Ok, i am a newbie i admit, and so is my friend. He has a 84 supra celica and a 74 vette. He owns me any day in my 97 civic, but we like to work on cars in general so we were talkin about the factory chip in my 97 civic. I want to put headers in but he thinks w/o putting in a performance chip that headers will just make my car run worse, so my question is will headers do anything w/o the chip, does the factory chip really resrtict me that bad?

Sure you can add I/H/E with out a chip I am sure 99% of us here on the forum are doing just that. As for a performance chip they are expensive (Spoon,Hondata) these chips are used more for the extreme car enthusiest aiming more twords an NA set up or turbo. FYI I/H/E wont give you crazy gains...so no worrys.

if your mods do not require changing the fuel and ignition maps, then, why change em?

the question should be.................what is the purpose of a chipped ecu? what does it actually do? why do people use em?

look for real answers, not advertised ones.