Murphy’s Law in action

Some years back, I bought a premapped engine

management system for my car, a $1,300 unit

that I could just barely afford — but in my mind,

it was worth the premium price because it was

premapped and would not require expensive

Dyno tuning, at $150 to $200 an hour, to set up

(see Part VII of this book for a discussion on

Dyno tuning). Well, it turns out the unit I pur-

chased was premapped as advertised, but the

mapping was for a Japanese version of the car

running 95 octane fuel, and at the time, I had

access to only 92 octane pump gas here in

California. It would have been dangerous to run

my car on such an aggressive tune. Further,

even in Japan, the preloaded maps are only

regarded as good enough to get the car running

so that it could immediately be driven to the

Dyno for a proper tune. After spending another

$1,200 for a full two days on the Dyno, I now had

a $2,500 engine management solution. And then

four months later, California gas stations stopped

selling 92 octane and 91 octane become the

highest available grade of pump gas. Back to

the Dyno I went. . . .

This sounds bad, and yet I count myself lucky. I

can only imagine how bad things could have

been had I run the car on the more aggressive

Japanese starter tune and blown the motor in

the process. Barely able to afford the $1,300

controller, and strapped past my limits at $2,500,

I would have been completely ruined facing a

complete engine rebuild on my brand new motor