[headers]

Originally Posted by CPH

On a recent rr day I had to send six cars back without re-mapping because they were not up to it. This the drivers did not realise.

Sir, How do you decide that the cars are not upto it? I'm sorry to question you on your profession

Originally Posted by CPH

Romeo Ferraris made a long distace racer with uprated internal but the block and head remaining standard churning out 360bhp. Although it is a rac a car 1000km long distance racing is comparable to 50,000km normal use.

Would be interesting to know what internals are bettered!

Originally Posted by CPH

The amount of air that the induction allows the engine to take in is quite substantially more than with the stock induction.

How do you get substantially more air into the system without TC or SC ing the car?

BTW, excellent explanation above

[amitoj]

Thanks for explaining, CPH.
It seems to me that tuning boxes are more like a software hack that we software engineers put in sometimes whereas remaps are more like a true software upgrade!!

@yzfrj: OT but arent swifts anyway suspected of having a weak clutch? I thought i saw a really long thread about that somewhere here. But yeah i do agree that that it is important to put a car through its paces.

[drpullockaran]

In an internal combustion engine fuel and air ratio is extremely important not only for power output of the engine but also for its life.

Do not touch or recommend any chipping unit or chip reprogram that does not govern both the fueling and the air input. In turbo charged diesel it means increased fueling should be proportional to the amount of force fed air you can give the engine. Enriching it more than 12:1 will kill your engine faster than the time you would enjoy it. Even if you do get the fueling spot on heat dissipation is critical too and also lubrication.

I will be doing a reprogram to my Cruze sometime in the near future but only after I can get information on the longevity of the engine after chipping it. I expect all my car engines to give me at least 2 lakh kilometers of life and hence I am skeptical about going away from the norm especially with chipping units that only govern fuel input without controlling force fed air's volume and temperature.

[CPH]

Originally Posted by headers

Sir, How do you decide that the cars are not upto it? I'm sorry to question you on your profession

You don't need to be sorry for asking these question. They are quite legitimite. You are not asking for my credit card number.

What we do is making m ultiple runs on the rr or chassis dyno. We look at the torque characteristics and how the variations on the air fuel ratio is on the different runs. This gives us a clue on the health side of the engine. Sometimes it is also mechanical weaknesses.

Originally Posted by headers

Would be interesting to know what internals are bettered!

First of all the conrods need changing and pistons need to be of higher spec too. The valves are usually titanium, but this is not suitable for road use because titanium valves need to be lived or they will just go. Nobody knows why, but this is the way it is. Big end bearings, main bearings, conrod bolts and head bolts will be uprated. Cam spec is also changed.

Originally Posted by headers

How do you get substantially more air into the system without TC or SC ing the car?

In simple terms you try to get the gas speed or intake velocity as high as possible (before flow dynamic restrictions hit the flow) and at the same time you have a rather long air intake. This leads to a slight over pressurissation of the plenum and the inlet port (or runners) because we do not have a constant flow in the plenum and runners. As soon as the valve closes the inertia of the air column creates the higher pressure. Since the time till the valve opens again is quite short (when your calculations are right) this pressure is still there and the air is pushed into the combustion chamber. But this is not the only reason why the performance was so big on the graph shown above. Resonance chambers, corrugation of the hose, steps and edges in the pipes and poorly designed bends have their share too in losing power by creating unnecessarily turbulence.

Originally Posted by headers

Sir,

Don't make me feel older than I am. It is bad enough that I turn this month 50 (but I am not telling when ). Just call me Pete or Peter.

[CPH]

Originally Posted by amitoj

It seems to me that tuning boxes are more like a software hack that we software engineers put in sometimes whereas remaps are more like a true software upgrade!!

I love it the way you worded it.

[humyum]

So Peter, would you recommend a Pete's tuning box for a Swift Diesel which is going to be set at the first setting which is the 90 bhp one with a stock replacement filter Green filter if I plan to keep the car for around 10 years and atleast a lakh and half + kilometers ?

Its run 20 thousand km till now btw.

Give me your honest opinion about this

Thanks in advance.

[CPH]

Originally Posted by humyum

So Peter, would you recommend a Pete's tuning box for a Swift Diesel which is going to be set at the first setting which is the 90 bhp one with a stock replacement filter Green filter if I plan to keep the car for around 10 years and atleast a lakh and half + kilometers ?

Its run 20 thousand km till now btw.

