I'm so lost when it comes to ecu's and tuning and I really want to learn more about it.

I know I should start to read a lot more to get familiar with it, which I'm going to start doing.

One question that I'm curious about is...if I buy S300. Do I have to send my computer out to get chipped first and to get the S300 installed before I can start tuning it?

Also I have a 92 eg with a b16a2. So is my computer obd1 or obd2?

 

Zeeman, you may step in any time....

Depending on what you want to do with the motor will determine which route you should take for moding your ecu.

The basic easiest way and what works very well for most applications, is to convert your stock ecu to obd1 (b16a2 is obd2 I believe) and get an obd2 to obd1 harness and tune with a program like crome or neptune. Will be way less money than a hondata system.

 

Phearable.net - Electronic Fuel Injection Tuning Solutions - Hondata, Neptune, Crome, Uberdata, Ectune, AEM, Honda Tuning, Widebands, Fuel Pumps, Intercoolers, Turbos, LS/VTEC, ECU Chipping, Chipped Ecus, P28


after reading that whole thing...ull have a better understanding

 

u chip and tune ur ECU to run setups that ur stock ecu cant handle. like say more air from a boosted motor. oih yea but as MPR said u can only chip an OBD 1 ECU (92-95 civic 90 - 93 integrsa) if u wanna chip an OBD2 ECU like a 96-2000 civic u need a special harness u can buy seperatley from the company that sells u a chip.

zeeman can elaborate

correct me if im wrong

 

most people convert to obd1 and use a chipped obd1 ecu (92-95 civics and 92-95 integras) and a program like crome, neptune or hondata to tune.

The thing with hondata is, that you have to buy some hardware before you can get it tuned. Meaning, you'll spend $600 US on the s300 system, then you'll have to pay someone to modify the ecu to accept the s300 system (different than how you would normally chip an ecu), then you have to pay someone to tune it. So to use hondata can be pretty expensive by the time you're done.

With crome or Neptune, you don't need anything other than a regular old chipped obd1 ecu. With Neptune there is a 1-time license fee (per car) to be able to use Neptune on your car. You can get the car tuned 5 times, but you'll only pay the license fee once

Civic_66: your 92 civics ecu is obd1.

 

so changing ur OBD basically u adjust ur air/fuel ratio which increases horsepower ?

 

Changing your A/F ratio is a side-effect of tuning, not some variable you can just mess around with in tuning software. The handy variables you CAN change with a good OBD I + tuning software are fuel maps for different vehicle speeds, engine speeds and throttle positions.

With that map, you can increase or decrease the amount of fuel delivered for any particular situation. The most commong being: got a turbo, lots of fresh new air. A stock Honda OBD-II ECU isn't set up to handle the amount of air a turbo will deliver, so you swap out to OBD-I, probably put some bigger fuel injectors in, and then you need to tune how much fuel those new injectors deliver for the different situations.

A good tune means your A/F ratio for just about any situation runs between 12:1 and 16:1. A bad tune would go outside that range... too low and you're running rich: just dumping fuel that probably won't get burned, too high and you're running too lean: not enough fuel and you'll build up stupid amounts of heat. Both situations are not good for your engine.

Stock ECU's are just fine and dandy for very lightly modified setups (Shortram or cold air intake, headers, exhaust)... it's when you start pumping in more air, or changing your compression ratio with new heads is where a stock ECU will simply not understand what's going on and you won't see the power gains you're looking for.