Diesel tuning boxes

[ShadyAl]

I have recently put a tuning box (Van Aaken) on my 1.9tdi 110hp Octavia, after umming and aahing over a remap/tuning box for a few months.

I bought it from someone on the forum, and they even fitted it for me, took less than 5 minutes, and BOY! What an improvement!! :eek::eek:

Just wanted to say, if your not sure about getting a tuning box for your diesel, do it!....

[TrevorB33]

glad your enjoying it mate, my car feels gutless without it lol, should get it rolling roaded when you get a sec be interesting what it does,

[okeh]

I have recently put a tuning box (Van Aaken) on my 1.9tdi 110hp Octavia, after umming and aahing over a remap/tuning box for a few months.

I bought it from someone on the forum, and they even fitted it for me, took less than 5 minutes, and BOY! What an improvement!! :eek::eek:

Just wanted to say, if your not sure about getting a tuning box for your diesel, do it!....

I know where your coming from

I put a dragon box on my fabia one year into the warranty to tide me over whilst i waited for my warranty to run out before i had a remap.

My warranty ran out last year and im not bothering with a remap now

[mark3844]

Is this available for the 18t petrol (vRS) engine? And are there any related issues to fitting them? problems etc.?

[TrevorB33]

no these are diesel only im afraid

[mark3844]

shame. What kind of performance do they give to the Diesel vRS? Having driven once recently I wasnt impressed enough to consider buying one have had a petrol, but the good lady thinks we should have a diesel!

[okeh]

Dragon box claim a 30% gain in performance

My insurers told me to insure the car as 170bhp(fabia)

I dont know if the tuning box can give this type of performance boost but it deffo gives the car more uuummmppphhh plus the turbo kicks in at a lower rev range

[muppo2000]

I'm a bit of a newbie here so sorry if I sound a bit stupid :dopey: but what's one of these "tuning Boxes"... I dont know if I've ever seen one?

What kind of price are they?? Is the performance increase as good as everyone seems to be saying?

I have a TDI 110 Octavia and I would like to give it just a little more guts... So this sounds very interesting. :orb_grin:

[ap0gee1978]

What kind of performance do they give to the Diesel vRS?

I'm not aware of any 'proven' results for the vRS, however there was a printout floating about for a PD130 Superb with a Dragon Box that was putting out 176 bhp and 289 lb/ft. But driving diesel and petrol are chalk-and-cheese - if you drive a turbo-diesel (especially on a standard map) like you'd drive your turbo-petrol, you're bound to be disappointed...

[ShadyAl]

Hello mate,

Well im not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but a tuning box is basically something you plug into your car via a computer port in the engine compartment, which in turn tricks the car into behaving more responsively.

Its pretty much like having a remap done on your ECU, except it isn't permanent, as you can unplug it anytime you want, i.e when you sell the car..

As far as I know, a good tuning box can cost upto £400 brand new, but I managed to get mine for less than £100 second hand. If you look on the 'For sale' section on this forum, there's normally one on there every now and then.

There are however, a lot of sh*tty ones out there on Ebay, which are normally a LOT cheaper, and are normally just a few cheapo resistors in a plastic box.. It will do the trick, but there's no guarantee it wont damage other parts of your car along the way.. I personally would stay well away from these...

As far as extra power after fitting, I have DEFINATELY noticed the difference, I also have a 110hp diesel, and the difference is phenomenal..

I haven't had it rolling roaded, as im not all that interested, but I do know the power, especially torque has improved massively, and my MPG seems to of improved a little also.

Hope this helps.

[muppo2000]

Thanks for the info Fella!! Sounds like a great bit of Kit.

I shall be keeping my eyes open for one of those when the next pay check comes through

I have been umming and Ahhing about getting a remap done but this sounds like a better compromise.

Cheers all

Mupp

[KenONeill]

A good "tuning box" like the cited Dragon and Van Aaken units, is also known as a "intercept tuner" because of the way it works.

What it does is read the signals from the sensors, and modify them, basically the same thing as a generic remap does, but a few clock cycles of the EMS computer later.

[ap0gee1978]

Hello mate,

Well im not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but a tuning box is basically something you plug into your car via a computer port in the engine compartment, which in turn tricks the car into behaving more responsively.

Its pretty much like having a remap done on your ECU, except it isn't permanent, as you can unplug it anytime you want, i.e when you sell the car..

As far as I know, a good tuning box can cost upto £400 brand new, but I managed to get mine for less than £100 second hand. If you look on the 'For sale' section on this forum, there's normally one on there every now and then.

There are however, a lot of sh*tty ones out there on Ebay, which are normally a LOT cheaper, and are normally just a few cheapo resistors in a plastic box.. It will do the trick, but there's no guarantee it wont damage other parts of your car along the way.. I personally would stay well away from these...

As far as extra power after fitting, I have DEFINATELY noticed the difference, I also have a 110hp diesel, and the difference is phenomenal..

I haven't had it rolling roaded, as im not all that interested, but I do know the power, especially torque has improved massively, and my MPG seems to of improved a little also.

Hope this helps.

Id be interested why you think you have one seeing how you're describing a Bluefin or One-Click, which are remaps and will set you back more than £400 new, I think!

