Alright, I'm running out of ideas when it comes to this. I've recently acquired this vehicle through a trade so I'm trying to figure out exactly what the previous owner did.

At around 3-3.5k rpm's, my car begins to spit and sputter... and runs like a pile. It only happens at partial throttle, before vtec engagement. In first, if I hammer on the gas it will break up around 3-3.5k and then engage vtec, and it won't sputter through any of the gears following.. until I start driving at partial throttle. When I'm not in vtec, it happens in every gear.

So I decided trying some of the obvious things such as: new sparkplugs, new cap and rotor, new distributor, new fuel filter, injector cleaner. I am down to my final two guesses, ignition timing or ecu related problems. I've heard of people having "break up" problems when the o2 sensor starts to go bad, so I took the chip out of the ecu to disable them. The chip read as a stock p28 basemap, which I know isn't correct for a b16b haha. The part that worries me also, is the condition of the ecu (pic shown below). Is it possible that the ecu could have damage to it and cause my car to run the way that it is, or is it a combination of the o2 sensor, basemap and maybe even possibly ignition timing? I don't know at this point whether or not to purchase just a new chip to program (because this chip won't let me reprogram it) or get a whole new ecu? All opinions welcome; I really want this car to run right.

Sorry about the image, if you click on it you can rotate it so you don't break your neck.


Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vWLPHVRvEY