Whilst browsing ebay for VW T5 I came across several people selling plug in chip tuning boxes for the 1.9 TDi PD engine. They are claiming increase of 35bhp and 70nm torque and cost between £20-50. Anyone here using anything like this? any good?. It seems far too cheap to be true to me?.

I have 1.9tdi 100PD fabia

Cheap nasty 20p resistor that will fool your engine into thinking its running cold and will inject more fuel and will probally fook your engine:thumbdwn:

Stay well clear if i was you.

Snake oil, it's just a resistor that fools the temp sensor into thinking the engine needs more fuel. Total waste of money.

They are :pants:

Steer well clear

Thanks chaps I thought it would be something like this!!

A decent tuning box will cost £150+

A decent tuning box will cost £150+

And double that again!

just go for it and get a remap

There are two types of Tuning boxes, a digital one and an Analogue one. The cheap ones on fleBay are normally the analogue ones. These consist of a 10p resistor in a plastic box that connects to your fuel sensor tricking the ECU in thinking it's running cold so therefor it adds more fuel. They may work but it will probably produce lots of black smoke and fault codes to appear.

This link may help: eBay.co.uk Guides - '20 BHP Tuning Chips' - The TRUTH

Digital boxes on the other hand (eg Dragon etc.) change the fuel and possibly timing to get more power and can do at different rev ranges so are more sophisticated and obviously more expensive.

The alternative is is a remap for a few hundred pounds which not only changes fuel, but also turbo boost. The only problem is most are not easily removable, unlike tuning boxes.