Give me your honest opinion about this

Thanks in advance.

Let me put it this way: I tell you what I would do if it were my car.

I would go for a re-map, which should be done on a chassis dyno. You have one in Mumbai. I don't know who can do the mapping, but this should be possible to be done (or do I have to sort this?).

BTW I was 2 days ago in Leicester meeting an Indian singer for my other work (my passion).

[humyum]

Originally Posted by CPH

Let me put it this way: I tell you what I would do if it were my car.

I would go for a re-map, which should be done on a chassis dyno. You have one in Mumbai. I don't know who can do the mapping, but this should be possible to be done (or do I have to sort this?).

BTW I was 2 days ago in Leicester meeting an Indian singer for my other work (my passion).

Well, I still have like 2nd half years of warranty left on the car and it has had a lot of gearbox issues which got sorted in warranty. A remap will void any kind of warranty on the car which in my opinion is a dangerous gamble.

Any drawbacks of the tuning box or any probable risks I would be looking at from the component failure point of view ?

And the absolute max power I am looking from the car is 90 bhp as I don't want any kind of component failure at any stage which is not normal as reliablity is one of my major criteria.

Oh you were in Leicester, where in leicester ? I live near the Owl And Pussy Cat Pub.

[headers]

Originally Posted by CPH

Don't make me feel older than I am. It is bad enough that I turn this month 50 (but I am not telling when ). Just call me Pete or Peter.

Well Pete, An advanced birthday greetings to you mate!

Thanks for the superb explanations - It adds to the knowledge base too.

[CPH]

Originally Posted by humyum

Well, I still have like 2nd half years of warranty left on the car and it has had a lot of gearbox issues which got sorted in warranty. A remap will void any kind of warranty on the car which in my opinion is a dangerous gamble.

Any drawbacks of the tuning box or any probable risks I would be looking at from the component failure point of view ?

And the absolute max power I am looking from the car is 90 bhp as I don't want any kind of component failure at any stage which is not normal as reliablity is one of my major criteria.

Oh you were in Leicester, where in leicester ? I live near the Owl And Pussy Cat Pub.

Component failure has got to be divided into 2 sections.

Engiine and transmission.

In a petrol engine when underfueling you will end up with overheating, which leads to head gasket failure. If you heavily overfuelyou will end up with bore wash, which leads to the much more expensive damage of wall wear/damage. This in turn means an engine out job. Whether you are lean or rich you would not know.

In Diesel engines you have the problem when overfueling that the carbon deposits in the long run kill the turbo bearings. Also when going over the limits of boost the turbo eventually will cave in. Again you can't see the limits on the tuning box as you don't meter it.

Now to the transmission.

To start with, most of the gearbox failures I personally know of are due to wrong gear changes, where people put extreme strain on it.

On a normally aspirated engine it is quite difficult to overstrain the components in terms of force.

On force induced engines you can get over the limits. But that is not easy (I wonder whether they did not replace the rather than repair the damaged box. If you have another problem with it I would jump up and down at the dealer demanding proof that the box has been changed).

To limit the power to 90bhp is meaningless in terms of strain. All components are torque rated as this is the force applied to the unit. Power and torque are in a relation, but only so far as the power expresses the work done at a certain rpm. The higher the rpm the lower the torque (once the peak torque is reached).

BTW, I would like to meet up when you are in Leicester or if you are there at the moment we have near Stanstead arolling road event on the 18th of April.

[CPH]

Originally Posted by headers

Well Pete, An advanced birthday greetings to you mate!

Thank you

Originally Posted by headers

Thanks for the explanations - It adds to the knowledge base too.

I was thinking to sort a tuning FAQ, which is gettiing locked by admin and constantly added to with answers that have not been provided, which should in the long run save quite a bit of time for admin and is more specific than the items in the modification forum.

[yzfrj]

Originally Posted by CPH

You are doing better than my wife.

Wide grin

Originally Posted by CPH

You are not asking for my credit card number.

May I ask that now ?

Originally Posted by amitoj

@yzfrj: OT but arent swifts anyway suspected of having a weak clutch? I thought i saw a really long thread about that somewhere here. But yeah i do agree that that it is important to put a car through its paces.

It does feel weak if you ask me, even on the diesel.
However there are folks running stock clutch (with pretty decent life) with a bunch of mods. (if you know who/what I'm talking about )

Originally Posted by drpullockaran

I will be doing a reprogram to my Cruze sometime in the near future but only after I can get information on the longevity of the engine after chipping it. I expect all my car engines to give me at least 2 lakh kilometers of life and hence I am skeptical about going away from the norm especially with chipping units that only govern fuel input without controlling force fed air's volume and temperature.

