if I buy adjustable cam gears for a stock engine in order to advance the cam gears for more low-end power do I need a tune? or will it throw a code?

 

I'll go ahead and assume this will be adjusted and optimized on a dyno since that's the only reasonable way to go about it. The effect may be small- or negative... and hard to measure with "street tuning".

Personally I would not want to pay for a dyno session without being able to tweak fuel and ignition tables and make the best of the setup changes.

 

But if I don't have a tunable ECU and just threw on the cam gears and slowly advance the timing away from stock. Will it throw a code or adjust the advance back to stock?

 

What engine?

K series is immediately going to toss a code for cam crank correlation.

I would bet an OBD2 B20 with a crank sensor will do the same.

 

sad. I hope that's not the case. Cuz I'd like to avoid tuning if possible.

 

And it's a newer b20b4 that was just broken in.

 

Just trying to get more low end power if at all possible.

 

the B20 cam sensor is in the distributor so as long as you have enough adjustment there to set the spark timing within the stock spec the ECU won't "know" anything is different.

I think what you want to try is feasible. I'm curious if you'll get a noticeable effect, but doubtful nonetheless.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll try it next month or so. And see what happens.