My "Dinan" chip -from eBay E36 M3 - BMW Forum

Smoothm3 · 09-28-2009, 09:54 PM

I have been wanting to purchase a chip for my 1995 M3 for a little while and liked what Dinan had to offer so I looked around and found one on eBay supposedly new and "given" to the seller. So I bought it figuring what the heck, it's $50 and I have a 50% chance it will work.

I installed it saturday night and to my amazement (psh) it didn't work. The car would crank and crank and sputter but wouldn't start, I did eventually get it started by mashing the gas into the floor and cranking for a while and test drove it, with minimal results.

I did more research, with no help from the seller, and found out that I needed to synchronize the chip (EPROM) to the car's EWS anti theft system which was the cause of it not starting - I didn't recognize the chip.

So then decided that today (monday) I would take it to BMW to have it synchronized. They tried and tried to do it but the new EPROM would not
take the sync and refused to talk to the EWS thus continuing not to start.

After hours of diagnostics the conclusion was that the chip was faulty, so I pulled it out and put he OE EPROM back in and sure enough it worked, the sad thing is when I did get the car to run it seemed to overall run better without the "Dinan" chip.

Personally I think some guy (unique_auto's) sat at home and made a "dinan" chip with his computer and EPROM burner- but that's just my theory. Now I'm trying to get my money back. Lesson learned.

johnnyBgood · 09-28-2009, 10:10 PM

Sorry to hear about your misfortune, there are certain things you can trust to purchase from ebay for your car, but a tuning chip is not one of them........

jb

german-speed-demon · 09-29-2009, 12:41 AM

swift kick to the melon always solves this problem.

carguy13 · 09-29-2009, 02:54 AM

man that sucks...hope you get your money back.

Smoothm3 · 09-29-2009, 08:35 AM

I had heard of others having good luck with the chips like I bought so I figured why not, the chance was worth the money just not the pain in the ass, It didn't hurt the car at all either so a can chalk it up to "a good learning experience" lol

RoadsterMadness · 09-29-2009, 05:51 PM

As others and I have said repeatedly - DINAN is WORTH the price as they are really the only ones who truly stand behind their products (and make most of them under their own roof). If you want a Dinan chip - GO TO DINAN - it is the only way and they will then stand behind it, re-tune it, etc. When I got the Supercharger for my Z3 from VF and it had bad bearings and a bad impeller with only 2K miles on it - it was I who had to pay to get it removed (whole blower, etc. ship it to CA, wait like 2 MONTHS, pay to ship it back, then pay to have it reinstalled). They did NOTHING except lagh at my misfortune at being STUPID enough to by from them and to rebuilt the same piece they originally sold me. Dinan overnights chips for programming and reprogramming, replaces everything at THEIR costs entirely and stands behind their stuff even AFTER the warranty. Plus, they make GREAT products! No, I onlt work for them in any way, but I wnated to share my own experience. Caveat Emptor- Let the Buyer beware indeed. I hope you can find a way through Ebay to get your $$ back.

94BMW325i · 09-29-2009, 09:10 PM

I recently bought an ebay chip for my 325 for something like $45 shipped, and it runs great. Revs out to about 7000 - 7200 and I definately noticed a difference.

Smoothm3 · 09-29-2009, 09:46 PM

Like I have said before it's a 50/50 chance that you will get a good one or a dud.

The other scary thing about getting a chip off of eBay is that you don't know the true origin. It isn't that hard to make your own version of a chip by modifying the stock EPROM and then mass producing it with a home EPROM burner, hopefully the guy at home knows a little about what he is doing.

The only thing you can really hope for is that it is a direct copy of the aftermarket companies chip, which is very illegal-but that's on them.

94BMW325i · 09-29-2009, 10:52 PM

I went with one that a lot of users on another BMW forum have used, and some of them have 1 year+ of use with the chip, but yes I am sure some ebay chips could cause problems with your car after a while.

Smoothm3 · 09-29-2009, 11:22 PM

The only thing I noticed WHEN I got the car started was the RPM increase. The power increase wasn't solid enough for me to judge as beneficial, I would need a dyno, I thought there was a difference but when I took it out and drove it as stock I don't think there was much of one, the +500 RPM just gave the illusion of an increase - but again, this was a faulty chip. Sounds like you got lucky, and even if yours burns out in a year, who cares $45 is nothing.

I talked to the guy on eBay and he said to send it back and I can have my money back..lets see how this goes...

witeshark · 09-29-2009, 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smoothm3

I talked to the guy on eBay and he said to send it back and I can have my money back..lets see how this goes...

Ah cool, good luck yo!

Smoothm3 · 11-17-2009, 09:59 PM

Follow up:

I just now received the refund for my chip and man was it a pain.

The faulty EPROM chip for the DME was not TOO hard to return, it tool about 10 e-mails and a week of explaining to the slow learning illegal chip manufacturing seller that the chip was defective and why, especially since he didn't even seem to know how to install it. I also explained to him that because of my recent experience with the engine chip that I wanted to return the trans chip, to make a looooong story short, I sent him the chips and he refunded the one but refused the other and kept it. All it took was some negative feedback saying just that and that guy who took days to reply to an e-mail had the money refunded in no time - providing I changed the feedback from negative. All in all it was a great learning experience and a horrible pain in the neck, but no damage was done to the car or it's computers and I got my money back,

thought I could save some money - bad choice.

The reason I write this humiliating story is not to show my lack of judgment because it was based on positive stories, blogs and forums like this, the reason is to show that this is one of the negative sides of the chance taken in buying chips from unknown sources- lucky for my mine ended up ok.