Gains can depends on what kind of modifications have been done to your car. With minor modifications, you may not see huge improvements. We have found there is a bell curve relative to certain bolt on modifications and the calibration. The early SBEC cars can run on the rich side stock, installing headers, exhaust, and other bolt-ons improves the VE and the air fuel mixture generally leans out as a result. What this means is that, depending on the level of modifications your car has, sometimes there are not huge gains to be made in peak hp and torque through the calibration. Applications where ecu tuning makes a noticeable improvement are usually those that involve considerable engine work, especially camshaft changes, ported cylinder heads, and increased compression. When people do engine mods without supporting ecu calibration work, the drivability can be very poor. We have seen many modified cars , SBEC or JTEC equipped, sometimes tuned with piggybacks, with less than acceptable drivability, and often times people just assume that poor drivability is unavoidable when certain modifications are made. Recently I read a post on a VCOA thread about tuning, which stated “cammed cars surge, nuff said”, and I think this vague and open statement summarizes why people are confused about what to expect for drivability. Certainly, depending on the parts combination, there can be a loss of low speed drivability that no amount of calibration work will fix. If the ecu is properly calibrated, and the parts combination is correct, even with a big cam, this can be the difference between having a little bit of two stroking from the cam with acceptable if not good drivability, and driving a bucking bronco, that surges, wants to stall or idle hang, and generally speaking is not much fun to drive at all, which we have seen many.
Of course, we can do the regular stuff, turn the fans on sooner, eliminate skip shift, raise the idle speed, re-map fuel and timing curves, etc, which may be useful for many. At this time, we have not done any 2 bar map conversion to run boosted applications, but plan to in the future.
- Chris
DC Performance: Proven Performance
