I am figuring out what chipbox I should purchase for my Octavia RS TDI 2.0 2015?

Most important features for driving is quicker acceleration than stock, quicker pedal response  (will probably try a throttle).

 

Do you guys have any useful reviews, for instance dyno, experiences with the chipboxes a.s.o.

 

I have read loads of comments regarding the various chips, however haven't found any specific review for the Octavia RS tdi 2.0

 

Thanks if forward for all useful advices..

 

 

Why a box if it’s out of warrantee. Remap all the way 

16 minutes ago, Ed81 said:

I am figuring out what chipbox I should purchase for my Octavia RS TDI 2.0 2015?

Most important features for driving is quicker acceleration than stock, quicker pedal response  (will probably try a throttle).

 

Do you guys have any useful reviews, for instance dyno, experiences with the chipboxes a.s.o.

 

I have read loads of comments regarding the various chips, however haven't found any specific review for the Octavia RS tdi 2.0

 

Thanks if forward for all useful advices..

 

 

I wouldn't waste your money on any of those. As your Vrs is well out of the 3 year warranty period you would be much better off getting a stage 1 custom remap which should see power rise from 181bhp to at least 220bhp and torque rise to around 500nm.Cost depending on where you are in the UK will vary between £350-£500 at a good tuner and it would be advisable to use one who have their own rolling road for proof of what they are claiming gain wise.

Edited 10 February, 20206 yr by shyVRS245
spelling mistake

Thanks guys,

 

Well, I live in Sweden and the engine is insuranced until 150000km, I've only reached 100 so far, which means my car is still "warranted". In case anything happens with the engine, let's say it breaks down. My insurance company covers the entire cost to replace it with a new engine, as long as I've conducted every service interval at a Skoda authorised firm and avoided to install other carparts/hardware/software than skoda.

 

Therefore I'm considering to try a chipbox.

 

I'm sort of avoiding remapping the car because I woildnt want to leave any traces of the car being tuned when I'll sell it.. but maybe I'm wrong in that sense?! 

In that case I wouldn't fit anything to it until you reach 150,000km. When the dealer plugs your car's OBD into a lap top they can see the extra boost that these chips and boxes leave on the ECU memory.

11 hours ago, shyVRS245 said:

In that case I wouldn't fit anything to it until you reach 150,000km. When the dealer plugs your car's OBD into a lap top they can see the extra boost that these chips and boxes leave on the ECU memory.

Not entirely true as you've been told many times, the footprint this boxes leave are ONLY in the fact that the engine has performed outside of it's normal operating parameters.  As it's a considerable amount of work/cost to find this out, OEM's DON'T request this work normally & they'd have to be faced with a £10k plus warranty claim to do it.

 

To the OP, DTE are the only unit I'd use as I'm on my 3rd, I'd also highly recommend the Pedalbox, it transforms the car with far better throttle response.

10 minutes ago, themanwithnoaim said:

Not entirely true as you've been told many times, the footprint this boxes leave are ONLY in the fact that the engine has performed outside of it's normal operating parameters.  As it's a considerable amount of work/cost to find this out, OEM's DON'T request this work normally & they'd have to be faced with a £10k plus warranty claim to do it.

 

To the OP, DTE are the only unit I'd use as I'm on my 3rd, I'd also highly recommend the Pedalbox, it transforms the car with far better throttle response.

Tony why are you on your third one do you have to buy a new one for every different car like a remap or did two become faulty?

4 hours ago, themanwithnoaim said:

Not entirely true as you've been told many times, the footprint this boxes leave are ONLY in the fact that the engine has performed outside of it's normal operating parameters.  As it's a considerable amount of work/cost to find this out, OEM's DON'T request this work normally & they'd have to be faced with a £10k plus warranty claim to do it.

 

To the OP, DTE are the only unit I'd use as I'm on my 3rd, I'd also highly recommend the Pedalbox, it transforms the car with far better throttle response.

