RedMist wrote:This is one of the misconceptions I have an issue with. How does swapping out a map that must have taken Toyota many months of programing and testing with something that you program in a day create this magical gain?
It's not a misconception. I've tuned several Toyotas (among others) and in most cases there have been good gains to be had in terms of power, torque, driveability, transient response and fuel economy. You have to realise that Toyota's goal was not to provide you with blistering performance. The factory ECU is programmed to protect the engine at all costs, run on a wide variety of fuel octanes under a wide variety of conditions and make it last 20+ years. If you get good performance and economy then that's a bonus.
It does that through overly rich fuel maps and very conservative ignition maps coupled with many layers of fail-safes. It's pretty much the only way of making sure that the same engine that carts grandma to the shops in her Trueno will hold together towing a (small

) trailer up a hill in a Carib and won't throw a wobbly if nana puts 91 in it.
I can't think of any other "mod" that will give you all those gains in one step like an ECU that is tuned with that specific goal in mind. That and it means you can get it retuned to make the most of every new addition you make in the future rather than just piling parts on and changing how the engine "breathes" without making any changes to the mapping to take advantage of that...