First of all, I have to say thanks and give props to Adam C for teaching me to not be scared to open the hood of the 3rd Gen I own, and to hook me up with some mods! I now have a switch to turn my fans on, a manual boost control valve (drilling was required!), and a really sweet (and cheap!) stock air box mod. Y'all people gotta check out this man's heat shield and air box mod! When I first brought the car over, I was at 11 psi with only a Greddy Power Extreme cat back. After the manual boost control and air mod, the lowest we could get it was to 11.5 psi. Then, Adam did some drilling on the boost valve and it's now back at 11 psi. How safe is that with everything else stock? Adam wants me to upgrade the ECU next, and I was curious as to what would be good for my set-up...Adam has a M2 ECU and told me that it was supposed to be very modest. That's a good thing! Any other opinions? How high can I safely go without the ECU, and how high will I be able to go with a new ECU without making other mods? What mods would those be? I know, I know, lots of questions...but hey, you can ask Adam if ya don't believe me - I'm kinda clueless with this car!

 

Well, as far as I know, 11psi is OK, but I wouldnt try modding it anymore or driving it hard on a cold day with out a new ecu or someway to get the boost down even lower.

ECUs... If you just want something that will allow you to run more boost, M2 would work. Im going to go with the Apexi PFC so I have more options, the the M2 ecu will be great for what you want to do it sounds like.

Anyone else want to chime in or tell me im wrong? I hope im on the right track here.

 

Well, I think one good thing is that it was pretty cool out when we were messing around with it to get it down to 11 psi. My curiosity is in upgrades vs. stock 10 psi. My understanding is that you can do all the mods you want, and as long as you keep the psi at 10, you are safe. How is the car faster then with the mods? I ask because when we made these mods to my car to "go faster", the psi increased. Why are some people then running at higher psi?

 

By increasing the air flow, you are making more power at the same PSI. For instance, 10 PSI on stock twin turbos is NOT the same power as 10 PSI on a single turbo.

As far as the ECU upgrades are concerned, it really depends on your goals for the car. If you are looking for some more power with reliability, the reprogrammed ECU's like M2, Pettit and GForce (Rotary Performance) will be just fine. Power FC's are nice if you can have it tuned but I wouldn't, and don't, recommend running a programmable ECU unless you are going to get it tuned on a dyno.

As noted, the stock ECU does deliver plenty of fuel at 10 PSI for most bolt-on mods, but I wouldn't go crazy about that. It doesn't take much to have the boost spike or creep and then cause you some serious problems.

As far as other modifications to the car and keeping it safe, look into a downpipe and an aftermarket radiator. Just talk more with adam c, he won't steer you wrong.

Good luck!