My Experience with Pete's Tuning Box in a Ford Fiesta

[MutantX]

WildWeasel yzfrj - this is for the benefit of people who will be going in for the tuning boxes. It will surely help tem decide.

[yzfrj]

was it due to to the "Tuning box" ?

There is no way to know if it is or if it is not.

What I'm trying to say is there will be niggling problems.
Maybe people are not aware or different people has different tolerance levels.

Every mechanical component is designed with a margin of safety.
The tuning box AFAIK increases the rail pressure.
It still works as its designed to take it.
This will obviously reduce the life.


Go through rippers thread, he did have lot of niggling issues.
I'll certainly won't call it trouble free.

Rainier's car, did have issues.

Again there is another friend who had a swift with the box.
2 turbo's were replaced, is it the box ? I don't know.

All these were modded with B14, (and a one off prototype suspension), Tarox the works.
I'll not call it trouble free at all.

With any kinda mods there are risks as well as gains.

already done the damage

What damage did I do ?
If people think bolting on a box will have no ill effects, they are certainly misinformed.

you dont want to discuss it over the forum why mention it ?

Its not up to me to discuss, I did mention it yes.
Why cus maybe Rahul is not aware, so the statement he made is not entirely accurate.

As he mentioned it here

I only mentioned what I was aware of.

Raghul / Arun,
I don't know for a fact if the box caused it or something else.
I'm not an expert nor I claim to be one.

this is for the benefit of people who will be going in for the tuning boxes. It will surely help tem decide.

Again there is nothing I can add here.
All I know is it was not smooth sailing all the way.

All this is why I did't opt for a box in my dad's swift.
It was running with B14 and still have tarox.
Power does't hurt, does it ?

I don't want something to happen and dad end up blaming me.
He was not happy with the B14's as height was dropped 1.5cm in the front. He did't like it. So its not on the car anymore.
Bottom line I don't want to take any chance with the box.
Maybe I don't sound logical, but it was certainly logical for me why I did't go for it.

[blackhorn]

yzfrj, if its any consolation at all, i have a box installed on my swift d, it has been that way for the last 10k kms, i intend to keep everyone updated on any problems i encounter along the way and the experience itself wether it be good or bad

the only thing i have noticed this far is that once or twice the fuel pump pressure light came on, when i took the box off for it to get its service, the codes came up from the ecu diagnostic as fuel pump failure(both high and low pressure pumps)

upon researching on the net i found that these codes are registered by the ecu whenever i coupler is disconnected and there is a difference in the readings from the sensors which include the rail pressure sensor and the fuel pump, it stores this in a long term memory bank which cannot be overwritten, which is why it was reflecting those, after a ecu reflash the error was gone, this fuel pump warning light also came up when the battery was weak(at the time i hadn't even bought the box for the vehicle) as the pump wasn't able to generate sufficient pressure owing to the low current state of the battery

[mclaren1885]

Riju, could you atleast tell us what "niggling" issues Rain's car had before he sold it? Maybe we can try to reason out whether it was due to the box or not or otherwise. Last I remember, he sold the box to another Gearheads member when his car had done around 65-70k kms because we decided to get a re-map that never worked out. Given that he bought the box at 44k kms, his car has not run more than 25-30k on the box. And like I said earlier, there were no issues till about 90k when I last drove that car. I would really love to know what issues he faced since. Maybe it will also help trace back to see if any signs of trouble cropped up in the 1 year that I drove that car almost every single day.

Yes, there was some issue that seem to be cropping up with the alternator IIRC, but that might have been due to the freakout we did at Muzhapillangad Beach.

As for Louis' car, again please go through his thread or mention these "issues" you are talking about. Only then will anyone be able to gauge what went wrong and why.

AFAIK, Louis' car went through a lot of experimentation and niggling issues are bound to crop in purely because something like that has never been done before. But again, like I last recollect, apart from the turbo failure that happened during the initial stages of owning the car, I don't really remember him having any major issues except the fuel pump getting weak around the time he sold it. And to imagine he was running a much bigger turbo, an aggressive re-map and a lot of testing on that vehicle, not to mention the constant abuse of being belted up those ghats, I think it did hold up really well.

