This is merely just a post on curiosity. I just recently turboe'd my 97 civic with a b18 and I'm going to get it tuned at a dyno here in a week or 2. (I'm waiting on my chipped ecu) and I have a little understanding on tuning a car ( keep in mind I'm not going to I'm just curious). a while back my buddy had a turbo civic and tune it himself through chrome and I remember he retarded the ignition timing through chrome. I was always curious but never asked. when you adjust that through chrome (say 1 degree per pound of boost) did he also have to adjust the engine. like can or distributor?

 

Simple answer, no. Ignition timing is mainly adjusted via the software.

Head to the engine management forum to discuss more

 

thank you I was always so curious and it was just bothering me I will have to take a look in that section

 

Only thing that is done with the distributor is syncing the timing to the ECU via timing light. This should be one of the very first things done.

 

Even before attempting to start tuning the ignition map in the computer.

 

well shouldn't the distributor already be synced with the ecu since it was time correctly before? forgive me if I'm not understanding

 

Again. the ECU is going to look at OEM based mechanical timing, (the presumption is we're talking about using an OEM OBD1 ECU) just like any NA car, which is about 16*. If it weren't for that, the car wouldn't turn over and even operate normally, you'd hear the engine rotate as though something is wrong; ignition spark would be off, making the car struggle to stay rotating, etc.

So, you go by base mechanical timing, because the ECU is automatically looking for OEM-based timing events. You'd perform these steps whether you were modified or not.