F56 JCW w/ Racechip GTS
 

So a little background first:
I purchased my '16 JCW back in May 2018 and immediately added the DINAN Sport that I bought off the previous owner of the car. Since day 1, the butt Dyno said it had a little more than stock in the low to mid range but nothing crazy. I liked that I could easily remove it for the free scheduled maintenance at the dealer. I also had plenty of problems with the app used to change the settings on the box. it would have trouble connecting, never had any sore of way to confirm what setting you were in, and the boost gauge never worked for me. I tried using 3 different versions of android (N,O,P) as well as IOS and still no change. in January, I got the car down to Detroit Tuned and ran it on their Dyno, peaked at 206 WHP which from research has showed me that's about what stock baselines will run. that being said, I did not run a baseline on the car without the sport so if the calibration on the dyno was wrong ( i trust they know what they're doing though) then it could be giving some gains, Though I am convinced the chip is stuck in regular sport mode because the app sucks and doesn't work with my phone.

Decision made, I pulled the trigger on the RaceChip after a good friend put down 160 WHP in his base cooper with the last generation of the chip ( RaceChip Ultimate)

Bonus was, the chip was on sale ($100 off). I also found a code online for an additional 15% off so ....
REG: $599
Sale: $499
Discount: -$75
Total: $424USD (~$560 CDN)

It just arrived last night and I will be installing tomorrow evening. Going to go for a rip with no chip before installing, then again after and see what the butt says. The car is currently in winter storage, but its supposed to be in the positives this weekend (Deg C) and the club is doing a run to the Toronto Autoshow so why not try it out before the end of the 30-Day trial period.

In the future, I will be getting some hard Dyno numbers from the Racechip. I visit friends in Detroit quite often, so next nice weekend we have that I am down there, we will do some more pulls. nice part is, the racechip has a "0" setting which is stock tune, so I should easily be able to do a pull in that mode for a baseline, then crank it up and see what it can actually do in the real world.

Does anyone out there have any experience with the GTS, or any recommended mounting locations or methods? the clips and zip ties they include don't look too sturdy for me.

Cheers,

I have also ordered the Racechip GTS for our JCW. Since its full winter in Norway, I have not mounted yet. I would very much like to hear your experience.

Interested in your results:popcorn:

I used GTS racechip for almost 1 year ...
and I never had a dyno
what I see, in the turbo gauge, the maximum level show 1.3 bar, condition map 7 with octan 98
I know, the stock jcw f56 is 1.1 bar ...

and if you REMAP ecu with manics or else , they say can reach at 1.5 bar ...

Was this with a separate boost gauge or one running off OBD or in the OE Chrono Pack? If it is off OBD, or the OE gauge, I think the reading would be inaccurate.

Anyways,
Got it installed this weekend. One thing to note is that Cable 'A' goes to the boost pressure sensor, and Cable 'C' goes to the Map sensor. these use interchangeable plugs so they can be plugged in backwards. the instructions that Racechip sends is unclear on this. I initially hooked them up wrong and I popped a couple codes when I started the car. it ran, but much quieter than normal as ECU was running the engine at min power. this was with the blank plug in and not the racechip. once racechip was hooked up (initially though problem with blank plug) car wouldn't even start. on noticing that that the new wires at boost pressure sensor had 3 wires and the OEM harness had 4, we swapped the cables and car started perfectly with no codes.

Let the car warm up and went for a drive to home depot in setting "0" (stock) to zero the butt dyno (i've been driving my old R50 as a winter beater so needed a good calibration haha). after getting some heavy duty velcro and securing the chip to the top of the battery cover (only place where a chip this large would fit), we dialed it right to "7".

HO...LY...****!!!!

definitely a large bump in power through the entire rev range. car pulls hard right to redline. be ready to shift almost immediately as i was at redline way faster than expected. lets just say this car will put me in jail territory before i even make it to the end of the freeway ramp. I also have never been able to spin tires in 4th at 80kph. I can now haha.

One thing to note is that along with this increased power, there is also an increase in lag time. I believe this is due to the chip itself, as they are coded to only give the additional power when it is demanded so that they can improve fuel economy while regular driving. this means it takes a split sec to engage the chip.

All in all, I am happy with the purchase and will check back in the spring with some more feedback and Dyno results when they are available as the car is now back in her winter slumber.

Cheers,

Sounds good! What I always wonder when I read some of these testimonials is why don't people just get a true ECU Tune? Takes a couple hrs, you can even mail yours into the dude and put it back on, no zip ties and all that crap. About the same price too. And you never read about any problems like the disastrous Dinan Sport clip on box. I've said before the guy who did mine said half his customers already had bought a clip on box.

Because the piggyback is removable, resellable and nothing gets overwritten by dealership software updates. Easier to install and it provides more than enough power for most people.

Besides that I can't think of a good reason.

BTW I have used both Dinan products and would hardly label them as disastrous.

separated boost gauge , i use defi gauge and duell AG frogkit ...

u must to replace it with a sports tire, otherwise you will easily burn out hahahaha ...

1st i use falken 225 then i change with neova ado8r yokohama ...

next target is eventuri intake ...