For those who are unaware, here are the two cars we are discussing.

Another Mad Swift D in the making.

Torturing the 1.3 DDiS

While I do appreciate you trying to correct what I said, I'd really be thankful if you could tell us these issues Rain or your other friend faced in detail. Will be helpful to understand the kind of failures one can expect.

[yzfrj]

Sorry to sound blunt.
I brought this up as, calling it trouble free was inaccurate in my book
If anyone is really that keen probably they should get in touch with the Rainier or ripper.

If they want to share it they will.

Rippers car I agree there was lot of experiments on it.
However he was happy with it that is all that matters.

My experience with Petes have been good till date.
If anyone wants a bump in power best bet would be a remap.

There are lot of cars which are running fine yes.
There were couple of cars that was running not so nice, that all.

If anyone want to blame the box feel free.
The point is there is no conclusive way to prove or dis-prove it.

As Murphy's law says "If anything can go wrong, it will"

[Ripper]

yzfrj
About Ripper 's swift

The turbo blew at 20,000 kms while I was running the tuning box . I dont blame the tuning box, I blame inept MASS who advised me to take to turbo out and get it "cleaned" by them. I was an idiot and didnt know any better, and let them. Learnt my mistake and never let MASS do anything to the car without me being physically present and authorising every screw turn.
I remember calling Peter after they had "cleaned" the turbo and the car lost all power. All I could hear over the phone was peter's wordless sputtering when I told what I had authorised MASS to do, without taking his advice or anyone else's for that matter.

The high pressure fuel pump was faulty when I sold the car at 88,000kms.
That could be purely manufacturing defect, or it could be because the car was being pushed mercilessly by my greed for more power. At one point, the car was out accelerating a verna CRDi to a 100kmph.
The tuning probably a hastened the failure of the fuel pump. Probably.

Big deal. I was warned about which components will take more stress when the car is pushed that much, by Peter himself, and I went ahead, because I was willing to take the risk. No regrets, the car was a barrel of monkeys and I loved it to bits. Literally.
Whatever you think went wrong with it, I dont know, I'd given you a blow by blow account in person, and kept it off the forum because I didnt want the buyer to interpret that all the faults in the car that occured 3 months after he bought the car from me was due to my use/abuse.
But these were the only 2 problems I'm aware, that I caused.
You know exactly the kind of person the buyer was(used car salesman) and the kind of blunders he made, cutting corners while fixing the faulty high pressure pump.
I compensated him for the high pressure pump, BTW, if you remember. But I outright refused to compensate him for other stupid stuff like the wires coming out of the ECU that he cut, and concealed from me. He probably did a lot of other jugaad work which set off problems, but I'm not going to take the fall for it, or let Pete's performance be the scapegoat for that.

If it matters at all, I went ahead and remapped the Figo (at Pete's again, obviously) I purchased after the swift D,at 5k kms and it has now run 40k in a year, and it is a dream. EVEN,If the fuel rail blows at 80k again, (unlikely, this car is tougher than the swift and hasnt been modded or pushed as extremely hard as the swift) I wont mind. I'll have had solid for for 2-3 years with no extra maintenance costs other than that hypothetically blown fuel pump. Totally worth it.

Now, I'd like people to stop talking about a car I sold 2 years ago for a killer price.

EDIT- I just remembered- the tarox rotors were capable of stopping the earth's rotation, but they were murder on the brake pads.
The clutch was changed twice. (to be expected, the torque it was making, and the fact that I learnt to heel toe on that car)

[Techie]

I just got back and have to be honest, too much to read. I am just getting this hang of admin stuff and all that. I am now a days on a tight schedule due to work and personal reasons and therefore It is too much for me to read all the stuff going on.

if possible can someone be kind enough to just point out what has been going on? I will give my inputs. If there are any unanswered questions - technical ofcourse!!, I will try to answer them.
Ripper
Hey man long time. I am only on GH and FB for now. G+ I got your invite having a tough time with FB so decided not to get onto G+.