Hidden under the plastic kick panel of the passenger floor well is your Mustang's EEC-IV processor (Pronounced "eek-four"). This is the brain of your engine and is often a complete mystery to most people as to how it operates. People work endlessly to unleash every last horsepower from their engines, to maximize their suspension for the best traction and handling, but the average person can't change what goes on inside the little silver box (which if you're like me, that's a good thing ). This is where after market chip companies step in. They claim to increase horsepower by recalibrating the computer to outperform its stock programming. Some say the only gain seen is from the timing advance built in to the chip. My mission was to find out just how easy a chip is to install, and what power can REALLY be realized from it.

Superchips, in Florida supplied a custom burned chip for the test. What follows is our installation procedure. You'll need the following tools and supplies to complete the installation.

• 10mm Socket - For removing the wiring harness from the EEC-IV.
• 8 or 7mm Socket - For removing the EEC-IV cage.

IMPORTANT! Electronic equipment, like the EEC-IV is VERY sensitive to electrostatic discharge, also known as static electricity. It is important that you not touch the pins on the EEC-IV. You may carry an electrostatic charge and discharge that voltage into the processor. It takes over 3000 volts of charge before you'll feel a static "pop" (like when you touch a door knob in the winter), however, it can take as little as 300 volts to destroy a microchip or transistor. Thus you could damage the processor without even knowing it. You should excercise the same care when you handle your Superchips performance chip module. Do not touch any of the connectors on the module itself.

First, pull back the plastic kick panel cover in the passenger side footwell, just forward of the door. You may need to unscrew the first screw of the scuff strip on the floor board to do this. Be careful when pulling the kick panel out, it is held in by a large plastic push pin. Do not break this as you'll need it for re-installation of the kick panel. You may have a piece of sound deadening behind the panel as well, if so remove it to obtain access to the processor.

Behind the kick panel you will see the wiring harness and processor. The harness is held in using a 10mm bolt and the EEC-IV is held in by a plastic cage. Unscrew the 10mm bolt until you are able to pull the wiring harness from the EEC-IV. DO NOT try to remove the 10mm bolt from the harness itself! Be very careful not to bend any pins on the processor.

Now remove the bolt that secures the EEC-IV's plastic cage. It will be either a 7mm or 8mm bolt. Do not try to remove the cage! Once the bolt has been removed you should be able to lift up on the corner of the cage and slide the EEC-IV out of the fender well.

Bring the processor somewhere clean and clear to work on it. Remove the sticker ( or cover depending on year ) opposite of the wiring harness connector. Inside of the exposed port you'll see the EEC-IV's circuit board where the chip will connect to. This is the EEC-IV diagnostic port and a brownish, greasy coating on it that needs to be cleaned off. Use a Q-tip with some alcohol on it and clean it thoroughly. Once it's clean scrape it LIGHTLY with a razor. If metal comes off, you've scraped too hard!

Now it's time to install the chip which is pretty simple. With the opening you just cleaned on the right side as you look at it, push the chip in so you can read the writing. Mine stuck out a little, so I used duct tape to hold it in place.

Install the processor back into it's cage and tighten the cage bolt. Now carefully insert the wiring harness back into the processor's connector. You will not be able to push it all the way in, just make sure that it is seated squarely and close enough that the bolt will pull the harness back into the connector. Tighten the bolt until the harness is all the way down into the connector. DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN! You will see two tabs on the wiring harness that will meet with the edge of the EEC-IV's connector. When these just touch the connector you've tightened the harness enough.

On the street, the car seemed more responsive. Not the kick in the pants of a blower or nitrous mind you, but more than I felt from pulleys (which everyone will agree is a definite HP booster! ). I drove around for a few days, really the car seemed the same except for better throttle response and more power, especially in the higher RPM range. Now to see what it does at the track...

At Milan Dragway, I made several passes, both with the chip and without to compare the two. Superchips recommends returning the initial timing to 10 degrees BTDC with the chip in. I always ran with mine at 13 degrees and I left it there through all of the testing. While this worked for me your timing will vary from car to car so if you try this, be aware of detonation.

The runs I made at Milan brought me these results:

Now, if you look at the results ( granted, the numbers aren't incredibly fast ), you will see that the chip brought the MPH up by about 1.5 mph. If you plug these numbers into the Corral horsepower calculator, given the car's 3200# weight with me and fuel, with the chip I made 243 HP without, 232 HP. That's an 11 HP gain for less than 30 minutes of work. Besides the now obvious gain in HP the chip made the car more responsive on the street and it seems smoother now too when idling. All things considered, I think it was a good modification.