Hey Mike,

I read a couple of weeks ago that superchips was working on a chip that will help the lightning give better fuel mileage. How is this coming along?

I am interested, because as may remember I have orderd a 02 L. According to the dealer I should get it in April-May 02. I will be ordering a superchip for it immediately upon arrival, that is if this chip that I have in my 00 lariat cannot be re-programmed to work in it.

Question? Will this program that you are working on yeald the same amount of hp and torque as the regular program? Secondly. Will the L run efficiently on 90 octane gasoline with a super chip?

I also remember that you were selling products for other tuners , what go fast goodies will or do you have for the 02 L.

Thanks in advance for your response.

 

Hi Fowl,

We'll really need to go over all those details off the message boards here, but briefly...........

We are not officially working on a "gas mileage chip" for the Lightning, there really is no such thing as a pure "gas mileage chip" per se. I have posted that a program that I have been testing did add 2.0 mpg on my Lightning, I went from 12.27 mpg to 14.27 mpg exactly, but it was not designed with maximum increase of fuel mileage as the primary goal, though that was one thing we were monitoring because of the types of changes that were done, as I felt that we'd see a bit better mileage, and we did. It's still a performance chip first and foremost.

That particular program added about another .5 mpg over what the normal R9N5 Superchip program generally does to the Lighting (which is usually about 1.5 mpg if driven *conservatively*), again, purely as a by-product of the increased spark advance. We're also talking primarily about cruising mpg, not in-town driving of course. Also remember that this was achieved with conservative driving, and only 2-3 full-throttle bursts over the course of each tank of gas, somewhat restrained driving for a Lightning. We are the only ones with that particular program, we have not released it to anyone, Superchips is not going to release it, though in time, we may allow some of our customers to use it if they want. As far as power, that program has not been formally dyno'd, seat of the pants impressions are that it feels about the same as R9N5 at full-throttle, it does have a bit more throttle response & power noticeable on part-throttle in the mid-range. It would take some good dyno pulls to see if it actually makes more absolute peak horsepower.

No, you cannot run 90 octane gas with the "standard" Superchip performance program for the Lightning, you must use at least 91 octane or higher. Of course, the 2002 Lightning doesn't exist yet, so we don't know if it's going to have changes that might affect that, but by & large, 90 octane is not enough. In fact, from the factory in bone-stock trim it requires the use of 91 octane, and this is clearly pointed out in the Lightning owner's manual that a minimum of 91 octane is required. We can make a custom program to allow you to run it on 90 octane, but of course you are not going to get quite as much power gain. What I would suggest is to do like 95% of our other Lighting owners do, run the 2-program Flip Chip, and that way we can have a program tuned for 90 octane if you need, and then another more aggressive program for when you have access to better fuel, or just whatever combination you might want.

As far as what other parts we have for the Lightning or any other vehicles, we are of course authorized for JDM Engineering Lightning parts & we carrry other parts as well, far more than are appropriate to mention here one by one, so just give us a call at your convenience & we can go over all of that in detail with you.

Have a great weekend,