Hi, i bought a used 04 EVO 8 RS last year, the engine looks clean all stock, i'm thinking to start tune it, before starting to modify i have some questions

1. How do i know if the ECU is flashed? is there a way to know?

2. What is first? ECU reflash or install the modding parts.

3. What is better, flash it yourself or purchase a ECU flashed from a tunner, like works, ecutek, VR flash, etc

 

1. If you pull the rom and its not the same as the stock version for your ID (you can get these from activematrix.com or openecu.org) then its been flashed at some point.

2) Really should get some parts first and then do a reflash for the parts. You can reflash at stock and get some more power but its not as good as reflashing after some modifications.

3) Depends on your expertise. If you like to learn and have time then doing it yourself is cool. If you don't have patience or worry about screwing up then get a flash from a real vendor on here.

 

If you decide you'd like the car tuned my rates are very reasonable for the first time ( $150) and even cheaper for future retunes ( $75). Also when you pick up a Tactrix cable (www.tactrix.com) if you dont have a stock map I can provide you with one if you'd like to give tuning it yourself a shot. A wideband should be your first mod if you're going to tune it yourself.

Cheers!

 

Thanks for the answers, help me a lot, clear me a lot los questions, i will start to purchase the mods parts first.

About the ECU flash, when you mean "pull the ROM" is to extract the program file from the ROM, i will need the tactrix cable and the ecuflash software?

Can i know if the ECU is flashed doing some test to the car? like see if the ECU cut the fuel on 8000 RPM or something like that.