I suppose some boring old fart like me has to say it. When I was 20 I thought I knew it all. When I was 30 I realised I didn't know it all at 20 but I did now. When I was 40 I realised that I didn't know it all at 30 etc etc etc. Now I am 50 I must know something ? I have only just joined this forum and find it useful, knowledgeable and most times entertaining. What disturbs me on occasions is all this talk of modifying the cars to go faster, which is understandable - I can see the point of it - but usually topics like this don't mention (hand in hand) is how to increase the stopping power of the car - this current topic is one of them. As for talk of 're-chipping' the car but not telling your insurance company because they won't find out - what are you guys thinking about. If I have learnt nothing else about insurance I can tell you that in the event of any claim (house/contents/medical/car) insurance companies will do everything in their power NOT to cover you. If you increase the power of your car and have an accident and cause serious injury or worse to another party (or even yourself) most likely the insurance company will look very very very closely at your car. I'm a professional electronics engineer - it would take less than 30 secs to establish that 'your' car does not have the standard data in its rom/eprom. Look at it from the insurance companies point of view ? - they can sit back and relax, pay out ?500,000 when you make a claim for someone you've maimed or they could spend ?40 and get an engineer to look at your chip. So, now you've hit someone and they are lying dead on the pavement and your insurance is null and void.
As I say I'm sorry to be an 'old fart', I know its easy for me to say it when your my age and you only pay ?300 a year for insurance, but I was young once. Don't cheat on your insurance - you may be on the receiving end one day.