Club 80-90 Forums

Hi All
Anyone chipped a normal diesel car with a £90 ish "power box" type product freely available on e-bay. The sort that just plugs into the common rail sensor.
Do they work or are they just a scam?

Surely if any of these cheap wonder devices worked, manufacturers would be fitting them as standard?

horns wrote:Surely if any of these cheap wonder devices worked, manufacturers would be fitting them as standard?

See your point, but wanted to add experience to conjecture.

i know someone who has fitted one to a 90bhp xsara

goes alot better more like the 110 version

slight increase in mpg

his has a few switches to adjust various settings so may take a few months to set up to best performance

he is doing about 80 miles per day

Hello,

not sure what you've got, but a lot of those boxes that you plug in just fool the sensors in the ECU into providing more fuel. The more sophisticated ones control the MAF sensor too, but they can't monitor Exhaust Gas Temperatures etc... To do chipping properly the ECU has to be able to see and control everything. Some of these boxes do little more than the famed "evry mod" on the non-PD vw tdis, which is just the installation of a resistor to fool the ECU about the delivery of fuel in the pump. This is fine if you know what you're getting into, but having seen inside one that was taken off a T4 tdi, I'm a little sceptical - you're always better off with a chip. Out of interest what engine is it - older engines have standard chip maps and you can get them probably as cheap as the boxes and fit them yourself.

Ewen

update
just been confirmed by the owner,
pug hdi 90hp box has been fitted for a month .
driven about 500 miles per week.

mpg has changed from 41 to 54 and it goes a lot better

just need the longterm review now.

Thanks for comments

The car is a 2004 BMW320D if that helps.