Ok, thanks for the piece of advice. 

 

Sorry, I'm a bit new here.. 🙈 What does OP mean?! 

 

The same question as ShyVrs245 asked ; have you used 3 boxes or do you mean you have upgraded the box 3 times? 

 

I would like to know from someone who has applied it to the same sort of car as mine, I can't see what cars you guys are driving since I'm typing on my phone 😊

Well obviously Shy drives a petrol 😄

1 hour ago, Ed81 said:

What does OP mean?

Normally used to mean "Original Post(er)"

1 hour ago, KenONeill said:

Normally used to mean "Original Post(er)"

Thanks Ken 😄👍

I had a DTUK Tuning box for a while, ended up taking it off as I was bored of limp mode - on all settings that made any noticeable difference. The pedal box however is well worth the money.

This is the major issue with tuning boxes plenty of owner experiences of limp mode kicking in whereas a custom remap will never leave you frustrated and cursing.

15 minutes ago, j1mg said:

I had a DTUK Tuning box for a while, ended up taking it off as I was bored of limp mode - on all settings that made any noticeable difference. The pedal box however is well worth the money.

That's one of my fears.. I don't mind spending money on equipment, as long as it brings me value. 

 

Thanks for sharing 👍

14 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

This is the major issue with tuning boxes plenty of owner experiences of limp mode kicking in whereas a custom remap will never leave you frustrated and cursing.

Yeah its a hard pick.. 🙄

How easy is it to trace if you remap the engine? 

What about pedal box, is it traceable?! 

Do you believe the car workshop will notice any major difference when serving the car? 

1 minute ago, Ed81 said:

Yeah its a hard pick.. 🙄

How easy is it to trace if you remap the engine? 

What about pedal box, is it traceable?! 

Do you believe the car workshop will notice any major difference when serving the car? 

I'm very honest with my dealer when I remap a car I tell them because I'm confident there will be no problems with reliability and I have never had to make a warranty claim on a remapped car yet my wife's standard Karoq has had 2 issues now resolved under warranty which were faults engineered in by Sokda due to poor development and supplier faulty parts.

7 hours ago, shyVRS245 said:

Tony why are you on your third one do you have to buy a new one for every different car like a remap or did two become faulty?

Box 1. FSR for the 1.4 TSI no faults in 3 years of ownership 

Box 2. FSR+ for 2.0 TSI no faults in 18 months of ownership 

Box 3. FSR+ with App Control as it's easier to get the updates & change settings 

23 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

This is the major issue with tuning boxes plenty of owner experiences of limp mode kicking in whereas a custom remap will never leave you frustrated and cursing.

This statement ONLY applies to diesels

 

Shy you're really taking the pee now, a balanced POV is what's been asked for

11 minutes ago, Ed81 said:

That's one of my fears.. I don't mind spending money on equipment, as long as it brings me value. 

 

Thanks for sharing 👍

TBH if you're running a diesel, a tuningbox is gonna give you limp modes in colder weather

I've tried both a tuning box and a remap on the 181bhp VW TDI unit.  In both cases the outcome was better than stock.  I feel the (stock) engine just doesn't perform as well as the numbers would suggest and I actually prefer the lower powered 150ps unit; the power is more accessible for more of the time and you don't need to be at silly speed/revs to exploit the available power.  Remapped though the engine feels pretty good (but still gruff!)

 

Tuning box pros: 

• Relatively cheap 
• Easily fitted/removed 
• Noticeable gains over stock
• Arguably warranty friendly (still leave a trace IMO but much harder to detect/prove VS remap and TD1 flag)

Tuning box cons:

• Erratic power delivery on some settings
• Never really feels like 'OEM power delivery'
• You do have to fettle with settings to find something suited to your car/driving style
• They work by spoofing ECU signals, so you never really know how much overboost and overfuelling is going on and if it's really operating within safe parameters. 