I went with the piggy back box as my car is still under warranty so I can remove it if it goes into the dealership. As stated above, It also doesn't get overwritten by a dealer software update. The other thing for me at least is that I plan to continue to build this car once out of warranty and to get the most out of the ECU flash tune, you need to find dyno time and it is tuned for those mods, so as soon as you do something else you need to retune at a cost. now i'm not saying you wont see any benefit without a retune or that it's 100% necessary, but the whole point to a ECU tune is get it to be as optimal as possible. the piggy back I know is not the optimized result so it wont bother me as much if its not optimal. I do plan on going full ECU tune at some point, just not now. when I do I can sell the racechip.

(EDIT: I'm also hardly needing HP at the moment, its a daily driven car that sees track and autoX time and now has an alleged 290HP on tap .... To be confirmed)

I have heard of plenty of problems with both DINAN products (experienced it with the sport) As I understand it, DINAN is not even shipping the elite at this point because of failing wiring harnesses (2 sources in the local club have heard this directly from DINAN)

Stardust, I already have "sports tire". these were 225/40-18 Potenza RE760 sport. Have 215/45-17 RE-71R tires for track and AutoX. Good to know its a separate boost gauge though.

any plans for dyno?

Yes, Will be on the dyno in the spring at Detroit Tuned. Will do a pull with racechip in setting "0" which is stock tune, then a pull in setting "7" which is highest mode on GTS. I will hopefully have the 2 graphs overlaid on each other and will post the results here. This is all a few months away though as the car is in storage for winter. Likely looking at early to mid May.

I can't wait for it, please share us the result ....

someone local! Michigan is such a dead zone for modded f5x's.
keep me posted when you may be going. It may be useful to compare multiple tubes. My pro tuning kit is going on next week and I still have my jb4.

I have a NM tuner. I had 93 in it when I installed it. Been putting in about 10oz. Klotz octane booster per tank of gas. During the 2nd tank of booster I notice the lag was gone. I assume it was due to being able to use more timing.

I'm outside of Toronto, but have a few friends in Royal Oak so am there somewhat often. I'll try to remember to PM you when I set a date. There's going to be a JCW R56 coming along with me as well that also just got a Racechip. It would definitely be interesting to see the difference between the Racechip and the JB4 since it's one of the more popular ones. I may be able to convince a Clubby JCW with the DINAN Elite to come along as well. would be good to put some hard numbers online for them all from the same dyno on the same day. I know it would have helped me make my decision haha.

Hmmmmmmm Interesting, I'm only running 91 as that's whats common here. There's 94 at some stations so maybe in the spring i'll give that a try and see what happens.

I had the Racechip ultimate in the past on my car. Per the technical support team with Racechip this was expected and as designed behavior for it. We have 93oct here and I had it from day 1 until selling the Racechip. It seemed to be much worse when going from light throttle to WOT. If you eased into it then the lag was pretty much nonexistent.

Not a fan of that "design behavior"

I believe the reasoning for this is because the chip is designed to only manipulate the sensor signals when under load and relative to that load. when there is no load, the chip sends the regular signal straight through. this way you can have the extra power available anytime, but still get standard or improved fuel mileage when highway cruising. though i suspect the "lag" is the chip taking a sec to realize you want a ton of power and then giving it.

one of the reasons I sold my Racechip. If you turn down the Racechip setting the surge will be less noticeable.

I will say comparing my logs of NM, Dinan sport, and Racechip Ultimate the Racechip had by far the safest AFR of the three. The downside on the MCS with a tuning box only altering boost and not adding fuel is the ecu will continue to target ~14.5:1 AFR which depending on the other mods and ambient temp you are right on the edge of detonation. This is not as big of an issue if installed on a JCW because they run a richer AFR.

This is true, I am on a JCW so not really a big concern for me. the racechip also plugs into the MAF and MAP sensors so in theory, it could manipulate those values as well in order to get the car to add more fuel. the DINAN Sport definitely cant do that, though I believe the elite can. The JB4 should also be able to do this. in the future, I will definitely be going full ECU tune, though I want to check some more boxes off the mod list first so I don't have to keep retuning.

I can confirm the old Racechip Ultimate does add fuel. The new Racechip GTS is pretty much the same as the old ultimate but the components are better.

JB4 only connects to the TMAP and MAP sensors but they must be altering the temp reading to a certain extent because JB4 consistently hits 13.2 to 13.5:1 AFR on a MCS

Just wondering what you use to log AFR? OBD Bluetooth adapter and a phone app? I'm looking around for a good adapter to use with the torque pro app so I can do some logging in the future.

The elite plugs into the MAP sensor on the intake manifold, the MAP sensor before the throttle body and the fuel rail pressure sensor. Been running mine for about 4k miles and love it. There is definitely a little boost lag compared to stock depending on how you are manipulating the gas pedal, but its been working great.

It would be awesome to have these products are compared with hard dyno numbers, although I'd honestly just dont want to know when it comes to my own car haha.

Before I purchased JB4 I was using a OBD Bluetooth adapter and logging with DashCommand.

JB4 with the Bluetooth adapter makes logging a piece of cake.

On my 2016 I ran a JB4, Helix DDC, AWE exhaust and VIP intake. ARF's were 13.1 at WOT.