so i called a performance shop in the area that is a dealer for APR, and turns out that the chip does need to be soldered on to the ECU, so i'm just going to take it over to them next tuesday and get the thing chipped for $399

 

You're going to love it.

You willalso want to upgrade your DV. The stock one will eventually fail, and you'll get a little better performance from the upgraded ones.

A panel k&n filter if you dont have one already, and an better exhaust will also increase the performance more once you are chipped.

 

sweet, yeah the plan is to get the dv, i'm also gonna make heatshilded K&N cone filter setup, and i already have a 2.5" straight pipe from the DP back. will the aftermarket DV be louder? or liek what makes them uhh... 'hearable'?

 

DV and a cone filter setup will make it much louder.

 

yeah it will be more noticable. with the added boost and new dv it should sound completely different than what u got on there now

 

wow it took way to long for that answer. first off... soldering is required... its not hard to do but you just need to be very careful while doing it beacause the posts are very fragile and easy to break off... then your chip is pretty worthless. its easier to just pay a dealer to do it and not too much money either. now you live in colorado so you are obviously getting the 91 octane program right? i had the apr 93oct and when i drove to cali i was pretty f'ing pissed once i reached nebraska and there was nowhere to get 93... car ran like ****. i would go with giac if you have bigger and better plans for the vehicle. you did say it was a project and work in progress right? by the way i still have my apr 93octane chip if anyone on the east side of the U.S. is interested... ill let it go for a reasonable price. make sure you have the aeb engine and maybe we would have to call apr to make sure its compatible with your ecu, but its better to pay less for a used one. its not like they have wear and tear.