I know these digital tuning boxes are not to everones taste but one come up on ebay for a good price the other day so i thought id buy it. It doesn't really seem to have give me that much more power to the car as i expected. It's defanitley smoother and pulls all the way through the gear but not that extra oomphh i was expecting. I have it on setting 6.

FOr those of you who know about these boxes, when calibrating the red led never comes on or never flashes at all? But the yellow led does as said

IMO you've just found the cheap way of destroying you engine, ask Browny about the damage a crap map can do

These are not the cheap twenty pence resistors you get. These are £350 brand new. Theres lads who have run them for years with no problems whatsoever

Adjustable resistor then ???

Adjustable resistor then ???

Well if Big di*k says so :yes:

I guess it must be.....

Edited 31 January, 201016 yr by octaviamk21991

I'm not anti -tuning boxes* but for £350 i cant see why anyone would opt for one over a proper map and i've also looked inside one so i know whats in there and charging that much is shameful i'm sure you didnt pay that of course

*had one on my Mercedes E class for over 5 years and 60,000 miles

I have to say that I would never have a tuning box on a car again. My 330d came with one on it and inside of 12 months, the engine was dead! It was popping injectors and fuel lines like there is no tomorrow.

The trouble with these boxes is that as you crank it up to max setting, they just set all tables as high as they can go and the end result is more power but at the risk of a dead engine. The one on the BMW was £650, I saw the receipt, and it was dedicated that engine.

I would never do it again as i paid 7k for the car and had to sell it 12 months later for £3.5k... Never again!

Ben is getting my car soon - proper remap and based on what I have been told, the way to do it so the vRS doesn't wheelspin so much is to smooth out the torque curve so the power is more linear - bliss!

I am sure that not all will kill engines, but lets just say I won't ever risk it again.

Edited 31 January, 201016 yr by Rincey

As Dan Ackroyd said, 'We mock what we don't understand!' Dragons and other digital boxes work DOWNSTREAM of the ECU, taking the signals to the injectors and using a microprocessor to modify them 'online' to increase the fuelling at certain revs. Similar to a remap on a diesel engine with a non-VNT turbo, really. I had one on for a good 20k with no issues whatsoever. FWIW, there's nothing up with an analogue box either, if you know what you're doing - search on here for more info...

In answer to the OP's question, IME the setting relates as much to how far up the rev range the engine produces usable torque as to any significant overall increase - at anything less than 7 anyway!

On mine, the green light (power) was on constantly with the engine off, and flashed when the engine was running and the box was processing signals to the injectors. The red light should only come on if there's a fault...

HTH

As Dan Ackroyd said, 'We mock what we don't understand!' Dragons and other digital boxes work DOWNSTREAM of the ECU, taking the signals to the injectors and using a microprocessor to modify them 'online' to increase the fuelling at certain revs. Similar to a remap on a diesel engine with a non-VNT turbo, really. I had one on for a good 20k with no issues whatsoever. FWIW, there's nothing up with an analogue box either, if you know what you're doing - search on here for more info...

In answer to the OP's question, IME the setting relates as much to how far up the rev range the engine produces usable torque as to any significant overall increase - at anything less than 7 anyway!

On mine, the green light (power) was on constantly with the engine off, and flashed when the engine was running and the box was processing signals to the injectors. The red light should only come on if there's a fault...

HTH

Thanks mate:) I Think it's just me expecting a deamon to be unleashed from the engine. When i think about it there is a big difference in torque.

Not as much of a smoke increase as i thought though

all your dial will be is the adjustment to a variable resistor. i also have a friend who fitted one of these boxes (around £300 iirc) to his mondeo diesel, and his engine went apesh!t.

for that money you could have got a remap from a reputable tuner. i really dont get it at all.

all your dial will be is the adjustment to a variable resistor. i also have a friend who fitted one of these boxes (around £300 iirc) to his mondeo diesel, and his engine went apesh!t.

for that money you could have got a remap from a reputable tuner. i really dont get it at all.

These are not a 'dial adjustment'

SWMBO has one on her MK5 105PD Golf and it has transformed her car, before the Dragon digital box was fitted there was very torque from standstill, now though it is closer to the torque of my 130PD, makes the car much better to drive (she does not rev it or drive it 'enthusiastically' at all), she now loves the car whereas she was actually thinking of selling it before the box was fitted.

The other reason people buy them is because they are transferable to your next car (if suitable) or you can sell it on again, so it's not 'lost money'.

Edited 31 January, 201016 yr by Gizmo68

Dragons don't have dials, and don't contain resistors - variable or otherwise. People need to actually know what they're talking about before they start expressing their opinions...

Dragons don't have dials, and don't contain resistors - variable or otherwise. People need to actually know what they're talking about before they start expressing their opinions...

