Originally Posted by VTBimmer535is
Being an auto has nothing to do with the performance output of the engine. You'll still get the same power from the chip.
Also, just from my bmw side, i just put an ECU in myself and was not hard to do at all and it is a significant difference in power vs. stock chip. You would have to look at the higher end chips to actually get some power out of it. I'm not sure how much you want to spend on a chip, but if you can get an ACTUAL one from like mugen or one of the major car tuners you could get some good power out of it.
On gas mileage, the chip will not affect that, it just depends on you drive the car with the chip in it
I wanted to floor it off of every light cause it had so much more power, so its all a drivers thing
Good luck, if you're not willing to spend much money on mods, that the guys advice and use it for repairs to keep the car on the road.
~Andrew
being an auto will limit how much power you can make because honda auto's are notorious for not holding a lot of power. your bmw is completely different from an integra. you cannot compare the two. honda ecu's are already very well programmed from the factory. there's not much you can do to improve on it with a stock engine. you cant just plug in a generic chip and expect 10hp like you would in your bimmer. even an authentic mugen, spoon, skunk2, etc. ecu wouldnt be ideal because those ecu's were tuned on a certain engine, in certain conditions, with certain mods. every engine is different and needs to be tuned differently. there is no one size fits all chip.
a worthwhile ecu upgrade would be to something fully programmable like hondata or aem ems. they allow you to control everything from ignition timing, fuel maps, rev limits, and a ton of other stuff. but, you would need more than a basic i/h/e setup and have it tuned on the dyno to see significant results.