Chipping an E30 316i - any benefit?

Chipping won't damage the engine in anyway.

Power increase on a 316 won't be huge, but drivability will be improved and also mpg can be improved.

Ask chippeduk about it, the chips are chip as..... err chips!!

The only thing you might improve with a good quality chip would be the driveability of the car, maybe make it smoother.  You'd be lucky to see much of a noticable power increase, although some will probably claim 10hp gains or something which is not true.

ohh, and it is noticable.

I`m saying that the drivability and performance will be noticed yes.

If you added 6hp too a 300hp M3 you wouldnt notice it but on a lower powered 1.6 you will.

And as BMW sell to a wide market they have to cover different grades of fuel, we have 95+ octane, other countries have as low as 81 octane. If the car was tuned to run on 95+ it would have probably the best power (this is what chippeduk maps the parameters to, so gaining power), but if it was shipped to a country where 81 was only available you'd have a pretty knackered engine thru detonation and loads of 'pinking'. Also they are retarded for poor maintenance.

Japan has 100 octane, thats why performance imports like Subaru Imprezas suffer from pinking and have to add an octane booster to get back up to the 100 available in Japan. A UK Impreza will be tuned to suit UK fuel.

This probably also why BMWs benefit more from a chip/remap as they are more retarded to cope with a wider market then say Peugeot (which don't give as bigger benefit) as these cars are generally sold in europe where octane is better and thus tuned to run on a higher octane.

My car would have run on a low octane fuel, but now I've had a remap it probably wouldn't do well. The knock sensors will adjust timing to suit different ranges of fuels, but there is only so much they can adjust, so a chip/remap moves the adjustable parameters up the scale, so using the higher octane fuel available will give a better benefit and the fuel will be burnt more efficiently.

How would you know that the chip had caused the failure? Unless the engine was either new or had been thoroughly inspected before the chip was fitted. If it was me I wouldn't offer a warranty, at least not on the engine dying. After all Jason could sell a chip by post to someone who's car he has never seen, if the engine was already tired it could be due to fail anyway. I doubt any of the bigger chip companies offer such a warranty either, unless you could prove conclusively that the failure was caused by the chip, which I suspect is very difficult.