I am new to the world of tpi and need some advice. I am interested in getting more power out of my tpi 350, but i dont want to go through the hassle of changing the stock ecm programming. Is it posible to go with a different set of heads and camshaft and still use the same intake and ecm programming? I want to make as much power possible but still have it streetable. I was thinking about losing the tpi all together and going with a carb but that tpi system looks cool! Any and all suggestions or comments will be greatly appreciated.

 

Yes its possible, but to get the full benefit of your other changes you should swap your chip.

Its far from a hassle. One of the great things about our TPI cars is that you just swap a chip. There is no programming to do like with the 4th Gen cars. You can do it in 10 mins. Just unplug the old and plug in the new. Besides, there are lots of affordable chips for sale nowadays. You can find alot of them in the classifieds section of this board. I can't tell you much about chip burning or custom chips. I don't have any experience in that area.

 

I would definetly put a set of headers on it and a good exhaust with it.

 

Think about what you are asking about, You want to change all the hard parts and "Magically" have all the software "give me what I want"

The computer and software is from the late 1980's, how would the "engineers/programmers" of that day know, "the perfect tune" for todays hard parts????

 

the ecm in our cars has the abilty to "learn" and adjust accordingly but you will definetly not reap the full benifits if you dont get a chip that corresponds with your upgrades

 

Yes, the ECM can make changes based on whatever new parts you add, but only to a certain degree. Unfortunately, at least in my experience, the parts that will work well within your car's parameters, will not yield too much additional power. Of course, this is relative to what each of us considers "power".

The good news however is that you can buy/tune a new chip fairly easily. On that note, don't buy any pre-tuned chip from anyone. You need a chip burned for YOUR car. At the absolute minimum, talk to a custom tuner who knows the specs of your car, and have them burn a chip. They can do this fairly cheap, and it will work just fine. Having your car strapped on the Dyno, and having a tuner work with your car until it's perfect is of course the best route, but it's more expensive, and not always convenient. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. With my minor mods, I had a mail order tune done, and I couldn't be happier. I'm planning a complete brand new engine for my car, and for that, I'll take the car and have it dyno tuned.

Rule of thumb for upgrades pretty much goes like this:
First is a full tune up.
Next is all the free mods (there's a lot, do a search )
Next is exhaust/headers.

after that, different people have different opinions. For all my engine work, nothing made as much of a difference as a torque converter and new rear end gears. That'd be what I would do next.

So much depends of goals and budget. To some people, adding 25hp is a nice upgrade. To others, 125hp is a nice upgrade. As much fun as these discussions are, they're pretty difficult to answer effectively. Best advice is to READ, SEARCH, and ASK QUESTIONS!!!!!!

 

-you can mail order chips
-free flowing exhaust improves power no programming required
-heads/cam will require programming, some may not but are probably mild
-ditch the tpi and go carb and not have to worry about chips

 

Ill just give you my list of mods and let you decide if its a direction you want to take or not

Air Foil
KnN filters
Edelbrock lower intake
Arizona speed and marine runners
Ported plenum
Edelbrock headers
Flowmaster 3 inch exhaust
LT4 cam (not the hot cam)
Throttle body coolant bypass
TPIS AFPR
TPIS chip (burned for the modes listed)
March underdrive pulley
Full tuneup with 8mm wires
MSD coil
Rear gears swapped for 3:42s
Shift kit in the 700R4

All this brought about around 220 horse on the dyno for a 305 TPI. It also pulls all the way to around 4800-5000 RPMs instead of dropping off at 4000 like it would have stock. Honestly i have no clue how much most of these modes cost as they were done when i got the car.