Turbo Boost With Tuning Boxes

[Kye]

Hello all.

I'm looking at getting one of these boxes for the beastie. I have seen that you can get ones that plug into the common rail AND turbo boost sensor. The common rail I understand. The turbo boost I don't.

How does the tuning box control the turbo when it is a free flow devices that depends on the exhaust output? Does It take the output from the sensor and 'trick' the engine into thinking it has more air going into it?

The reviews and write ups are all favourable and sing plenty of praise, but I can't get my head around this bit of the jiggery pokery that goes on.

I'm looking at either DPUK or TDI Tuning at the moment. I'd prefer the DPUK unit but they don't yet do the CRD-T (common rail and turbo boost) for my engine. TDI Tuning do but I read that the power delivery isn't smooth.

Cheers all.

[jeebowhite]

I think it's more a gimmick and it's best to just use the common rail.

If it's a high cost (hundreds) device your looking at a connection that would only benefit if it's am electronically actuated turbo device.

[supercmaxer]

I have a tuning box that plugs in to the common rail, it tricks the ecu by chucking in more fuel, in turn putting more pressure on the fuel pump, injectors ( it's what I've been told )

[troy45]

Hello all.

How does the tuning box control the turbo when it is a free flow devices that depends on the exhaust output? Does It take the output from the sensor and 'trick' the engine into thinking it has more air going into it?

The car does have some degree of control over the turbo via the wastegate and actuator. In very basic terms the actuator is fed via an air supply (taken from intake system) controlled by a solenoid. This solenoid is usually electronically controlled and varies the air pressure fed to the actuator which is attached to the wastegate. The effect of opening the wastegate is to bleed off exhaust gasses which would otherwise be driving the turbo compressor so you have a degree of boost control via this set-up.

If the tuning box plays about with the signal from the intake air pressure sensor it may well kid the system that it's producing less boost than it actually is, result being it ups the actual boost to achieve it's target values. Would expect that this produces a boost offset across all rev ranges etc and would be a very crude way of getting more performance, if it works at all.

Loads more info on wikipedia to explain it better :)

[TomsFocus]

Which engine do you have? If its got a VNT turbo, that's massively controlled by the ECU.

It adjusts vanes inside the turbo housing to make more or less boost. Its the best compromise between a huge turbo which gives top end but lags a lot, and a tiny turbo which has very little lag but runs out of puff quickly.

As for the tuning box though, I've always gone for remaps over tuning boxes (though it helps that I can read and re-flash maps myself). Tuning boxes do work in that you get more power, but often at the cost of reliability and fuel economy.