I heard that getting a chip for your car is bad for the engine. Does anyone know of any truth behind this?? And if so, what does it do???

 

Your 98 has a "fixed" chip in the PCM.... you can't remove it. You need a programmer that programs the chip. It will not hurt your engine. You can either get something like the Hypertech that puts a "canned" (and often very weak) program into your PCM, get software that will allow you to program it yourself (dangerous, unless you know what you are doing), or send the PCM to a "mail order" tuner to have the features you want added/revised.

I think you would get better answers if you put this on "LS1 Engine Tech".