yeah its a little late for not touching anything. I have sportlines, sri, straight pipe from res back, all speakers are swapped w\ head unit, and im putting LEDs and HIDs in this weekend. so the resale is probably already screwed for my car, i was planning on running it into the dirt anyway... but i dont want to keep spending money on my car if it wont do anything. just seems like id be throwing money in a black hole.

 

at the risk of starting another "bolt-on" power debate that can be gained on current gen cars there are various ways manufactures "detune", "hinder", "take the fun out of it". depending on the type of car they may either reduce performance by adding bends or decreasing the size of the intake or exhaust system or being very restrictive on the ecu's learning curve. with mazda its most obvious in the ecu (computer) even with full bolt-ons the computer restricts full power for one reason or another (emissions, longevity) with the amount of money you spend on a 3 with bolt-ons the only thing you gain is response and at "full" (throttle body is never fully opened, only 80%) throttle "power".

lets take my car into consideration i have full bolt-ons just short of a lightened harmonic balancer, 2.0 autotradgic. car feels very responsive, more than stock i know that, what can i beat? another 2.0 and 2.3 autos with the same mods thats about it, what does that mean? im the fastest of the slow cars, i hang around civics all with mods (either engine swapped or basic bolt-on), all manual, which one can i beat? not a single one lol. bolt-ons on this car is not worth it if your looking for the same amount of gain lets say as any other car in its class, what you get is response and "feel" like its faster (which it is but not as much as it feels). if you want a wake up call have someone else drive your car and have them give it some gas, you can see how slow it really is (do it in a safe area plz)

 

sorry to keep this going i promise after this you can close this thread lol
but would you say a turbo for an auto is pointless? yeah i know it will cost more and more to beef up the needed points but where do you guys stand on it?

 

oh and 1 more question.. are the places that claim they can tune your ecu if you send it to them are they legit? or just a scam?

 

Turbocharging your (automatic equipped) car isn't "pointless" per-se as you can probably push the output of your engine up to around the 200 hp level without causing your transmission to fail the first time you nail it, however, even at that relatively modest level of boost your transmission is going to take a beating and fail much sooner than it otherwise would have.

Regarding having your ECU retuned, I've heard mixed reports; if the retune is successful you'll have to run premium fuel as the subsystem the new code can use to make a significant amount of gain with is by remapping the spark curve.

 

Agreed