Ha! Had you going for a second there. This has nothing to do with my other post, in which my XK ended up with a fantastic tune from a wonderful fellow. No, this happened about a year ago and I thought I'd put this out there for others to know about so they don't make the same mistake that I did.

I have been investigating tuning the XK for some time. Because the NA 5.0L is not commonly something that is the subject of tuning efforts, finding companies and individuals who work in the area is sometimes a little difficult. During my various searches I kept stumbling across something called a "Tuning box". This device advertises itself to be a sort of piggyback ECU that reads information from the engine and then massages the ECU on the fly to create higher horsepower, higher torque, more fuel efficiency and so on. There is more than one company making this product and I think if you google search "tuning box" you'll find them easily.

The company I settled on is actually named Tuning Box (www.tuningbox.com) and they are located in Belgium with an impressive website that has lots of pics of cars on dynos highlighted with neon and men standing around in aggressive postures with their arms crossed. Four things about them caught my eye:

1) They seem to work with high prestige vehicles. Jaguar, Lamborghini, Maserati, Aston Martin, Porsche and so on.
2) The cost seemed right. I believe the device that I purchased was $750 so I was pretty sure it was more than a resistor and a plug, or a chip that made flashing lights.
3) The promised gains were consistent with the kind of results I was seeing from other tuned NA 5.0L XKs. Roughly 30 HP gains with equivalent torque, and an extra mpg or two of fuel economy.
4) They worked with 5.0L normally aspirated XKs. There is a product page devoted to that platform specifically. THIS FACT BECOMES EXTREMELY IMPORTANT LATER.

The page still stands: https://www.tuningbox.com/en/petrol-...xk/5-0-385.htm

You'll notice that it looks like they know what they are talking about. They also sell a version of the "Pedal Box" but that's not relevant to this discussion.

I ordered the device. Waited about 3 weeks for it to arrive. The packaging was quite nice (not quite Apple nice but still better than some Chinese slap together job) and the instructions were clear. And a little confusing. I'm looking at the pictures in the instructions and the engine bay they are showing me is for an XKR, not an XK. Undaunted I opened my hood, pulled off my engine cover and began quickly realizing that this box thing was not made for my car at all. The biggest giveaway was a piggyback plug that I was supposed to plug into my boost sensor.

Of course I don't have a boost sensor. Also the placement of things (like how to tap into the car's power supply) was flat out wrong. The instructions and device were clearly for an XKR. I think anyone could have figured that out, you didn't have to be remarkably savvy to quickly determine that things just didn't match up.

On top of that I was pretty dismayed at the device itself. It was well built and solid feeling and the wires and leads were all quality items... but they didn't make any sense. There was a power lead and a ground. And one set of wires that you plugged into the IAT sensor, basically making it so that the IAT signal went through the box before it got to the ECU and a similar set of wires that plugged into the boost sensor, basically this box was going to be between the IAT and boost sensor and the car's ECU.

In my mind this threw up huge warning flags. The only thing this device could possibly be doing is tricking the ECU into both thinking that the intake temps were cooler than they really were, and that the boost wasn't as high as it actually was. I can't think of anything else it could be doing. There were NO other sensors or leads.

Anyway, I wrote tuning box an email saying that clearly they had sent me the wrong product (although the part number was correct according to the website "Tuning Box Evolution 3564") and also I asked some questions about what exactly the thing could be doing. The response that I got back was they sent me another copy of the installation guide.

I responded with an email that had some heat in it. I didn't need an installation guide. I needed a different product. One that maybe actually did something. They responded by asking me to take photos of my engine. Did so, and sent it to them. About a week later I got back a short email that it didn't look like my motor was supercharged, perhaps I had ordered the wrong product? So I sent them an email with screen shots of their product page with the part numbers on it, highlighted the part numbers in my documentation and that was printed on the device itself, and told them impolitely that if I got the wrong thing it was THEIR fault not mine since I had ordered it right off their XK webpage. No response for about a week.

So then I called my credit card company and that started a whole go around that lasted about 2 months while they had me send them correspondence and so on. I finally got a direct email back from someone with a Belgian sounding name who informed me that this was my fault since I did not own an XKR and an XK "Cannot be tuned as it does not have a supercharger". I once again referred them to their own webpage (that still exists!). This was going nowhere and it looked like I had been shorted $750.00

One problem I was having was when I called Venture One I would routinely get some very nice girl in her late 20s who would listen attentively and type a lot but clearly had no idea what I was talking about when I would talk forced induction and how an XKR is a very different animal than an XK even though the names are similar. FINALLY on one phone call I got a guy who had a real inner city accent (for some reason I imagined him sitting in an office in Chicago) and as I was explaining this whole thing again for about the 7th time when I said "I have an XK, not an XKR" he said "AH" and it was clear that he got it. 10 minutes later I got instructions to return the product to Tuning Box with a signature required and the moment I got that signature the credit card company would pull the money from them and credit my account.

Shipping that thing back to Belgium with insurance and requiring a signature cost me 150 bucks. Money lost and lesson learned.

So I would politely suggest that you avoid the company Tuning Box and even any sort of "tuning box" product unless you enjoy spending money and putting your engine at risk.

 

If anyone is curious, here is an installation video for a competitor, a company called TDI. It's exactly the same product.


You'll notice there are exactly two plugs. Apparently you can get everything you need to aggressively tune a car from two simple sensors. Who knew?

 

Wow that post made war & peace short

 

That Tolstoy was an amateur!

 

Dont know the geezer is he Russian ? some of us are WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWay ahead of you man . Just saying loads of guys have tried things like this inc myself (racechip) gets a better name than tdi box you tried map 5 was a hoot . Ps tell me the l;ocation for the boost sensor on the xkr 5l ?

 

if you are interested it is a condensed version of a lengthy encounter, if not it is nothing but noise
ymmv


wj

 

They say White noise is the worst lol PS. Boost sensor location on a xkr 5l is . stand in front of car (as you guys drive on the wrong side of the road ) boost sensor location is on right hand at back corner of the engine almost hard to get to and plug into as doing the supercharged oil change , bed now zzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

Well I'm glad you've had this experience. Have you ever told anybody about it so that, you know, they could maybe not have to go through the same things you did?

I have no idea where the boost sensor is. I don't own an XKR. "Boost sensor" is what they were calling it, I'm pretty sure they were referring to the intake manifold absolute pressure MAP sensor? And now that I'm sitting and thinking I seem to recall that the other plug was tying into the fuel pressure sensor, not the intake temp sensor. I could be mistaken. In any event it was just two sensors.

 

Absolutely. I see you are in Springfield give my regards to Bart

 

If you had any idea how similar it is here to that Springfield, and how much I look more and more like Homer every year, you'd laugh and laugh and laugh.

 

A few Simpson characters on here , Stuart reminds me of Flanders

 

George, you remind me of Krusty!