# 2nd Gen 18 Build Plans



## KRainsbarger (Aug 5, 2018)

I bought this car in mid April, and I alreadly know I want to do stuff to it but money is tight. What are some good mods to do for the ones that don't have a money surplus??


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## Taxman (Aug 10, 2017)

Appearance wise, vinyl wraps for the gold bowties are an improvement for most paint colors and very cheap (huge improvement on my red car, I had the bowties painted to match the car).

Window tint is less cheap. 

For free, you can get more mpg, more tire life, and a bit sharper steering feel by putting more air in the tires. I've been running 51 front 48 rear in my 2016 with 16" tires that are rated for maximum load and speed at 51psi. It sort of compensates for the soft freeway suspension tuning and I'm getting an indicated 48mpg on my only warm weather tank of gas.

For engine, there's nothing you can do but tune it. The computer manages torque, if you manage to increase maximum torque, say with a more open exhaust, the computer will just dial the boost back to get the intended output.


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## Iamantman (Sep 24, 2018)

Taxman said:


> For engine, there's nothing you can do but tune it. The computer manages torque, if you manage to increase maximum torque, say with a more open exhaust, the computer will just dial the boost back to get the intended output.


Is this true? I've seen other say that here but I'm skeptical without evidence. I would be surprised if the computer actively "de-tuned" like that. 

Do you say that from experience or are you just sharing common knowledge?

Thanks!


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## Taxman (Aug 10, 2017)

Common knowledge. 
Maybe @Snipesy or @[email protected] could speak from personal knowledge.


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## Snipesy (Dec 7, 2015)

Yes. The last cars that were dumb enough to make more power by just general tinkering were made in probably 2005-2007 ish. Everything after that uses a much more modern ECM. There are lots of controls based on fuel pressure, torque, different preasures, even the humidity of the air sometimes. It allows the ECM to have a tight control over everything and no amount of removing exhaust and I take restrictions is going to change that.


You can 'lie' to the ECM but that's a whole nother rabbit hole and I have never seen it actually work well on anything made after 2007.


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## Iamantman (Sep 24, 2018)

Snipesy said:


> Yes. The last cars that were dumb enough to make more power by just general tinkering were made in probably 2005-2007 ish. Everything after that uses a much more modern ECM. There are lots of controls based on fuel pressure, torque, different preasures, even the humidity of the air sometimes. It allows the ECM to have a tight control over everything and no amount of removing exhaust and I take restrictions is going to change that.
> 
> 
> You can 'lie' to the ECM but that's a whole nother rabbit hole and I have never seen it actually work well on anything made after 2007.


Hmm that still seems so crazy to me. But I haven't modified any newer cars so I guess that makes sense. But you're saying most cars will offer no real benefit to bolt on parts after "x" amount of time it takes for the ecm to remap the curves? So what does a tune do differently? Are they bypassing that code somehow to keep the change in fuel and timing adjustments permanent?


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## Snipesy (Dec 7, 2015)

Iamantman said:


> Hmm that still seems so crazy to me. But I haven't modified any newer cars so I guess that makes sense. But you're saying most cars will offer no real benefit to bolt on parts after "x" amount of time it takes for the ecm to remap the curves? So what does a tune do differently? Are they bypassing that code somehow to keep the change in fuel and timing adjustments permanent?


All ECMs are made to be universal. They have a massive amount of configurations for changing how it responds. Tuning is about changing those configurations directly. There is no extra code involved and many ECMs (not the 1.4L) don't let you program the software anyway (signatures and all that).


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