| Review: Petes Tuning Box On The Accent CRDi
Mr. Powerbox Vol. II
It was an early morning team-bhp drive to lonavala a little more than a month back. The white Octavia had a little blue surprise under its hood. I didn’t know about it, I saw that 1.9 take off at that palm beach signal and was stunned. It left all of us for dead at the junction. I finally caught up with Mr. Powerbox (that’s what he was being called now) Rtech. Only then did I come to know that the pete’s tuning box was behind all this mindblowing acceleration of the TDi.
I knew that there was a new tuning chip available for diesel engines….but didn’t think much of it until I saw Mr. Powerbox flying through the ghats in lonavala.
After being excited for about a day….i forgot about it.
Then about half a month later…I received an sms from Rtech asking me if would like to try out the box on trial for a week on my Accent CRDi. I said why not.
I was contacted by Peter (turbo india), he directed me to Mr. Lalit of Four seasons automobiles located near haji ali.
So after college, I left for four seasons. I met Mr. Lalit there who answered all my queries regarding the tuning box. His mechanics installed the box within 20 minutes. Its basically plug and play…it wont mess your warranty or anything. Just before a visit to the service station, unplug the box which takes all of 15 mins or less. And the service guys wont be able to tell if anything was there. So rest assured your warranty is safe.
First Impressions
At four seasons, the mechanics open the hood…one thing that could have been done better by the manufacturer was that some sort of support could have been provided for the box which otherwise lay in the engine bay with the help of a few clips…a metal support of some sort would help so that it wouldn’t knock itself loose over a period of time. Also with a proper support, it wouldn’t be tossed around when the car was on rough roads and be damaged. Anyways the fitting was done in 20 mins or so and I was ready to roll.
I drive away with the new chip under the hood….and there was no difference apart from that the car was pulling better from revs lower than before. But I was driving in bumper to bumper traffic (which was going to get a lot lot worse in the coming days…26th july), so didn’t get a chance to stretch her legs. But I could feel that the car had become more driveable and I could hold on to 40kmph in 5th gear without any theatrics. I was really happy driving around in top gear and making the most of every litre of diesel.
I stuck to the usual diet of turbojet diesel from HP. The second day comes…and I really get to open her up on marine drive early morning on my way to college. Overtaking was already a breeze in the accent but with box it was a totally different animal.
And another thing, I was really happy to re-aquaint myself to 3rd gear wheelspins hehe.
In layman’s terms, before the box I would feel the torque surge uptill about 2500rpm and then the engine would gradually start loosing steam till the 4500rpm redline…but now with the new box, the torque more evenly spread throughout the revrange and I could feel the surge all the way uptill 4000rpm. Did I mention that overtaking had become devastating? People on traffic lights were surprised to see an accent take off like that…I loved seeing the looks on those faces when they would catch up with me at the next signal.
Amateur Acceleration Tests
These were carried out by me and fellow members powerfreak and rusted pistons on the back roads of kharghar. We couldn’t get hold of the Gtech Pro…so a simple stopwatch had to suffice. So these are just indicative times.
Powerbox CRDi
0-100 kmph
11.49 seconds
Regular CRDi
0-100 kmph
13.4 seconds
Power
98 bhp (powerbox)
82 bhp (stock)
98bhp is the default setting for the powerbox, theres another surprise second level which ups the power to around 110 bhp, but for this you have to have a free-flow which I had and a K&N filter which I didn’t. So the powerbox ran on its default setting of 98bhp throughout the allocated 7 days. Boy with such a difference on just the default setting of 98 bhp, just imagine what it would do if the second level of 110 bhp was used.
Fuel Economy
Lets talk a little about fuel economy, ever since the powerbox, the urge to floor the pedal to the metal was there even more than before. But in my daily driving apart from day 2 when I had really redlined the pants off her, I was getting my usual fuel economy of about 12kmpl. The worst was around 9kmpl which was achieved on my revhappy day 2.
Day 3 was when I tried an economy run, I drove with a light foot with AC 50% of the time to college and back…distance covered was 50kms in considerable amount of traffic. After some rough calculations, the car had consumed about 2.8 litres of diesel. So the fuel economy figure was at 17.7 kmpl inside the city and I couldn’t have been happier…what a combination of power and efficiency.
But driving the way I did was not possible on a regular basis…so my regular FE figure would be around 12kmpl (city) and 18kmpl (highway). Both figures are with AC. Mind you, these figures aren’t much different from before the powerbox, I was getting similar figures before too…but the difference was that I wasn’t driving normally, I was flooring it more than usual and even then the FE didn’t change much. On a restrained highway run, I managed about 21kmpl.
Just goes to show that you don’t really need to sacrifice efficiency for power.
City
Best – 17.7 kmpl (AC 50%)
Worst – 9 kmpl (AC 100%)
Regular – 12 kmpl (AC 100%)
Highway
Best – 21.2 kmpl
Worst – 15 kmpl
Regular – 18 kmpl
* All figures with AC
26th July 2005
Im stuck on a flooded road near dadar…with water above the fog lamps. Trains have stopped, theres water everywhere. I see an indica floating near by. Time is 5.30pm in the evening and the skies are dark…very dark, I could have sworn that the time was more near to 7pm had I not seen the clock. Im listening to traffic reports on the radio (it’s a little too late for that, I was already stuck in one of the most major traffic jams that Bombay has seen in quite some time)…the cell networks have jammed already and I worry about my friends who are facing similar situations elsewhere and even about my parents who would be frantically trying to call me.
The carpets are all soaked and I can see water collecting inside the cabin…here I am, sitting with wet feet in my car praying to god to please not let my car stall…the praying gets more frantic when the indica floats by and when a scorpio stalls right infront of me. I push on gently, slipping the clutch all the way. The smell of burning clutch is in the air and I can see some smoke coming from the bonnet…it was steam from the water that was coming in contact with the engine. Then I realise that im also carrying the powerbox…which just adds to my worries especially after remembering that its worth 35000 bucks. But after 8 hours of trying to get home and also helping out a bunch of kids returning from school on the way, I finally make it home. Nothing seems to be damaged apart from the horn and the autocop siren which went on the blink because of all the water around. I was happy to be home and safe also that all my loved ones were safe.
26th July is a day nobody living in Bombay is going to forget very soon.
Verdict
I would definitely buy the powerbox. A potential increase of about 30bhp without any mechanical alteration to the engine is quite a lot. Ahh for the power of software. Even if you don’t really redline the car…the sheer driveability it offers should make you consider putting this under the hood of your turbo-diesel. Apart from a price that’s a bit on the higher side…theres nothing really wrong with the powerbov.
And this is more power without sacrificing the economy….need I say more?
A special thanks to Rtech, Turboindia (peter) and Lalit in helping me out with the powerbox.
Drifter | 
17th August 2005, 18:47
