Whoaaa I finally installed my injen axle back and cold air intake with mmw headers and now my tc is finally alive. My mechanic warned me to get the car tuned due to all at once modifications how true is that, and if so can the tc be tuned with its stock ecu or due i need like an emanage for tuning. Help for a beginner in the world of a tc.

 

If you just have header/intake, there's no real reason to tune. But you would need some sort of piggyback system.

 

Yeah man, just from those mods there is no reason to tune the car at all really. The stock ECU can handle up to 6psi??? I think from the S/C, of course thats with a reflash but your mods aren't going to give it anything it can't handle. I got CAI, header, s-pipe, cat back and my ECU is handling it just fine. However, it is possible to get a piggyback system if 1)you have the money to blow and 2) if your going to go F/I down the road anyway and just want to get some prep work down :D If you do get the piggy back though I can't imagine you pulling too many extra horses out of it. I havn't looked for this specifically in a thread or anything but maybe if the tune is done excellent, top notch, etc. you may get up to 10whp? Someone with more experience on that will hopefully chime in.

 

From what I've read with that setup you would be running lean and if you wanted to you could get it tuned for a couple more horses; a piggy should help maintain the car's a/f ratio. If you get all that done you would probably be running 160 whp/tq.

 

Thanks for the info guys there is nothing like free information. I was definitely about to blow 500 bucks on greddy's emanage just from the discussion i had with my mechanic with his excuse/theory if im driving it hard i should get it tuned the whole adjusting red lines and air and fuel ratio changing he was quoting me at anywhere between 15-20 horses but he really isnt used to working on scion's a whole lot

 

you would need heavy mods to the head/cams/tb/etc to really get the benefit of that large of a hp/tq increase. I'm not saying that you wouldn't see any gain, but they would be marginal to say the least.

 

what is a piggy back system...?

 

To understand a lot about them your going to have to search this forum for all the info but in general a piggy back system is just that. It piggy backs on the stock ECU of the car. Basically the ECU in the car runs everything, from the engine to your power locks. Well the engine parameters are preset from the factory in the programming. So the car's ECU is going to do whatever it takes to run like it was meant to from the factory. Of course when you put on a turbo or S/C then it is no longer running within factory parameters and the car can not compensate for it correctly. With the S/C there is a flash chip they use to upload the new fuel/air maps and a few other things so it runs right. Turbos don't have that option, so aftermarket companies created whats called a piggy back. Basically the ECU is running the engine, but the new piggy back is giving it fake data if you will, so that the ECU will compensate in that direction that the piggy back wants it to go. So for example, if the piggy back determines that you need to dump more fuel into the cylinders so you dont run lean, the ECU is going to disagree as it should normally, so the piggyback will send the ECU fake information to "trick" the ECU to dump the fuel when it normally wouldn't. That's how it kinda works in a nutshell, however, Toyo, being the smart guys that they are, made our ECU very intelligent, so in other words, it will "learn" that the piggy back is there giving it wrong data over time and when the piggy back goes to trick it, it says no way I'm staying right where I'm at. Stand alones are one of the best options for our car when you go F/I because a standalone has full control of the engine, the ECU is no longer involved. They aren't needed but they do offer more control since the ECU isn't in the picture anymore. Hope that helps, someone that is wanting to go in more detail can explain it better to you probably, but just search around and you'll find a lot of info on them and and what different brands are out there and the pros and cons of each.