate to have the cal-docs in my possession which erased all of those "question-marks" written all over my hack charts from 1986. I also found that ATR did some mods in the program half of the chip (everyone else only modified the data half) and added an anti-copy string of data. You couldn't read and modify the PitBull data unless the checksum matched a pre-determined value, otherwise the chip would code 52. Clever, but it also showed that ATR had access to some very confidential stuff out of GM engineering and no doubt a program engineer in his back pocket, which gave Phil a major advantage in offering performance chips. Still, the performance chip upgrade market was intense and loaded with chip producers. ATR also added a "red herring" string that further copy-protected his work, and was successful in a lawsuit back then. However, in the mid-90s, the cal-docs got published on the internet, and effectively grenaded the chip market. Everyone and their mother became chip hackers. Still, up until that point, I managed to produce thousands of performance chips during those years. Fun times while it lasted...

 

[STF420@comcast.]

I still have a couple of your thumb wheel adapters
So much easier than pulling chips. Works perfectly

 

[JayC]

Fun fact hardly anyone knows. After Phil and Shirley sold ATR, they ended up selling my chips as the later Pitbulls.

 

[GNVenom]

Boy, that chip business was bustling, wasn't it? One of these days, all of us old-timers should all meet at the GSNats, just for posterity....There's still a few of us around.

 

[JayC]

Boy, that chip business was bustling, wasn't it? One of these days, all of us old-timers should all meet at the GSNats, just for posterity....There's still a few of us around.

I keep saying every year Im going to go but something always comes up. Last year my wife had a 10 x 9 mm kidney stone that we were dealing with.

Maybe next year.

 

[GNVenom]

Jay: Yeah, same with me. Always seems it's a go in January, then May comes around and hey, "my calendar is full". We just gotta force ourselves to do it. It'd be a blast! Talking to Ken Mosher, he's keen on the idea. I need to get a hold of Joe Lubrant, drag him out of retirement maybe?

 

[JayC]

Jay: Yeah, same with me. Always seems it's a go in January, then May comes around and hey, "my calendar is full". We just gotta force ourselves to do it. It'd be a blast! Talking to Ken Mosher, he's keen on the idea. I need to get a hold of Joe Lubrant, drag him out of retirement maybe?

Id definitely come if I have enough time to coordinate. We have a lot of animals so it takes a while to line up care.