Ok, so I go out and buy some Crawfords cats and a 3/8" plenum spacer. Do I stand to see better performance if I then do an ECU reset (meaning the gas pedal pumping).

I thought this was only for the transmission.

 

yea i just put a ztube/ pop charger

should we reset after each engine/exhaust mod?

how could you tell if its a reset by doing the gas pedal thing anyways

 

because the cel supposedly starts flashing when you start the procedure correctly, and then goes out when completed correctly. so if the light never comes on, you didn't do it right. and if it doesn't turn off, you didn't finish it properly. i've never been able to do it (my light never came on).

 

I used to believe in the ECU reset after mods, but not anymore. Because it does exactly that. It resets the values back to nominal, factory settings. This means back to stock flow parameters. Since the idea of modification is to increase flow, reseting will actually make your car slower at first since it is highly mismatched to the new flow values.

Just drive the car normally for the first 5-10 miles using auto shift and some manumatic. Then do some WOT runs. Continue to do some WOT runs a couple times a day for the next 200-300 miles and the ECU will learn all it needs to know on its own. The ECU reset is really only useful for clearing error conditions, not improving performance.

 

Doug at CrawfordZ.com just confirmed this. I just purchased some hi-flow cats from him and he said not to mess with the ECU Reset. He said that's crap and that he has piles of Dynos results to show for it.

If Doug said it, it's good enough for me.

 

I concur.... I can't help but laugh a little when I hear people swearing by the reset. Unfortunately, there is MUCH misinformation out there about the ECU.

 

Don't get too ahead of yourselves. If you have a 5AT it helps performance of the tranny immensely. Apparently what was taken as ECU changes coming from several 5AT owners claims in past years were actually TCU changes.

 

Also the reset affects the pedal position and throttle sensitivity and a different reset recalibrates the throttle body positioning. If you owned the car in 2003 you very well mistook what may have been TCU and other changes as ECU changes.

So what about draining the electricity from the ECU by pulling the battery cables. This car has an adaptive ECU as well, right? - there must be away to clear the variables affecting the ECU output.

 

I'm not trying to totally downplay the need for the ECU reset. I'm just saying that I was told it was not needed after every mod you make. Doug said that your not going to see any noticable difference in performance by resetting every time you do a mod.

For the transmission, I totally understand. In fact, I have already seen the benefits for that.

I doubt that I'm going to see a difference in my performance with my hi-flow cats after I do another reset.

This is my only point.