chips

BlackMark8

Registered
I cant find any chips for a mark viii on B.O.C - can anyone give me a direct link? how much do they run for? ive been desperate to see what it will do at the track. maybe work out a chip/paint 2 for 1 deal jamie ! lol jp
 
wow $325 ? Waay out of my price range. Driller, I know you got one - how much time did the chip alone knock of your 1/4mile track time?
 
Chip alone is likely worth 4 to 5 tenths in the 1/4 mile ET.

If you think the chip is expensive, don't go for a dynotune. ;)
 
wow $325 ? Waay out of my price range.

While it does sound expensive, you have to consider that if you called an SCT dealer and wanted to purchase a BLANK chip the MSRP is 200-230 dollars.

So the person putting the tune on the chip is making "chump change" compared to the amount of work that goes into tuning a mark 8.

FWIW: if the tuner made 125.00, that would be roughly compensation for TWO HOURS of labor at current labor rates, now consider the amount of time these guys spend on the phone with the customer BEFORE they make the sale, easily and hour..
usually they get 2-3-4 calls from a single customer before they actually "make a sale".

I couldn't "justify" tuning cars for 100-125.00's, it just wouldnt' be "worth my time".
Then, any "after the sale support" would further decrease your profit margin.

Personally, the cost of the "tune itself" is cheap compared to the hardware they have to BUY in order to be able to tune your car.

Ask yourself... would you spend..200+ dollars in order to MAKE 325.00? (125 profit but you had to spend 200.00 to make 125?)
see what I mean.

THEN consider the 5-6000.00 dollars that the tuner had to spend to be ABLE to tune your car.
IMHO.. there just isn't enough profit to justify the expense.

Hats off to BOC/Lonnie for keeping this stuff affordable for everyone!
 
and.. whatever you do....Dont buy one that is advertised for "less".

Your going to get substandard tune which wont give you ANY bang for the buck.

The SCT dealers who tune the mark 8's are some of the best on the planet, most of these dealers learned directly from Jerry himself. You cannot put a dollar value on that kind of knowledge, trust me.


Also consider aside from the performance aspect of the chip, if you get one from BOC you will be getting a tune that could very easily "double the life" of your transmission.
My original tranny lasted for 360,000 miles running on Jerry's tune.

Without that tune, I probably would have been thru my 3rd 4th or FIFTH transmission in 360,000 miles.

People focus on the "ET" gains when there is alot more to be considered.

Overall driveability is greatly improved, Fuel Economy is greatly improved if the car is driven with CARE.

Longetivity for driveline components also can be greatly improved.

Of course this doesn't mean that a "tune" makes your car "bullet proof"...but my cars tune definatley made the car "TOMMY PROOF".

hope this helps
Tommy
 
Was your tune by jerry or you? lol thanks for the input man, ill just have to try and save it up. But i have dreams for this car ! If i stumble on some money the 4.6 is coming out ! thanks driller & tommy.
 
How does a chip actually help the longjevity of a transmission? I thought chips just opened up injectors longer and dumped out fuel mileage? What else does it do to the driveability of the car? Does it shift hard? I think I need to research chip technology a little more.
 
by removing what is known as "flare" from the shifts and the immense amount of trans slip that is programmed into the stock calibration.

All that slip and flare and only creating heat and wear in your tranny.

A chip does NOT open the injectors longer.

It changes the entire personality of the car, shifts are greatly improved, driveabilty is greatly improved by recalibrating the entire power train strategy.

ALSO the stock PCM calibration has ALOT of extra fuel, way too much extra fuel.
at 5500RPMS at WOT the commanded AF ratio is 10:1 AF...

Recalibrating the PCM removes alot of that extra fuel which means you are making GOBS more power at an AF ratio that is still in the "making power range" rather than the UBERFAT stock fuel table.
 
wow $325 ? Waay out of my price range. Driller, I know you got one - how much time did the chip alone knock of your 1/4mile track time?

You get what you pay for when it comes to performance products. That’s what I tell people that call for pricing and try to bargain with me or price match. There are very few tuners or shops that even work with the Mark VIII. The vehicles are 10 plus years old and most haven’t been taken care of so they become problematic. Tuners rather work on something that they aren’t familiar with like a Mustang. The can quickly move them in and out with little time invested since the market caters directly to them. Also there are no real aftermarket parts for them. The tuners and shops that do cater to them have spent a lot of time to develop products and programming. Time is money in this market just like any other market that does any type of R & D. So $325 is actually cheap for what you get.

Then you have to do your own research on the tuner/shop. Most tuners may attempt to tune a Mark but do they really have any background on them? There are also shops that do cater to the Mark but they use another tuner/company to do their tuning for them. Or they purchase preprogrammed chips from another chip company and repackage and sell them as their own. That off the shelf program may work and then it may not. You can do a lot better with a tuner/company that does their own custom tuning. Ask Tommy about this, he’s experienced it first hand with his PRP. Even the techs at SCT couldn’t set him up with a good program to start from since these cars are so specialized and few.

Each program I build is custom built to the customer's requests and or per our discussion of the vehicle's needs. They have to fill out a specification sheet so I know exactly what the vehicle has. Then once the program files are built I burn them into a chip or program them into the handheld programmers. This is why we call them custom programs. These are not ready made programs that most chip manufactures like Superchips, Edge, Jet, Hypertech or Diablo use that one program fits all. We've spent many hours on the dyno, at the track and then on the street over the past 10 years testing our programs to get the results we want. Our performance programs can entail up to and more than 300 changes to the factory programming depending on the year, type and modifications to the vehicle. These changes not only include engine parameters but also transmission and torque converter for automatic vehicles. Removal of speed limiter, increased shift rpm, shift firmness and torque converter lockups (auto) are standard changes in all our programming unless otherwise notified. You can expect better throttle responds, drivability, some increase in mileage, auto transmission longevity besides additional performance.