A digital tuning box sits in the engine bay, and as Ken says, intercepts the signal from the ECU to the injectors to add more fuel. The fuelling 'boost' is tailored to the revs, so is a bit like a remap, but without doing anything to the turbo. An analogue tuning box is connected in series with the fuel temperature sensor and provides a 'flat' boost to the fuelling, which means similar effects to a digital box higher up the rev range, but lots and lots of soot at lower engine speeds (and an engine management light on newer cars!)

There are literally hundreds of posts on this subject on Brisky, so if you want to know more, I suggest making friends with the Search button!

[Gingercop]

I've just ordered mine, but with it being in for a tailgate replacement (Long story, main dealer **** up) I need to know if it has the 10 pin or 8 pin plug.

I have a 110BHP octy tdi estate Mk1.

Can anybody help?, 'coz I need to email the bloke back.

Oh and I did get mine from fleabay from a company in germany, I did read their feedback and contacted anybody who had purchased one for the same car to see if it was a crock or not. They all seemed happy which was good enough for me before I parted with me hard earned £50.

Cheers for reading.

GC

Edited 2 November, 2008 by Gingercop

[rwbaldwin]

I've just ordered mine, but with it being in for a tailgate replacement (Long story, main dealer **** up) I need to know if it has the 10 pin or 8 pin plug.

I have a 110BHP octy tdi estate Mk1.

Can anybody help?

Oh and I did get mine from fleabay from a company in germany, I did read their feedback and contacted anybody who had purchased one for the same car to see if it was a crock or not. They all seemed happy which was good enough for me before I parted with me hard earned £50.

You haven't bought a tuning box. You have bought a resistor for £50. All it does is to trick the car to inject more fuel. In the long run this will cause borewash as it doesn't take into account any engine parameters.

[Gingercop]

Hey ho, done it now, nevermind, any idea what plug it is?

[ShadyAl]

I'd send it back mate personally, Get your £50 quid back and put it towards a real tuning box.

Avoid anything on Ebay. Its all the same crap. (And feedback really isn't hard to make up...)

You will regret it otherwise.

[cydernet]

I bought a Synergy 2 Box for my Fabia VRS last week. The different is very noticeably especially in the lower rev range. The car just wants to pull and pull up through all the gears. Ive noticed the MPG going up as well and this is when Ive been putting my foot down enjoying the extra power . The box cost me £165 from Tuning-Diesels.com

[dstev2000]

The MPG readout should be taken with a pinch of salt, the best thing to do is a 'brim to brim' test because the engine management isn't aware of the goings on with the tuning box and it will skew the MPG somewhat.

Be very careful with the boxes advertised on ebay, as stated previously they can be VERY expensive resistors and nothing else!

I've used a few tuning boxes in the past and they have all been great fun. I had one on my PD130 and it was a good match for an Audi A6 2.7TDI

Dragon Performance recently went bankrupt so I don't know thier current situation.

[KenONeill]

You haven't bought a tuning box. You have bought a resistor for £50. All it does is to trick the car to inject more fuel. In the long run this will cause borewash as it doesn't take into account any engine parameters.

Borewash on a TDi? Oil dilution I can see, but citane doesn't cause borewash.

As ShadyAl on what to do with a Fleabay resistor box!!!

[Gingercop]

Well it has a 14 day money back thingy on it, I'll see what it's like. Other purchasers of this seem happy enough and it's not just from reading feedback, I have emailed them and had replies. Out of 3 for this particular one, two positive, they reckon that it has made a vast improovement, the other neutral, he says that no real fifference 1st ans 2nd, but more in 3rd 4th and 5th.

So I'm going to go with it but keeping an open mind.

[Kandy]

On a turbo diesel, a simple resistor mod can work quite well (even assuming that it is just simply an overpriced resistor, albeit nicely packaged and easily connected, that you bought).

[ShadyAl]

Id be interested why you think you have one seeing how you're describing a Bluefin or One-Click, which are remaps and will set you back more than £400 new, I think!

Well for a start, I don't think I have one fitted, I do... Also, my earlier description is in no way a description of a remap.... lol!!

[farcrygamer]

My wife used to have a psi motorsport box in her audi a6 tdi pd 130 (very similar engine to fabia vrs) and the overall experience was really good. we rolling roaded it at cox develpments in reading and it went up to 162 bhp. serious improvement taking in account that i got the box on ebay for 21 quid inc postage. MPG was prety much unaffected, maybe very slightly improved. there was no additional smoke. the car never missed a beat and never thrown any fault codes in 30000 miles (from aprox 130000 to 160000) we covered with the box fitted. treed a few boxes in the car that she now has (2003 bmw 320d) including dragon, speedhawk, p-torque and racechip. by far the best was the p-torque one. serious power improovement and very smooth ride. no fault codes, no smoke, no trouble. others either gave either little power gains, or thrown codes (rail pressure etc...). a good friend of mine has covered nearly 100000 with spider box in his nissan navara and it's doing great. i also know a few people that were having problems with cheap boxes. although higher end tuning boxes can be quite good my personal opinion is that remap is all the way to go if you want to keep the car longer.just wanted to share my experience about tuning boxes.