What a difference a day makes............as the song goes. Yesteday I had a 2.5 TDi L&K Superb with 160BHP. With a quick trip to Van Aaken, in Bracknell, I now have 187BHP and 60lbs more torque.

The numbers only tell half the story though. It's even smoother, far more urgent on the throttle and overtaking is an absolute doddle with the amount of torque on tap. The power delivery is more linear and the gearbox doesn't need to search for gears so much now and will accelerate hard without kicking down.

The good news is that Van Aaken leave the Skoda ECU alone and, instead, plug their own Smart box as a bypass. This means if I ever have a warranty claim I simply unplug the Smart box and everything is back to standard.

Even better, my average consumption is already improving just after one day.

Cost ? Normally it's just shy of

Van Aaken are often overlooked in the VAG market.

This sounds interesting......wonder what they can do with a PD130?

Nothing special TBH it's just another tuning box manufacturer. They are a pretty big name though, hence my comment of over looked.

What is the downside to this remapping? If it were pure gain then presumably the manufacturers would do it.

Also, how does the remapping affect the mpg profile of the 2.5?

The official line with any company that remaps is that they simply take some of the excessive tolerances that manufacturers build in with their fueling/boost/air mapping. Where you have to go careful is how far the remapping companies will eat into the tolerances just to achieve big numbers for their ad's. I have seen ad's for the 2.5 Superb offering 200BHP and big torque gains - but you have to balance this with the other mechanicals and the additional wear and tear it could cause. This is why I went to Van Aaken as they provide a customised map for your particular car. They rolling road it in standard form, look at the power delivery curves and they programme the remap to best maximise the power outputs without stressing the mechanicals.

In terms of improvement to MPG I have seen a 0.4 average MPG increase. So, you would hardly get excited about this but when you think of the power increases you gain and it doesn't actually consume more diesel that's pretty good.

I've just removed a Van Aaken smartbox from a Golf 150 and I'm amazed at what little difference it's made on my PD100 Furby.

I bought a resistor box from John Yardley of these pages a few years ago which ripped my arms out, the Van Aaken is pathetic by comparison.

However ... there is a thread from 2004 on these pages about Van Aaken box jumper settings which I shall play with over the weekend.

After some investigation it transpires that the Van Aaken box was on the lowest setting ... a quick adjustment of the jumpers produced much better results.

All in all, I am impressed ... the box produces strong smooth power with no extra smoke on the highest settings (jumpers on 1&2 and 4&5 if anyone's interested). With the box fitted the car feels like it has a bigger engine rather than a remapped small engine if you get what I mean?

Good to hear that the Van Aaken box has worked well on your Golf. I have chipped five cars with them in the past (Nissan 300ZX TT, TVR Cerbera, Laguna 2.2 DCi, Saab 9000 and Isuzu Piazza) and always been impressed by the quality of their product.

My remap is still great fun and when run on BP Ultimate really has even better power delivery. What's even better is that my MPG is now up to an average of 42mpg - not bad for a heavy right foot and just shy of 190 BHP.