Hey guys,

Wondering thoughts on these £150 tuning boxes, but purely from an economy point of view and not how much faster I can go. I have an octavia Vrs tdi, but she is a 56 plate on 110k miles now. If I get one, but drive her for economy (with the occasional run to clear the dpf ), will it still kill clutches and wear the engine? The claimed 10-15% increase in economy would be great on my £450 pm diesel bill. The insurance is not an issue, as it is through work and won't affect premiums.

Is there anything negative to consider, especially given the age/mileage of my baby.

Jamie

It doesn't directly increase economy.

What it does is give you more power and so less need to be as heavy on the throttle.

All the tuning boxes do is trick the car and inject more fuel.

A remap often brings greater savings.

Tuning boxes overfuel the engine to increase BHP and don't alter boost pressure or timing, hilarious fun on the old PD130 which didn't have the DPF.

I wouldn't recommend one on a DPF equipped car in a million years to be honest.

I've always been very skeptical about the claimed MPG gains from tuning boxes, they interfere with the signals running to the unit injectors so the ECU doesn't really know how much fuel is being used hence better consumption indicated on the dash. When I ran one it used more fuel if anything.

Save up a bit longer and get a decent remap.

And would a decent remap be worth it on an older high mileage car? Wouldn't want to kill her for the sake of saving a couple of quid.

The remap would be kinder on the car than a tuning box.

A remap can also be tailored to have lower gains if you want economy and worried about stressing components.

I have experience of a TMC tuning box used on my 1.2 TSI Fabia for 2 years. 10% improvement in fuel use, more 'driveable' and more shove if you wanted it 20% increase on power and torque. Just sent it off for reprogramming and a new wiring harness for my 1.8 TSI Octavia. It does more than overfuel, with 3 sensors linked into the 'box' altering boost and fuelling to match. Quality item but not cheap though. They do boxes for diesels too

Ok, thanks. One more thing, if it was tuned specifically for economy would I lose power? Not worried about gains, but am happy with what I've got and wouldn't want reductions. Basically, I want to have my cake and eat it!

The tuning is for more torque and power so you don't have to work the engine so hard to keep up with normal traffic flow. There comes a point though where you will have the optimal balance of speed/weight/power to give the best economy so further tuning will cost more fuel if you go beyond that. It will be trial and error but to answer your question no you do not reduce the power.

Might also be worth doing some maths on it all what sort of gains in MPG you will expect to see and how long it will take to save the money you spent on the tuning box or a remap and any increase in insurance premium etc. As your happy with what you have power wise it might take you a long time to actually start saving money.