Chipping an AUTOart Peugeot 307 WRC 2005

I found this car on eBay quite cheap, and as I had a saloon chip laying around I figured it was time to get a car to put it in.
It was a bit of a gamble as I didn't know if I could fit the chip inside it. But as I've managed to do it on a Mitsubishi from the same manufacturer, I figured I could give it a try. However, when I got the car and popped the body on it, and desperately trying to find a suitable spot for the chip, I just had to give up with the conclusion that it's not possible to fit the saloon chip without destroying quite a bit of the nice looking interior.
I had to get a one-seater chip instead and hope that it would fit...

So, today I got the F1 chip and took a new look inside the car, and this time I found a spot to mount it in! So, let's get started.

Car's body removed

 The place that I found for the chip will be just underneath the hood of the car, i.e. above the car's guide blade. In this spot, the chip can be mounted without having to do any sort of modifications to the car's body or chassis, which makes it a bit easier. The downside, on the other hand, is of course the risk that it will touch the gears on the front axle.

I begun with stripping away everything on the chassis, i.e. both wheel axles and the motor. The wheel axles have some kind of locking mechanism on top of the bearings. These have to be twisted about 45 degrees to get loose.

Remove the bearing locks by turning them counter-clockwise

To get rid of the motor, the connections to it must be soldered off.
Now with everything removed, it's a bit easier to get the work done. I started with drilling the 3mm hole for the IR LED just in front of the holder for the driving shaft's bearing.

Everything in the chassis removed and the 3mm hole for the IR LED drilled

 To get the IR LED kept in place, I added a small amount of glue,

A bit of glue keeps the IR LED in place

Next I added a bit of extensions to the motor cables, and soldered them to the chokes on the motor (the resistor-like things). I let the original cables from the guide blade to be where they were and soldered the green and yellow cable to each of them. Every solder got a bit of heat shrink tube to protect from short circuits. I added some small strips of electrical tape to protect the cables from contacting the axles. The back-side of the chip also got some tape to protect it from a metal mesh in the hood and the LEDs for the driving lights.

Everything put in place. Note the chip upside-down in the front of the car.

To get the chip to be kept as high up as possible (and hopefully not touching the gears), I added a rolled piece of tape on top of it (see picture above) which will make it stick to the inside of the hood. When I had mounted the body, I gave the chip an extra push upwards with a screwdriver through the wheel arc to make sure it really stuck to the hood.


And the final result:

The underside of the car, where the IR LED is visible.

The finished result

Chipping an AUTOart Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII WRC

I finally took the time to chip my Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII WRC from AUTOart.

After popping the hood, this is what's revealed. What one immediately notice is that it's very little space for the chip in here (as the car is apparently not designed to be chipped). Another problem is the placement of the IR LED as the drive shaft is in the center of the car.

I started by removing all the stuff inside the car, that includes both wheel axles, engine, cables and the switch with which you can choose the polarity to the engine. I then drilled the front-most hole to suitable size for the LED.

 The problem here is that the dive shaft will short the LED's pins, so I tried getting it as low as I practically possible, however not all the way down as that could risk it touches something on the track. A bit of electrical tape on the LED's pcb should protect it from shortening...

I found that the chip itself can only be positioned on the left side of the motor and as far to the front as possible. The chip does also need to stand flat on the bottom which requires some cutting of plastic enforcement aligned with the rear-end of the motor's fittings.

 Another problem is the light's pcb in the car body. This must be cut loose in one end and bent back as far as possible to make room for the chip (see blue frame in above pic).

After this, it's just a matter of soldering all wires together and below is the result:

 Underneath you can see the IR LED between the front axle and the motor.