After any mod is it better to reset the ECU? If so, how do you do it?

 

For a long time I beleived what was handed down as common knowledge and was told to reset your ECU after you install your new mod.

You yank your battery wire, get in the car and mash your brakes until the hydrolic power saps what is life of the electrical juice left in your eletrical system/grid. Connect your your battery wire and carry on.

After meeting and working with Frank from for star, he says in todays cars, its a waste. His logic from what I understood is your car will always attempt to adjust and push the performance envelope. And it learns and gains experience, by resetting your battery you lose all that. After following up with other friends in the tuning game, Cars are getting more and more advanced, sometimes the learning / diagnostic phase of a battery reset are getting longer and longer, sometimes you have drive 50 km or more before the car will snap out of pre programmed behaviour. And thats the direction cars going going. Cars are entering the third generation of "stupid" before cars had now brain, then they came with basic bahaviours, now you can even slap a piggyback on them because they will just reset itself or throw a light, which in turn throws off other things.

Getting back on topic.

Once you install your new mod, let it figure out the increased capcity on its own. As we saw the difference when playing with the EVO X on the dyno last month. I beleive this line of thinking vs. traditional thought.

Its only my opinion, I am sure others have another take on it.

 

Yeah cars are getting more and more advanced. But we can only guess how adaptive the ECU of the lancer is to modifications.
EvoSoul based on your research did you try dyno-ing a modded lancer (w/ the sparkplugs for example) before ECU reset and after. Any noticeable difference?

 

I actually in the middle of evaluating the pulstar spark plugs, a reset in the ECU for the Lancers led to a longer warmup cycle to get the results to be more uniform. so warm up run 1 up to like 7 did not have a uniform dyno curve. Vs. making a swap of an intake or spark plugs. much shorter time, and the performance was there pretty quickly. I can see why you would want to do the reset, but when it came down to it. the gains will become apparent very quickly in the warm runs.

You have no idea how many times I said to myself, I gotta get a Dyno machine lol but I think on the dyno day must have done over 150 pulls on different cars, RSX's Lancers, S2000, and the EVO X.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtl4CqqEEVw&feature=user

I cant say to much yet about how the testing is going on the pulstar plugs, but so far the results are promising. I must admit I have been alittle distracted in the past week due to the fact that a 17 year old kid rear ended my brand new EVO X style bodykit. lol but the testing marches on. 1500 km on the plugs already.

Look for a formal review in the engine section by mid month
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAtu8ZbOklo

 

damn that suxxxxxxxxx


yeah i wondered how resetting the ECU really affects small mods such as intake......and exhaust


I would think you wouldn't need to reset the ECU after .....say an axleback exhaust from RRM, works, greddy....etc because the engine isn't taking in any more gas or fuel, just helpng the car breathe better at the end of the exhaust system......



Do we need to reset the ECU when installing AB exhaust?

 

that sux. I guess just leave it alone and wait until they can tune them

 

it is safe to do that ?