I am looking at getting a new shape Audi A4 with one of the 2.0 TDI engine variants. I was looking into chips and they make bold claims. More performance, more BHP.

Has anyone used these and can reflect on real world experiences?

I can see them working knowing the bureaucratic eco world we live in and sneaky manufacture tricks.

I would like to take recommendations on particular brands of plug in box as well.

Cheers

I believe all they do is up the rail pressure, making the whole map more rich, it's a very crude way of doing it, but its cheaper than a remap and probably does make more power over stock. A full remap will change injection quantity, boost pressure etc. and will also increase the limp mode overboost figure which a tuning box won't

Better to take it to a place for a stage 1 remap for better performance and some kind of warranty. I used angel tuning for my golf TDI after R-tech gave me a snotty reply about removing the back box for a straight through section. Done about 30k on the map and works great, more power everywhere in the map especially in the upper revs. MPG is slightly better too

A friend put one on a 2.4 Alfa diesel ended up back of car covered in black soot when driving hard, had to change inlet manifold as blocked up and went for a proper remap which worked well.

If I should ever descend into diesel hell for my private car, I'll be taking it for one of the bog standard remaps. £250-£300 seems like a decent price for a little improvement, as long as insurance doesn't go up too much.

Cheap plugins are exactly that, I have used race chip pro from Germany with reasonable results. We now have a DTUK box on a Leon fr and it flys, there box does controls boost etc and as its down wind of ecu totally undetectable. Andrew at dtuk is very helpful and very knolageable.

We have no issues with soot or limp mode and mpg is up.

Please don't! I carry out proper remapping, buy cheap, buy twice!!!!

I never said i was going cheap. I am happy to pay the money for a decent plug in.

I like the convenience of it. If they are remarkably worse than a mapper i will go to one instead.

the good thing about the audi limps is it common and hence worth the investment from a plug in unit company to get it right.

As i understand it, the modern plug in units access everything a tuner would and not just the basics.

Proper R-tech remaps can be had at around £200 I think if you mention being a member of one of the owners forums, regular price is £250

The tuning boxes can work surprisingly well on some vehicles, the decent ones aren't just a dumb "raise fuel pressure by x amount all the time" they actually have some kind of map internally to vary the pressure according to RPM and boost etc.

That said, some vehicles don't seem respond well. A friend has a new Jeep Wrangler with the 2.7L Diesel and has tried 3 different tuning boxes and all result in negligible performance increase followed by the ECU going into limp home mode. All vendors refunded him though.

two results.

1 in an new car I bought. Made a big difference. NO it didnt give me better MPG but it did fill a few flat spots and made it better.

2nd car. Used it for 3 days. It over heated and melted some wire on the injector loom and damaged 2 injectors so they needed replacing. After that the car kept going into limp home mode and we could never find the problem.

Would I use them again.... NO. Have i heard of that before .... NO. Would I get my cars remapped... yes.

Some of the old Rover engines worked really well with tuning boxes (Synergy for example) but for a new modern car it would be remap every time for me.

Ok so the LCB collective is saying remap, not plug and play.

So with that in mind, anyone recommend a remap specialist? In the south east would be nice.

Main suspects are Revo and AMD. That's from my leon coupra days.