I think most do but you have "sold" the box well!! They simply manipulate the data from or to the ECU so the fuel pressure is increased , they are dumb boxes and monitor nothing they simply replace one figure with another, they rarely (if ever) react to rpm they just replace a 4 with a 6 or 7 or 8 depending on how high you turn them up which is fine but since most people dont ever bother checking them on a dyno they have no idea even what boost this extra fuel can produce let alone how much power they really make and claims are often inflated

Most people also report fuel savings as the car fuel computer "thinks" its using a lot less fuel than it is not because its using less fuel

The difference with these generic box is the wiring not the internals and you buy the same box for a 100hp pd as a 170pd

If you have any common sense please, please send it back while you still can. It alters the fuel delivery by using offset values to increase the amount of fuel delivered in the same way a resistor would. A resistor does it in a totally liner manner while this box does it in a more customizable manner that you can increase the offset on by using the jumpers/dip switches in a very similar way to turning up the pot on a variable resistor. A remap by comparison can alter 30-40 different variables. I ended up with the VanArken (re-badged as a genuine TTE Toyota accessory) and the difference was night and day, it also stopped my Rav randomly cutting out at 70mph which despite sending the Dragon unit back 3 times it always did. The TTE version was a piggyback ECU setup plugging in between the ECU and loom, not just on the fuel rail sensor like the dragon pos.

Edited 31 January, 201016 yr by Avalon

...they have no idea even what boost this extra fuel can produce let alone how much power they really make and claims are often inflated...

Err, anyone who really knew what they were on about would know that a tuning box (or overfuelling for that matter) won't have any effect on the boost provided by the turbo. And as for the power claims, there's at least one dyno floating around for a PD130 with a Dragon box fitted - feel free to have a search...

...The TTE version was a piggyback ECU setup plugging in between the ECU and loom, not just on the fuel rail sensor like the dragon pos...

Likewise this gentleman, for whom his Van Aarken was chalk to his Dragon's cheese. However, he might be surprised to learn that both the Dragon AND the VanAarken (on the VAG engines at least) piggy-back the ECU. Now I can't comment on Dragon's offerings for Toyota diesels, but I can assure anyone reading this that the Dragon sits nowhere near the fuel temperature sensor on a VAG engine...

They don't really "piggy back" the ECU at all, they just alter the signals to the injectors to inject more fuel. A true piggy back unit would cost thousands, given than an ECU costs £1000-£1500 to get something capable of processing every output, decide what to do with it and how to manipulate it, then send it back out, and do all this in REAL time.. Unlikely for £350 or £650 don't you think?

This debate will go on and on and on. It's not as simple as "a remap is better than a tuning box" either, as there are so, so many bad remaps around.

You're right enough; I only used the term to draw a parallel between the mode of operation of the Dragon and the VanAarken / TTE. You're also right that you pays your money and you takes your choice! If I keep posting here, kittens are going to die, so that's it from me on the subject. Anyone wanting to know more would do well to search the site for 'stoichiometric'...

I wouldn't say that tuning boxes are the death of an engine, but pushing the injectors etc etc to extreme's aren't good.

The output from the engine will get better over a month or so as the ECU gets used to what it is going to do with the extra fuel.........a PD 130 could put out up to 175bhp with a dragon box on

Edited 31 January, 201016 yr by Octygone

Err, anyone who really knew what they were on about would know that a tuning box (or overfuelling for that matter) won't have any effect on the boost provided by the turbo. And as for the power claims, there's at least one dyno floating around for a PD130 with a Dragon box fitted - feel free to have a search...

MMM anyone who knows anything about diesels or simply turbocharged engines for that matter would understand the relation of fuel mixture to boost

MMM anyone who knows anything about diesels or simply turbocharged engines for that matter would understand the relation of fuel mixture to boost

I know I said I'd keep out of this, but since I'd like to try and keep the accuracy of the site to as high a standard as possible, perhaps you'd like to share with us all which key aspect of diesel combustion allows tuning boxes to work on diesels when they won't for petrol engines?

Well foook me.....

Modern petrol burn at stoichiometric mixture ratio (14.7:1 by mass, air to petrol). So when a petrol engine is running closed loop the amount of petrol being injected is actually the maximum that can be for the emission control system to work. If more petrol is injected then the mixture is 'rich' and this is detected by the oxygen sensor and the amount of fuel injected is reduced. So petrol engines are continually running with the amount of fuel injected under feedback control to a very precise 14.7:1 ratio. If it varies from that either the cat doesn't work properly or is damaged. That is why you can't really 'remap' a non-turbo petrol and you cant put a tuning box on any petrol engine.

A diesel engine on the other hand is a 'lean burn' engine. There is an excess of air, and no feedback control mechanism. So you can throw extra diesel into the engine (up to a point) and get more power (until is starts to smoke too much). Ideally you would increase the amount of air (increase boost) AND increase fuel and you can get a LOT more power. This is how a remap works.

Tuning boxes can't increase boost, they just increase fuelling, either by increasing fuel pressure and/or injector open duration.

A remap, by definition, will be a lot better and safer than a tuning box (assuming the mapping is done well).