Yes I did recommend a ebay ECU chip. If the guy plans on doing the B swap eventually He might as well not go all out and get what power he can get now on a minamal budget. The ecu chip I bought on EBay worked just fine. I even soldered it into my ecu myself and have never done one before. It gave me a little just what I expected for the money I gave. Anway If you find that what I recommend usefull leave me some rep. If not thats kool too. As for those disagreeing on what I say thats all fine and dandy everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Oh by the way you might not want to question what a SOLDIER says its just not good carma. Peace out
TRU
So just because you're a soldier, that means you're automatically a Honda tuning genius as well? I have nothing but respect for our armed forces, but that comment is just plain stupid, sorry. I hate it when people throw around their Army creds and then expect that they should be treated like royalty everywhere. I respect what you do and the danger you put yourself in, but it doesn't mean no one should ever disagree with something you say, especially when it's clear that you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're having good luck with an Ebay chip, then consider yourself one of the lucky few. The majority of them are crap, they just advance your ignition and fool your ECU into dumping in extra fuel, thereby causing you to run rich. All they do is cause shitty gas mileage, and eventually knocking and pinging.
You should never ever use a pre-programmed chip on a Honda. Tuning is not a "one-size-fits-all" kind of thing. You need to tune with your specific engine setup in mind. The best choice would be to take your car to an actual professional tuner with a dyno and let them tune it for you. The next best choice would be to get your ECU chipped, and then go to one of the numerous tuning websites, choose a base map that matches your engine build and modifications list as close as possible, and use that.
You could also get some kind of piggyback device (V-AFC or whatever) and tune that way. I don't really like piggybacks much myself, but I'd much prefer them to a crappy $20 Ebay "performance chip".
And I agree with you that he shouldn't be spending a lot of money on his D-series if he's going to swap to a B soon. That's why I recommend not doing anything to it at all. If anything, just a cheap intake would be my recommendation. Why mess with installing some junk performance chip that could potentially fuck up his motor? He'll probably want to sell the D15 once he gets his swap in, so I'd recommend that he keep it as stock and in as good of shape as possible...