When in Germany 2 weeks ago at an Audi Driving School I ask one of the Audi folks about chipping. I was told that Audi has had black boxes in all Audis for the last 2 years. They said that Audi would be able to read the data and tell if you had so much as rechipped the car, drove it a couple of miles and then put the car back to stock. Some of you may be playing with fire on this one. Sorry for the news from the horses mouth.

<br>They also said that about being able to read the true mileage and whatever. Not true, just a ploy to scare people into not chipping.

Lets all deny this one until Audi starts voiding some warranties, right. The person I talked to had no reason to lie about this one. He has always been truthful regarding anything I have ask. I'm not going to take the chance. I'll wait for the S4 instead. Anyway, what effect does all that extra chipped horsepower have on a gearbox and drive line that were intended to take much lower loads. That question really scares me. A new drive line for an A4 is sooooo expensive, about $10,000.

so why did they 'chip' the 1.8T engine to 1800hp?

i am betting if u have VWTOOL or VWPRO u can probably erase the code, and play dumb.<p>i don't think there is a separate "black box" or telemetry unit other than the engine management computer<p>comments from those with VWTOOLS???<p>1996 a4 2.8 qms

Hell, they'll even provide you with aftermarket suspension upgrades if that's what you want. A couple of months ago they fully modified an A4 - chip, lowered suspension, 17" MSW wheels - the works, and had it for sale! <br>

The drive train on these things is built very conservatively. I very much doubt that 40 or 50 hp is going to make it fly apart on the highway. By the way, any car will fall apart if you consistently put your foot to the floor and beat the living hell out of it. With a liitle common sense you can extrapolate the above to complete this thread.

I have a number of friends who are engineers. I am not saying this is exactly the way the A4 is built but it seems to be a common belief between them that when they are designing a part for something or whatever, you design it to do the job properly and then increase it's durability ten fold to minimize the possibility of failure.<p>I am pretty sure the driveline would have long-term durability even with a 1 bar chip. No engineer or engineering team at any car company wants to be responsible for manufacturing a flakey part so I am sure they do the same.<p>TGB 1999 1.8T qMS<p>

what you're saying is that:<p>Audi has put some technology in the car which will report back to Audi about something I've done to a piece of my personal property. That strikes me as an invaision of privacy.<p>If Audi knows I've chipped (and they don't need black boxes, they can open the ECU and look) they would still have to prove that the chip caused my radio to fail in order to void the warranty on it.<p>Clearly they could inverst hundreds of thousands of dollars into a second "black box" to monitor changes to the ECU. Considering the investment divided by (the number of cars chipped divided by the number of cars manufactured) it seems a poor way to spend your money.<p>I would think that a better method would be to have the dealers check the ECU on every car with a blown engine/turbo and/or transmission. This information, along with a chipped/not chipped flag is stored as a database and serves as a court admissible record to show that "chipping causes the following failures, you honor".<p>I would bet that your source is telling you the truth as he knows it, but that what he know may not be real.<p>As a non-Audi aside: several years ago, Microsoft was accused of trasmitting a list of all installed software on a machine during the registration process of another software component. The uproar was quite load (if I recall correctly). People have a thing about thair own property spying on them. (Credit cards notwithstanding, of course ;-)<p>Alex

I gave my car a quick squirt to 7000rpm, It hit Redline, Ignition Cut out came in for a sec. Checked ECU with VWTOOL, and presto a logged error code.<br>Engine exceeded maximum revs!<p>

As an engineer myself, I can say it is true that most products are overengineered. Anything that is critical or expensive tends to be designed to handle higher loads than it is "rated" for. This is generally refered to as the Factor of Safety. If something is designed to handle, say, 200 lbs. and you don't expect it to have to deal with more than 100 lbs. then you have a factor of safety of 2. <br>Different things have different F.S. though. Bridges often go up to 10, but most things don't rise higher than around 3. I'd suspect that the transmisson in the A4 is built to a F.S. of 2 - 2.5. Does anyone have more definitive info on this?<p>Brian<br>brian@graphiteria.com

s

Reeves Imports. They also sell Porsche, BMW, VW and Land Rover. They provide great service, and what I thought was really neat was when I took the A4 in for the first service the loaner they provided me was a chipped A4! I bought the A4 for 6% over invoice. Within the next few months I'll be ready to trade in the 325ic for something else, and I will buy from Reeves again. My sales guy was Jerry Harris. <br>

Tell that to all Yugo owners!

My friend that works at Audi, he says that the fuel injectors are rated at something close to 253 horses for the 1.8T. I don't think Audi is sitting there thinking, hmmm Honda has all this crap modified out of them, but them Audi owners, they would NEVER buy aftermarket mods... no no no. Get a clue! They design their systems with high tolerance so that we can buy aftermarket parts. It's the aftermarket that is going to drive the sales of this car, don't you think they know this?!?! That engine is bulletproof, because they know that if all it takes is $170 to get that engine to cough up about 40 more horses, we are going to do it. They have thought about that already. Also, they paid all this money for the research, tooling etc.. don't you think they are going to put high tolerances in it so all they have to do in about 3 years after the first car rolls off the line is change their own ECU and resell that car with say 180 horses? Get a clue. the dealers and manuf's know all this. They expect you to chip your car. <p>Albert