Asfar Rizvi

Hello Everyone !




A little history about the car: Its a new vehicle purchased in september 2011.
The stock power wasn't sufficient for me with just 68 horses beneath the bonnet hence ordered a pete's box just after running the vehicle for 1000 km
I stay in Indore in MP so it was couriered to me here.
Fitted the box and felt some erratic power peaks after 3rd gear and then bolt from the blue....just after two days of fitting the box......The car used to shut down after running around 25-30 Kms and refused to start until and unless it is left to for an hour.....and then again the same situation came into the picture.
Reported this to Mr Peter and he advised to change the possible locations of the box in the engine bay. We tried everything to realize the same results each time.
Now finally removed the box and sent it back to Petes.
After a few days of diagnosis, I was reported that my box was a lemon, and first time in the history of Petes, a box has been found to be faulty
Since my hunger of power for an otherwise truly driver's car was never fulfilled, hence ordered for a new TB.
Some days later, I got a new box.
This time went ahead with installing it and kept my fingers crossed.
HURRAY.....everything was perfect this time....
The car was pulling better and smooth....
As a non techie guy, all I can say is.....
"If the stock fiesta from 2nd gear onwards is at say x km/hr after a time y......the petted one always used to be at (x +15 ) km/ hr after the same time interval y, with all other parameters being constant and same.
This continued till the top speed was achieved, which without box happened to be around 168 km/hr and with the box used to be something close to 175 km/hr (Pete's box isn't know to increase the top speed however, so the difference might have been due to the fact that I could reach 175 with the box sooner than what I would have in the stock condition. Unfortunately never had such open roads here in MP to take the stock car to the same speed)
So that's the whole increment in the performance department, and not to forget, the only other performance product I had; was an OWS turboracing engine oil.
I sourced the oil after doing somewhat around 1000km with the box and felt some more smoothness during the entire gear range, but that's it. No more gain after using an oil of Rs 5630 over stock mineral oil; Castrol of Rs 1400.
However used the oil for another 8000 km and drained it and switched back to the stock mineral oil.
The difference was evident only in terms of some co****ness in revving but wasn't such a lot, so as to compel me to shell out Rs 5630 again and go through the tedious process of sourcing it from chennai.
So that was the whole history.....the vehicle clocked 11500 kms.


The Nightmare: One evening, while returning home from my office I started feeling that each time under hard acceleration, I was feeling some jitteriness in the car, something similar to the situation when there is no diesel in the fuel tank and the car is looking to shut down, but then again it used to get smooth. This continued throughout the back-home drive.
Since I have felt this behavior sometimes before as well hence decided to ignore, hoping that switching off the engine, then switching it on again and idling for sometime will resolve the problem.
But Not This Time....The next day car felt as if there isn't any pulling power left, no acceleration, infact it was like the car isn't interested to be happy revving machine again.
Took it immediately to the Ford dealers and realized that even the sound of the engine changed to something of a tractor :'(
Immediately got the diesel checked for quality and it was perfect as expected since I always got the tank refilled from the same pump I know for years.


Finally after the diagnosis I was reported that two of the injectors have gone kaput and maybe the ECU is corrupt as well, however the ECU was later reported to be OK.
The injectors were reported to be of 15k each and the ECU to be of 54k.
I had words with Mr peter and he was quite sure that it couldn't be due to the box, however I still felt that the injection system failing must have relation with the box provided that its an Induction Modulation kind of a box and directly worked on the injectors.
Fortunately I was able to get things repaired under warranty and had to pay just Rs 2000 for engine oil replacement etc out of the total bill of 42k.
The car is back and things are fine now, it has done 500kms since then.


My primary concern now is that should I again go ahead taking the risk of installing the box ?
Its kind of scary to think of this situation arising again maybe after clocking 40k kms this time, when I don't even have the warranty left.
The box again is at Petes in cochin and has been reported to be working perfectly fine, by Mr Peter.
People at Petes are extremely professional and really nice, the have agreed to refund the amount (43.5k) back and have even advised to choose this as the option now seeing future risks.


My agony now is what should I do !!
Should I go experimenting with Spider this time which is cheaper, 24k but again a rail pressure kind of box.
My concerns are the amount of risk that spider has plus the performance and power increments it can give, provided that I wasn't even much satisfied with the power increments of Petes box which was on the contrary an IM kind of box and as per the gurus here at gearheads IM box has been reported to give higher power figures than the Rail Pressure ones.


What should I do ?
Try a pets box again ?
Take a refund, buy a cheaper box and save the remaining money, maybe this time for rail pressure faults


Please guide me on this !


I would also welcome suggestion over performance figures of spider !
Is there any Ford fiesta owner with some experiences of TBs....spider, pets, dieseltronic etc. ??


Cheers & Sorry for such a long post!!