Calling a Honda Civic with a laptop “the most feared thing in the car community” is mostly a joke—but it didn’t come out of nowhere. Some cars, certainly some Civics, can make a lot more power than stock with the right modifications. Engine computer tuning is what makes those mods work properly, and a driver who knows that is typically faster than your friendly neighborhood farty exhaust haver. But computer tuning can unlock meaningful performance improvements even without other go-fast parts.
I only have one engine mod on my eighth-gen Civic Si and it barely counts. It’s just a cat-back exhaust and a mild one to boot. I replaced the previous owner’s Skunk2 MegaPower potato cannon with a much more mindful and demure A’pexi WS2. It’s still significantly less restrictive than stock, but the sound is more melodious and less “help, there’s a squadron of angry bees after me!”
Getting the car custom-tuned was more of an exercise in satisfying my curiosity rather than increasing peak power. But a session of E-tuning and another on an actual dyno was hugely beneficial to my humble Civic. Now, I’d tell anyone interested in hot rodding their car at all to look into computer tuning before you start bolting up new intakes and exhaust pipes.
My ECU Tuning Setup
I use three tools to mess with my Civic’s engine computer. The most critical is a Hondata FlashPro, which is the physical conduit between a laptop computer and the car through its OBD-II diagnostic port. My computer is an Asus BR1100C which I bought specifically for car tuning, but only because I didn’t already own a Windows PC. The Honda FlashPro Manager software, the last piece of the tuning trinity, has very modest system requirements but won’t work on Mac OS. The Asus I got is made for school kids—it’s cheap, portable, and reasonably durable. Those backpack-friendly qualities also make it easy to keep in the garage.
Practically speaking, there’s also an essential fourth tool in ECU tuning: knowing what the hell you’re looking at.
The complexity of tuning depends largely on how heavily modified a car is. But you at least need to know how to interpret fuel maps to safely alter them. Coming in cold, you can take one of three paths to engine tuning: Hire a professional (costs more money), learn how to do it yourself (costs more time), or just wing it and play around with settings and see what happens (costs your engine when you inevitably blow it up).
Some companies that make tuning equipment also offer what’s called “base maps.” These are pre-set tuning calibrations made to help a car run with a common set of bolt-on modifications. For example, my Hondata FlashPro has quite a few base maps with labels like “AEM short-ram intake and Skunk2 exhaust.” Those make for good starting points, but since there are subtle variations in engines unit-to-unit (especially as they age) custom tuning is the only way to make sure your engine is completely optimized for whatever mods you may have.
Hoping to ultimately learn how tuning really works, I discovered Evans Tuning—a performance shop not too far from me over the Pennsylvania border. The proprietor, Jeff Evans, is known for tuning Hondas but can work on anything. He also offers online courses where you can get trained in many different tuning software platforms.
Here’s an example of what Evans Tuning’s training programs look like:
Interested, but intimidated, I ended up pausing my plans to DIY and get what’s called an “E-tune” by Mr. Evans himself.
Tuning Tools and Costs
Here are the main parts and services I used to tune my Civic.
- Hondata FlashPro ($759.00) This version of FlashPro is compact and has Bluetooth. It looks much more convenient than the non-wireless version I have. Mine was a little cheaper, too.
- Hondata FlashPro Manager (Free) The software, updates, and firmware updates for the physical FlashPro device are free.
- Asus kid’s computer ($159.99) Got a cheap one from eBay; you don’t need much processing power to run Hondata FlashPro Manager
- Professional E-tune from Evans Tuning ($350.00) Tune prices will vary by car and complexity. My project was very straightforward and easy.
- Professional dyno re-tune at Evans Tuning‘s facility ($300.00) Same comment as above, plus this is a lower-rate “retune” since the car had already been E-tuned.
There’s no denying that dropping $1,600 to gain a little horsepower in mid-range and slightly better responsiveness in a $7,000 car seems kind of insane. But this project was largely fueled by my curiosity and the desire to see what dyno tuning is all about.
My E-Tuning Experience
E-tuning is one of my favorite concepts in car modding. You find a professional tuner who’s familiar with cars like yours, tell them what car and mods you have, then do some driving with your computer hooked up to the car so it can log data. Download and email that data to your tuner, and he’ll come back with some settings. Download an email attachment, upload it to your car, and then repeat, so that the tuner can analyze performance after each tweak.
Here’s a quick demo of how I upload engine calibrations to my Civic using FlashPro:
When I did my E-tune, I had an Injen cold-air intake and the A’pexi exhaust. The car ran OK at best—the intake was causing the engine to run rich and misfire. You’d think more air would make it run lean, but in this case, it seems that the stock Honda computer was confused by the abundance of air coming in and overcorrecting with too much fuel. Not only was my intake not giving me more horsepower, it made the vehicle drive considerably worse—keep that in mind before you start throwing parts at your project vehicle without a supporting tune.
