What is in a Turbo Boost Box?

huffhuff

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• Jul 13, 2015

• #1

Hi all

Has anybody opened up or happen to know what electrickery is in a turbo boost box? You know, the £60 type on eBay that connects near your ECU to fool it.

Cheers

 

Kwakerman

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Hampshire

• Jul 13, 2015

• #2

Cant say for sure but some of the 'cheaper' ones just contain resistors in parallel with sensors to fool the ECU into thinking that the fuel or water temperature is colder than what it actually is so the ECU pumps more fuel into the engine for more power.

 

huffhuff

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• Jul 13, 2015

• #3

That's what I thought, something along those lines. So essentially, not £60 quids worth...?!?

I thought it was to do with the boost values?!?

 

Bennehboy

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Huddersfield

• Jul 13, 2015

• #4

A zener diode...

Specifically they clamp the voltage to below 4.5V - that's the voltage which triggers overboost in the ECU.

They're a 'bad thing' tm because they can (read that as WILL) cause the MAP sensor to fail over time.

Better to use a MAP sensor with a larger range and have the ECU tuned accordingly, but a bit more of a fiddle/cost to do.

 

Last edited: Jul 13, 2015

FlyingPete

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Coventry

• Jul 13, 2015

• #5

They can be nothing more than a resistor or two in a box. Basically designed to extract maximum profit from the unwitting buyer. Targeted mainly at 17 year olds who've been reading too much max power.

A proper remap is different. You can extract more power out of an engine, but then you're eating into the safety factors built in by the manufacturers. Admittedly, that's always going to be conservative due to the number of vehicles produced and having to account for different usage conditions- if 1% of those have problems that's still a lot of warranty repairs.

 

huffhuff

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• Jul 13, 2015

• #6

I have had the ECU remapped, decat and straight though exhaust plus EGR removed (dynachip recommended a boost box too).

I want to give the waste gate a couple of turns and will likely do this at the same time. From what I can gather, a 4.3v zener will do the trick? £2.96 for 10 of them!

Connect that to the white/yellow pin on the ECU. Anode to earth and cathode side in to ECU?

Only thing i'm not sure on is wattage of the diode.

 

bankz5152

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South London/North Kent

• Jul 13, 2015

• #7

The proper boost boxs from Alisport etc.. allow you to run higher boost without the engine going into limp mode.

When looking into it I deemed it not worth it, max PSI is about 18psi before limp. Boost box would let you turn it up to 20psi which is the optimum for the turbo. Any higher and the lag becomes too long also youll be looking at higher EGT temps so your manifold could warp...

Thats from what I have learnt anyway...

Stick with your current set up, fit a big intercooler and up the boost to 18psi. That should give you the best performance without affecting reliability.