Jeeps are wonderful cars with a colorful history.
There’s a small secret among Jeep owners and that secret is a performance chip. Usually, if you want to improve the performance of your Jeep, you would have to take it to a mechanic and have them do a tune-up of the engine and other components. That can be time-consuming and expensive to do depending on what you want to be done to the car. If only there was a way to do this performance work without leaving the house. Sure, you could have the mechanic make a house call, but he can’t bring a dyno testing machine with him! Well, is there a way to cut out the travel time, the expense, and the mechanic altogether? Yes, there is! And that way is through the use of a performance chip!
Performance Chips
Performance chip tuning has been around for many years and these chips have helped to improve performance in cars. Back in the day, you still had to take your car to a mechanic to have them install the chip on the ECU logic board or onto the ECU itself as a daughterboard. Thankfully, times have changed due to technology and simpler components to install the chip onto your car. These days, performance chips can be installed through your OBD-II port under your dashboard. This port should be familiar to you as this is the port where you plug in a scanner tool to read error codes for check engine warning lights and you can also read your performance data in real-time with a high-end scanner tool.
The Process
Today’s process to performance chip tune your Jeep through the OBD-II port is a simple process. There are three tiers of performance chips to choose from with more options and stronger performance in the higher-priced chips compared to the lower-priced ones. Once you have your chip in hand, you can plug the chip into the port and push in the reset button on the chip for around 10 to 15 seconds. Then you start up your Jeep and drive as you normally would with the chip plugged into the OBD-II port. You should leave the chip in for around 150 miles before it starts fully working, so take note of where your odometer reading is when you first install the chip.
While you drive your Jeep, the performance chip is changing many aspects of your Jeep’s ECU chip. The ECU or Electronic Control Unit (or Module) is essentially the “brain” of your Jeep’s control system. The ECU controls how your engine burns gas through combustion sensors and air sensors, it’s constantly adjusting the mix for optimum efficient operation. The performance chip is slowly adjusting a new “map” of parameters and operations for the ECU to improve engine combustion for better performance than stock ECU parameters. This means that your Jeep performance will have better gas mileage, more horsepower, faster acceleration response, and other improvements.
Jeep History
Jeeps started out as a utility vehicle during WWII under the Willys-Overland Company of Toledo, Ohio. Due to its stellar performance under the auspices of the Allied Forces in the War, Willys-Overland developed a civilian version of the Jeep after the War under the badge (CJ) for Civilian Jeep. CJ’s remained very popular in the ensuing decades with the high-water mark being the CJ-5 in the late 1970s. This popularity was further heightened by being the vehicle of Catherine Bach’s “Daisy Dukes” character in the popular TV series “The Dukes Of Hazzard”. By this time in the 1970s, Willys-Overland had already sold the Jeep company to Kaiser Motors in 1950 and Kaiser in turn sold it to AMC in 1970. AMC was purchased by Chrysler in 1987 for the Jeep brand name and has been part of Chrysler ever since. This signaled the end of AMC and their brands (Pacer, Gremlin, Javelin, etc.) as Chrysler scuttled everything from AMC except the Jeep. Chrysler has undergone numerous ownership changes since 1987 which could be the basis of its own separate article.
For More Information
If you would like more information on Jeep performance chips, contact Chip Your Car today to learn more about how performance chip tuning can improve Jeep performance.
