Thread: Hey everyone! Good to be here!

We gravitate toward Pontiacs - its too bad GM axed the Pontiac line - it is my favorite. I had a 1985 Grand Am (V6), a 1992 Grand AM(V6 - my wife's first new car back in the day). Recently had a 2002 Pontiac Montana (V6). My Impala we traded in for a 2006 Pontiac Torrent (has a zippy 4 banger). The van was recently totaled, so I just bought a 2004 Grand Prix GT about a month ago with 99K miles. The previous owner left his Jenson LCD media stereo in it. Cool!!

It did have a couple bangs on it that I had fixed, and I just replaced the stock headlights with Halos. The stock headlights were frosted over pretty good. Thanks to this forum, I am going to pick up some throttle body cleaner tommorrow, because the car is having that annoying problem where it won't start without giving it some gas.

Thanks allot for the hlpful postings!!

HG

Thanks.

Anything real expensive is oing to have to wait until I get back to work. I'm back to college full time right now. I'll probably do the tail lights for Christmas. Maybe I'll look into a performance chip for now. This one has had some positive reviews: Stage 2 Performance Chip


Also, I tied my halo LED's to the wrong wire. The halo's are on when the headlights are not (when the running lights are on during the day only), so I decided I will tie the halo's into my low beams. One thing that looks cool is that the halo's blink when I lock the car via the keyfob. I was thinking about combining the functionality of both by using a couple of diodes to isolate the circuit that is not on when the other circuit is on...but that would mean the halo's would be on during daylight. BTW, it was suggested to use 330 ohm resistors (1/2 watt) to limit the current going to the halo's so they wouldn't burn out. I found that the 330 ohm resistor decreased the brightness of the halo LEDS too much - by at least 30 percent. I used a 10 ohm resistor which barely decreased the LED brightness.

HG

Thanks for the help. I will look into the maf as well. I appreciate the input!!

HG

Thnx. I really don't know that much about what what can be done performance wise with the car. The link I provided was for an addon that "takes over" some aspects of the data being fed to the ECM and reinterprets the values before the ECM receives the data. I found it on a review site. Well, I guess I better move this converstion to the right place in the forum. Thnx again for the input!!

HG

Originally Posted by Fivefingerdeathpunch

You cant modify data going to the PCM with a chip.

Its either you buy a "tuned" pcm or buy a tuning software and do it yourself.

What is you take on these?

Performance Chip Reviews & Guide for Car & Truck

The recommended chip's manufacturers report to do that. Theoretically, I could see how it could be done with a programmable microcontroller such as the Microcip pic. If the signals coming from the sensor are analog (voltage varies with sensor range) then the analog to digital converter (ADC) onboard the microcontroller could be used to read the voltage via an input and convert it to a digital value. Then an algebraic formula or a lookup table could be applied to the value. The result could be converted back to analog with the microcontoller's digital to analog convertor applied to an output. The microcontroller would be inline. As long as the microcontoller uses a stable 20 Mghz frequency generator, real time should not be a problem. I have done similar things in non automotive work. I used a microcontroller with a hall effect sensor and molybdenum magnets embedded in a plastic impeller to measure liquid flow through a pvc pipe. This application used the ADC onboard the microcontroller to measure the voltage coming from the Hall effect sensor. All I am saying is that it is theoretically possible, and it appears that Performance Chip Tuning Racing ECU Car Chips Power Super Flash has attacked the problem in this manner. The question (for a different part of this forum) is whether or not they did a good job.

HG