Tommy mentioned the price of a chip, it’s actually $250. He also mentioned the cost of the equipment and software, expect to pay over $10,000 just for software but let’s ignore that for now and just look at the other costs people don’t think about. First the tuner/dealer’s cost of the chip and shipping to him. He’s got to have storage for these products also so that overhead. Then there’s the time it takes him to sit at the computer and build the programming. Depending on the vehicle it can be anywhere from and hour to say 4 hours. That’s time on the clock. People forget that you are not only paying to the time to build the program but also the time and knowledge the developed over the years of custom tuning these vehicles. How do you put a price on that? Now add the shipping and packaging of the chip. Once you put all this together you are actually getting the first program for nothing. You basically paid for the chip and you get a custom program with it. The tuner/dealer really doesn’t make anything until after the sale of a second or third program that the customer purchases. 9 times out of 10 the customer only purchases 1 program when it comes to any type of mail order. This is why there are not that many mail order custom tuners. There’s no money in it. The tuners make their real money on dyno or street tuning besides builds.

Then like Tommy mentioned the customer service and or after care of the customer is additional time spent. I have had days where I just didn’t get anything done at all because I was on the phone the full day with before sale and after sale customers. That’s time taken away from programming for mail order and tuning/building at the shop and time is money. With a custom tuner he’s got to deal with the customers after the initial programming whether it’s good or bad. A lot of times a custom mail order tuner will end up with a customer that no one wanted to deal with. For instance; the customer has a worn out vehicle with failing or broken parts, CELs going off or he’s installed some performance parts on the vehicle that don’t work together or not installed correctly. He takes the vehicle to his local shops and they tell him he’s got problem and it will cost said amount to fix it right before the tuning. The customer won’t listen to these shops, doesn’t want to spend the extra money to do it right. So he goes with a mail order company such as mine. Now when he places his order he doesn’t disclose any problems with the vehicle and claims it is tip top condition. After he gets the programming and his vehicle doesn’t run like he expected he’s on the phone, email or posting on the forums that the tune he got sux. In the end the custom tuner has spent hours to several days dealing with this and losing money. More often than not it's the vehicle and not the programming. So when you say $325 is a lot of money this should put it in perspective. Here’s an example. http://www.blueovalchips.com/index.php?action=What_Not_To_Do


Now there are the Internet (whore) wholesale companies that also sell mail order programming. They buy 100 – 500 chips at a time and end up paying a substantial less for each chip. They specialize is a few models and so only purchase the software needed for these models. If they get an order for some other model vehicle than the packages they have they contact the parent company to get a base program. Now the models they cater to they have been supplied by the parent company with base programs for different octane levels, NA or blown. So they then get an order for say an 04 Mustang GT and all they have to do is pull up the off the self programs they were supplied and then program them into the chip. Takes all of 3 minutes and they send it off to shipping. There’s no custom programming involve in this type tuning. You usually get 2 or 3 programs with these companies at a low ball price. The MAP for a chip is $299. That’s the minimum we can charge for a chip. These companies will supply you with a chip and multiple programs for that price. They can do this because they bought the chips for an extremely lower price than the custom tuners can and then they have no R & D involved in the programming since they are using off the shelf programs supplied to them. These programs may work and then they may not. If they don’t, that’s too bad most of the time since there is no real customer service after the sale you are stuck with what you got. I know that a lot of these places the person putting together the programming doesn’t even know anything about tuning. They are just pulling a program from a folder and programming it into a chip or device.
 
Last edited:
...These programs may work and then they may not. If they don’t, that’s too bad most of the time since there is no real customer service after the sale you are stuck with what you got. I know that a lot of these places the person putting together the programming doesn’t even know anything about tuning. They are just pulling a program from a folder and programming it into a chip or device.

Been there before. :mad:
 
Lonnie,

Thanks for the explanation on your chips. I've got some maintenance things to take care of on our Mark first, then we'll definately be giving you a call.
 
Ask Tommy about this, he’s experienced it first hand with his PRP. Even the techs at SCT couldn’t set him up with a good program to start from since these cars are so specialized and few.
.

What happened was my Local SCT dealer that sold me the software couldn't build me a tune for my car, they COULD email me the stock tune over and over and over.

So I got a cool piece of software that I could burn 4 copies of the stock tune onto a chip!
now, while that was FUN, it did get very frustrating very quickly.

BUT.. I DID have the ability to switch between 4 BONE STOCK TUNES for the paltry sum of $1097.00.

This went on for about a month and a half, because SCT kept telling me I had to deal with the original dealer and SCT couldn't help me.
WTF??

So, I continued to email the dealer back and forth and kept getting the SAME BONE STOCK tune.. but HEY.. I HAD A COOL SWITCH! (sarcasm)

3 months go buy and I call SCT again, this time I got a little more sympathy from SCT after I sent them the tune file my dealer had been sending me.

SO.. 3 months into the nightmare SCT did step up and provide me with a "performance" tune.

Only problem was, it wasn't a performance tune for my 3.73 car, it was a performance tune for a 4.10 car.

Now all I had to do whas.. determine WHAT had been changed to go from 307 to 410, then make those changes to reflect going from 307's to 373's. alot of it wasn't too hard, but there were some things that were very difficult to iron out.

In the end, I was satisfied with the "end result...but.. WOW.. what a hard road to travel.
 
Back
Top