I was recently talking to a guy about import tuning and he directed to what he said was a great shop to work with. He told me that they can "re-tune" your car as it is stock, is this true? I thought the whole purpose of buying an aftermarket ECU was to tune your car, I'm a little confused....

 

he may be talking about re-flashing your ECU.
they erase the stock fuel map and stuff, and replace it with a different map.
this way you'll get more fuel and air into the engine, making more horsepower, but not tonnes, but definetely a solid few horsepower.

 

I want to keep my car "reliable", will this make it a less reliable daily driver? Let me know what you guys think..

 

I wouldn't go with it...thats my opinion. I would wait for Cobb Tunning to come out with there Mazdaspeed Accessport. There you will have the reliability and know its from a good company.

 

i don't recommend a reflash to any one who likes their car

 

That's a curious recommendation, but one you don't explain your reasoning for. I mean this question in the most innocent sense; you've peaked my curiousity as towhy you would say that?

 

reflashes might make your motor perform better and they might destroy your motor. there really isn't a whole lot of middle ground there. when you get the ECM reflashed, essentially what it does is overrides the stock settings of the computer so that the sensors think that they are being deprived, the timing of the spark is changed, a bunch of stuff like that. you could achieve the same thing by getting an engine management system from some one that can do the programming the right way, change the ignition timing by dropping in an msd kit with a voltage stabilizer, advance the timing by getting adjustable cam gears, i could just go on and on. it doesn't make any sense to me to change something that is completely irreversible. you could get the ECM flashed back to the stock settings, but if they screw up the after market settings, what makes you think that they can put it back to stock without screwing it up?