After about seven back-and-forths with Evans, I uploaded a final map to the car and it ran delightfully. Not only was the misfire and rich condition gone, but power delivery was smooth and consistent. FlashPro also makes it very easy to adjust the VTEC engagement point so the car can start making more noise sooner, and eliminate the annoying rev-hang phenomenon that plagues a lot of Hondas. The engine tends to keep its RPMs high for a beat when you push in the clutch to shift; that characteristic can be erased with pretty much the click of a button.
The best thing about E-tuning is that you can get it done from anywhere, on your own schedule. For simple setups on common cars, the convenience of an E-tune is tough to beat. An E-tune can even give you an extrapolated horsepower figure. But for real precision, and of course, a real wheel-horsepower figure, you need to go to an actual dyno.
My Dyno Tuning Experience
Wanting to run rallycross, plow through snow banks, and fly down dirt roads, I swapped my Injen intake for a factory Honda airbox. The aftermarket air filter was just way too susceptible to getting dunked in mud and grime for my liking, and research indicated it wasn’t worth much power anyway.
Without the metal straw intake, I reversed the car to a factory tune. The car immediately felt less perky, but the biggest bummer was the noise. That cold air intake might not have added much power but it sure did make one sweet induction sound. Speaking of intakes—longtime readers might remember that we tested a big range of drop-in air filters on this car a while back. That’s what brought me to dyno tuning.
With the stock airbox, you can buy air filters for a K20Z3-powered Civic at a huge range of prices. The OEM unit is about $20, NAPA will sell you a discount one for like eight bucks, and high-end tuners like Spoon Sports and aFe Power have fancy-looking models they charge closer to $100 for.
Once again, motivated by curiosity, I thought it’d be interesting to run a bouquet of these different filters on a dyno to see if there was any variation in power. The results were published in another Project Car Diary. But meanwhile, this was my chance to get the car re-tuned on a proper dyno.
Making an appointment at Evans Tuning’s facility was as easy as bumping the email thread I’d made with him during my E-tune. I think he was a little amused to see me roll up with an armful of air filters for a stock Civic–the car he had booked in after me was apparently Supra spitting out something like 700 horsepower. My car looked like a leaf blower in comparison, but seeing it hooked up to Evans’ dyno and watching him tinker with the thing was a thrill all the same.
The tuning process was conceptually similar to the E-tune except instead of doing pulls on the road, we were just revving the car up to speed with two huge measuring devices bolted up to the drive axle on the lug nuts. After we did a few pulls with the different air filters to test for variance, Mr. Evans made some tweaks with the filter we liked best to set the car up.
For what it’s worth, Evans disagreed with my decision to put the stock air intake back on. He was confident an aftermarket one would hit better numbers. He went on to say that a high-quality cold-air intake, plus a good aftermarket header and high-flow catalytic converter, would be the best bang-for-buck power adders to pair with a proper tune on my Civic.
You will, of course, get the most value out of a dyno tune the closer your car is to being complete. I don’t really want to go to war with my rusty-ass exhaust manifold bolts and I don’t want this car to get loud again, so I probably won’t be taking that step to squeeze more HP out of my humble Honda.
Appreciable Benefits of a Tune on my Basically Stock Car
The E-tune made a meaningful improvement to the way my Civic ran and pulled. It was transformative in smoothness—the car was just straight up running wrong with a cold-air intake and a factory tune. Just getting to a smooth idle was a victory. The first tune, done remotely by email, gave the car a nice and consistent run-up to the redline. But the dyno tune gave me some hard facts and visuals validating an improvement.
After we did our pulls comparing air filters, we ran another baseline and started a tuning session. Dyno graphs didn’t show any real movement in peak power, but in the middle of the rev range my K20 engine was making about an extra 10 horsepower. That’s not an insignificant number when you’re dealing with a 200-hp, sub-3,000-pound car, and the only mod is a mild catback exhaust.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusions that this is a fast car. I can do WOT-pulls up to the speed limit without getting police attention (that’s a feature, not a bug; part of the reason I have a Civic). But to me, the engine feels just a little bit snappier in response and digs out of the 3,000-6,000 rpm range a little more ambitiously than it did pre-tune. From a drivability standpoint, the improvement is huge to me.
The E-tune accomplished everything I was looking for. I would recommend people in a situation like me, just looking for incremental improvements with minimal mods, should go this route. But in-shop dyno tuning is a lot of fun and it’s really cool to get a verified, actual wheel horsepower figure for your vehicle. I reckon that alone almost makes it worth it.
I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen: Before you start modding, make a plan to get your car tuned. It’s the best way to take advantage of all the power your car can offer, and it’s the only way to get real benefits from bolt-on performance parts. Most turbocharged cars will have even more potential to make more power than they did on dealer lots, too. Just remember that there’s always give and take—making more power might eat into your reliability, or at a minimum, make you burn more fuel.
But the sky’s the limit in your tuning journey. Now that I’ve got the hardware and software, I can teach my Civic to accept new modifications. I can also use my FlashPro to log engine performance and see how it’s running at any given time. Down the line, I can experiment with different parts and settings. Plus, I know where to find online lessons on how to use these toys … or the number of a guy who can do it for me!
Got a project car you’re working on? Tell us about it in the comments!