Diesel engine chips are often a hot topic of discussion and as you can imagine there are differences between them.
It's the most commonly asked question we get asked trade shows – What is the difference between a STEINBAUER and the other chips?
In fact STEINBAUER is actually not a chip at all, STEINBAUER is a computer module, which is something that is completely programmable by us. Lets start with an overview of how the common rail system operates. We have a supply pump which supplies the pressure to the rail and this is a common source of fuel for all four injectors hence the name. This runs at a very very high pressure up to 1600 bar and the injectors are controlled by the ECU. This technology allows the engine manufacture to have multiple injections and multiple injections allow us to get more horse power out of a smaller engine and reduce the noise of what is commonly known as diesel knock.
Here is a brief explanation on the difference between STEINBAUER and most other modules we call pressure boxes. So the way a pressure box operates is it works with the rail pressure sensor. This sensor sends a voltage back to the ECU which is the brain of the system. The rail pressure box plugs into this and alters that voltage to the box. – It tricks the box, it thinks that the rails pressure is lower than what it actually is. So it tells the injector pump we need more rail pressure so the injector pump jacks up the rail pressure. So the rail pressure thats actually in the rail and what the ECU is seeing is 2 different levels.
Now to get some more power out of the diesel engine we need to get more fuel in and there's 2 ways we can do that by pressure or by time. The STEINBAUER doesn't raise the pressure at all, it actually plugs into each injector with its own separate harness. It is another ECU but works in conjunction with the existing ECU. So with the pressure the same the STEINBAUER will lengthen the opening time of each injector so therefore you're getting some more fuel into the engine creating power but doing it differently.
If you've got more pressure in the rail then one that it is all the time even at idle and two that it would actually have the potential to do some damage to componentry like cylinders. Once the rail pressure is up the rail pressure is up through all driving ranges that is how it is. Most of these smaller diesel engines now have 3 injection the pilot, the pre and main injection. If you increase the rail pressure you get more fuel at pre injection, pilot injection and main injection.
The STEINBAUER because it only works with the main injection we're only adding some extra fuel during the main injection cycle which is when the piston is starting the already travel down in its power strut to its a little bit like pushing a little bit harder on your knee when you are riding a push bike. We are giving some more torque but the pressure is not going to high. Both pressure box and STEINBAUER achieve extra power. with the pressure box you are more limited as to what you get out of it and the main reason is that this little pump is only capable of pumping so much fuel, so the more you try to achieve power out of it and the higher you try to raise that rail pressure you get to a point where this pump cant handle any more.
Because the STEINBAUER has a fuel map in it almost identical to what the vehicle ECU fuel map is and that is a map that we can change we can change all these different parameters to achieve more torque down low or more power at top depending on what the person or that particular model vehicle requires. So we can generally have no problem in achieving a good 20% power increase out of a vehicle and even sometimes more torque down low. But you find with the rail pressure box you tend to be a bit more limited around 10 to 12%.
In conclusion:
PRESSURE BOX: fairly simple electronics, easy to fit however we have more pressure on all the components in the system and we are limited to the amount of output we can achieve.
THE STEINBAUER POWER MODULE: Computer box, made in Austria, good German electronics, doesn't have any extra wear and tear on the components and has a far more achievable power output at the back wheels of the vehicle. We've had 30 years in the fuel injection industry and have worked with a lot of products other than the STEINBAUER module and we took the effort to travel the world and find STEINBAUER which was a unit which exceeded our expectations and we can pretty well do with it what we want.