first off i have a megan exhaust and an injen intake on my 2.2 ltz automatic. im am going to be purchasing a vibrant header/dp combo from a member on here. he said the combo will most likely throw a CEL but it can get tuned out. My questions are, is it worth to tune the car? will the performance of the car be affected by the CEL code? How much does a tune cost?

 

u dont need a tune to turn off a CEL, what he is referring to is that you will need access to HP Tuners (or sumthing similar) and you can go in and set the sensor to where it will not throw a CEL.

if you can live with the light being on, I wouldnt worry about it until you actually got enough done to your car that tuning is an absolute neccessity or you can buy a cheap OBDII reader and just reset it everytime the CEL comes on

l8r,
PD

 

with the CEL being on, would it affect the performance of the car? use more gas? run poorer? things like that

 

Nothing with happen if the CEL is on. It's just a light. It won't affect your car's performance in any way.

 

so why does the light come on then? sorry im fairly new to cars im learning as i go

 

It probably came on because of the emissions or something. It just means it's not good to pass inspection but it is good to drive and will operate just fine.

 

thanks

 

only to an extent, im assuming that the car will have a CEL from lack of a catalytic converter and this will cause you to have a slightly higher fuel consumption because of your ECU trying to guess the AFR calibration. Nothing that is too horrible, I would try setting up first and then once you have the CEL on then go to auto zone, have them get the code for it to see exactly what the CEL is.

bring the code back here post it up or just pm me and I can give you a clearer picture of how things will go, but I wouldnt worry about a CEL until you actually have one.

l8r,
PD

 

The code is just going to be a p0420 cat code. If the check engine light doesn't bother you then you don't need to be tuned for it. If you grab an interceptor gauge you can clear the code whenever it pops up. Your car will still run and drive fine, it's not a big deal at all.

 

Well I don't think it wud bother me as long as my gas mileage doesn't decrease cuz I do a lot of driving and it wud be a pain in the ass to be constantly filling up