What exactly does a performance chip do?

[Lil Poot 5,000+ posts]

bottom line= chips and tuners are only good for cars with big engines and diesel trucks I have installed chips and tuners in both cars and trucks the ones for gas trucks and cars are A WASTE OF MONEY you will barely get anything out of it.

that first sentence is just ridiculous. the size of the engine has nothing to do with it. the biggest factor in what difference you'll see with a custom chip is how good your stock chip is. in almost all cases its fine for a stock motor, not so fine for a modified motor and terrible for a highly modified motor. i spent about 200 bucks on my chip burning gear, not counting the laptop i use, and i picked up about 20 horsepower. thats some pretty good bang for the buck, i certainly wouldnt call it a waste of money. i actually think it was the best 200 bucks i spent on my car, and was a real learning experience, still is. although i do agree with you that just going out and buying a jet or hypertech chip is a waste of money. basically all they do is advance your timing slightly across the board. i mean very slightly, like not even a noticable difference. there is one other little thing they change that i can't think of, but its nothing that you'll feel any power increase from. like i said, either buy the gear and learn to do it yourself, or pay someone that REALLY knows what they're doing to burn you a chip. some have had good results with ordered custom chips, where you tell them your mods, cam specs and all that and they burn one, but honestly i've heard about as many horror stories, and generally it will cost more than the gear to do it yourself if you already have a laptop.

about the flowmasters, sorry, i should have been a little more specific. for MY application, flowmasters ****. third gen f-bodies have the headers or exhaust manifolds into y-pipes, a single pipe to the muffler, which splits it into 2 tips. the flowmaster 80 series for this application is hands down the worst name brand mainstream exhaust you can buy for these cars. thats what was on my car when i got it, and it sounded decent. after i put on the hooker though, it sounded much better, less raspy. car feels snappier too now. i haven't really researched exhaust for other vehicles, although i BELIEVE in almost all applications flowmasters will not flow as well as something like borla, hooker, corsa, or gmmg. although they do sound nice, especially on mustangs.