I bought a Bluespark tuning box and never once, on any setting experienced a limp mode, fault or warning.  Worth checking IMO as they are well regarded across several forums and they don't try and charge silly money, pretending that the box is loaded with 'maps' and that they have a huge R&D budget...cough ahem DTUK 🙄

 

Remap pros:

•  Proven R&D
•  Improves drivability and power delivery
•  Improved fuel consumption (~5% calculated via brim-to-brim)
•  Fuelling, boost etc should all be within safe parameters.  
•  Works in harmony with ECU/drivetrain
•  Can be removed and re-flashed via OBDII port.  
•  Transformed the car to what it should be from the factory

 

Cons: 

• The same company who insured me for a tuning box wouldn't for a remap (underwriter policy) so I had to go elsewhere (subjective)
• Be prepared to void your warranty (TD1 flag)
• Need visit the tuner to have the remap removed/re-flashed 
• Can be more expensive depending on the tuner and/or the tuning box seller (Revo remap is actually cheaper than equivalent DTUK box) 

I've used Revo for remaps on a couple of cars now and found them to be excellent in every regard. Typically agents are well regarded independent specialists so I'd always go to them rather than a dealer anyway as they understand both how the cars work and know about the remaps they're installing too.  I knew I fundamentally kissed goodbye to the warranties on two newish cars but I took the risk and just used the independent specialist for all maintenance work.  The cars never went near the dealer network but luckily enough  they were completely fault free in tens of thousands of miles.  

 

In my limited experience of using both I'd go for a remap every time.  FWIW, my insurance went up £50 by declaring both a remap and a tuning box (subjective)

 

 

 

 

Edited 11 February, 20206 yr by penguin17

1 minute ago, themanwithnoaim said:

This statement ONLY applies to diesels

 

Shy you're really taking the pee now, a balanced POV is what's been asked for

Read on here plenty of Fabia Vrs Mk2 owners saying tuning boxes have forced their cars into limp mode.

9 minutes ago, Ed81 said:

Yeah its a hard pick.. 🙄

How easy is it to trace if you remap the engine? 

What about pedal box, is it traceable?! 

Do you believe the car workshop will notice any major difference when serving the car? 

A remap shows up as soon as service software is run on the car, the ECU has a Qsum counter on it, it's the 1st thing the dealership software checks

Duff gen from @shyVRS245 i think on Mk2 vRS Fabia & tuning boxes.

Many used TMC & Blue Spark Tuning boxes issue free.  That was on CAVE engines and before there were Remaps available for CTHE engines.

The problem came from TMC boxes that were 2 cable ones for South America, and then duff engines / spark plugs.

57 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

I'm very honest with my dealer when I remap a car I tell them because I'm confident there will be no problems with reliability and I have never had to make a warranty claim on a remapped car yet my wife's standard Karoq has had 2 issues now resolved under warranty which were faults engineered in by Sokda due to poor development and supplier faulty parts.

Have you applied a pedal box ln your diesel, or only remap? 

24 minutes ago, Ed81 said:

Have you applied a pedal box ln your diesel, or only remap? 

Never used a pedal box, no need with a good remap and both our cars are petrol now after VAG emissions fixes in the past and tax changes in the UK. Only 25% of new car vehicles registered in the UK are now diesel powered. Diesel useful in trucks (HGV) and vans doing high mileages. Both 1.2TSi and 1.4TSi petrol engined Skoda's I have owned were both capable of over 60mpg so really no need to go diesel, even themanwithnoaim will agree with me on this having previously owned a 1.4TSi Octavia before his current Vrs245.

1 hour ago, themanwithnoaim said:

Box 1. FSR for the 1.4 TSI no faults in 3 years of ownership 

Box 2. FSR+ for 2.0 TSI no faults in 18 months of ownership 

Box 3. FSR+ with App Control as it's easier to get the updates & change settings 

Were the boxes applied on a diesel or petrol engine?