Then why do it in the first place ?
If churning out more power was "child's play" or "extremely safe" why in the world does't the manufacturer do it in the first place?
I feel all mods are a risk as its not as per the manufacturer spec. Maybe be some companies does over-engineer their products.
But it does't mean that "all" cars and mods done are without any risk.
After all manufacturers are not crazy to spend lot of money on R&D and testing the thing before sending it "out"

That is like expecting the best of both worlds, eh ?
Tell you what, Best of "luck"

It is bad enough that I turn this month 50 (but I am not telling when ). Just call me Pete or Peter.

Its a bad thing ?
Advanced Birthday Wishes.

Thanks a bunch for the wealth of info.
You did mention re-map is better, agreed.

However considering the "relatively" less cost involved in plonking in a "box"
and the fact that it does't "really" void warranty. What would be the risk factor ? (10% - bad or 100% bad for the engine, gearbox and what not..!)

Request to MODS : I feel the thread title need to be changed. Do you ?

[CPH]

Originally Posted by yzfrj

Wide grin

Stop it.

Originally Posted by yzfrj

May I ask that now ?

It has expired...phew

Originally Posted by yzfrj

It does feel weak if you ask me, even on the diesel.
However there are folks running stock clutch (with pretty decent life) with a bunch of mods. (if you know who/what I'm talking about).

Upgrading clutch is not the biggest problem.

Originally Posted by yzfrj

You did mention re-map is better, agreed.

However considering the "relatively" less cost involved in plonking in a "box"
and the fact that it does't "really" void warranty. What would be the risk factor ? (10% - bad or 100% bad for the engine, gearbox and what not..!)

The box is very much hit and miss and you never get the best out of it.

In some applications you will kill the turbo, even if it is 10,000km later. But this obviously also applies to poor mapping.

I know where you are coming from. But I am thinking as a precision engineer. I can't afford to take things easy because soon they will add up and desaster strikes.

My product failure rate on the technical side is so far zero and I wish to keep it this way. I can't be postive about a product that needs much more than just a couple of settings. The variations on the same production line and the same day are to big to allow for it. And you must not forget that we extract today a lot more power out of engines with much tighter tolerances. This ways in even heavier that due to manufacturing restrictions and totally stupid environmental measures (the don't work or work even adversly) a lot of the potential is killed, which means we would have even more power available out of the same capacity.

I hope you get my drift. I just feel uneasy about it. This is why I rather go through the headache of the more expensive mapping process, which long term is cheaper in any way.

[headers]

Originally Posted by CPH

The variations on the same production line and the same day are to big to allow for it. And you must not forget that we extract today a lot more power out of engines with much tighter tolerances. This ways in even heavier that due to manufacturing restrictions

Welcome to the world of Cpk, PPAP, TS, Six Sigma, etc

[gemithomas]

A small Intro

Everyone likes to extract more power from their cars. And that itself is the basis for the tuning box / remap market. Though not so big in the indian market due to obvious reasons of doubt and fear over service/warranty issues, i'm sure its slowly a growing market with more and more people willing to take the leap and experiment.

I remember people here with swifts, getz and innova's and many more running on tuning boxes. Almost all of them vouch for the performance gains and i dont remember reading anyone facing any major issues related to the additional power extracted from the stock engine.

I also remember one guy on PUG [Palio Users Group] who increased the performance of his car by connecting a resistor to some sensor wiring. IIRC He even fitted it on another members car and both were happy about the gains.

Now to the point of the thread.
I was in the market for "more power" from my Figo TDCi. After some initial research i was bombarded with quite strong opinions against the tuning box. Even very knowledgeable people were telling me that the tuning box just fools that ECU by falsely reporting the rail pressure and thereby asking for more fuel.

I spoke to a few people in the tuning box industry and they all confirmed that their 'boxes' do not vary the air intake.

So are these boxes just cheap resistors that fool the ecu. But then why are the Ford TDCi boxes priced above 40K INR

And if its just a cheap resistor in the 'box' why are the users not facing any issues even after long term use. I think there are people here who are running with the Box for even over 50k Km.

Now the Biggest Question
Has anyone ever tried to see what is inside the "Box"!!