i was thinking about buying a performance ecu chip for my 1997 honda civic it has a d16y8 engine and its vtech and i was wondering how much work it takes to install it?

 

Fail. Stop shopping on eBay for cheap crap.

 

^^makes sense...get some bolt ons and then get a tuner to chip your ecu and street tune it if anything...idk if i'd bother dyno tuning a sohc vtec or not...your call though

 

Please don't.

A. Your '97 Civic uses an OBD2 ECU. These are not easily chippable
B. Ebay chips suck. It's going to be some random map that most likely runs really rich with a late vtec engagement point which will make you loose power but you'll feel vtec kick.

Basically if you hate your engine and fuel mileage go for it. Otherwise save up, get an OBD1 ECU, Stepdown ECU harness and get a real tuner to tune it for you, if it's a stock engine with mild bolt ons you aren't going to see any real difference even then though.

 

grumblemarc:

There is a more helpful, tactful way of saying this...ah yes it looks like this:

I don't mind a strongly worded reply, but without directing someone to a better path you're just flaming, and nothing more.

 

ebay doesn't necessarily mean cheap they do sell wiseco and eagle rods on ebay and chipped ecu form reputable people. its the Chinese and foreign crap that circulates ebay that gives a bad name. ebay intakes are fine with a k&n air filter, cheap headers are not a bad buy on ebay either. if he wants to chip its best he jumps down to a chipped p28 with a ebay conversion harness for 40 bux(i have one and never had a problem with it). some places like phearable.net gives good base maps but there are base maps for a reason and need to be tuned not all cars are the same. running a wideband would be a good idea when doing this.