Hi guys,

I was thinkin about buying an aftermarket ecu as my first performance mod and wanted to know if this was a good idea... I planned on getting the ecu first because my car is imported so the engine is jap spec which runs on 102 octane while in Australia the highest offered at the pumps is 98. SO i didnt want the car to run rich for long and thought that an aftermarket ecu could tune the car to run on 98 octane instead plus i will be doing further mods to the car in future as well but wanted a place to start...tell me what u think

 

well here in the states we have 91 octane. and the ecu's appear to be the same here and there, so i dont think it matters. good place to start would be a super-afc

 

Just because it's widely available in Japan now, doesn't mean it was back when FC's were made. All the FC Turbos in NZ are Japanese imports and they run fine on 96, coz that's what were designed for.

An aftermarket ECU isn't necessarily a good first mod. The stock ECU can cope with the first batch of mods quite easily as long as the fuel pump is upgraded and the boost is kept down (wastegate porting required). The big advantage the stock ECU has is that the AFM allows airflow mods to be catered for (up to a point), whereas MAP-based aftermarket ECU's must be retuned any time a mod significantly changes VE.

 

octane is not octane...here in germany we also have 102....on base they have the US octane equivalent next to the german octane number...
98 is 95US octane and 95 is US 91 octane and 91 is US 89 Octane
so my guess is that 102 is like a 97-99 US Octane

 

I actually think an EMS is a very good first performance mod, especially when you live in the land of EMS products. While this is not recommended if the cost is a problem, an EMS has the advantages of better gas mileage, better throttle response, superior engine monitoring (AFR, manifold pressure, etc.), eliminates the fuel cut and flooding problems of the stock ECU, and may allow for other features (turbo timer, boost control, e-fan control, etc.) depending on the EMS.

Australia and Japan both use the Research Octane Number rating method. Anyway, octane is just an anti-knock rating, so it has little to do with running rich as stated as the concern of the originator of this post.