Hi @Exonian ...gret to get you thoughts , I had never thought of a pedal box nevermind heard of such a thing , spoke to DTUKtoday and aside from amazing service they seemed extremely informed as well as reassured me about both the pedal box and performance box not being traceable by VAG ....would really value your thoughts ..?
Since my last post in this thread I’ve also had the same pedalbox fitted to a GTD and now an Ed40 Clubsport.
My advice would be to get the pedalbox first. Play about with the settings a bit. You’ll find the car’s standard power suddenly becomes more accessible, particularly the torque delivery and the car just wakes up. It suddenly feels like a hotter hatch than it did before.
One or two people don’t like them. Not many though.
I’ve got mine on a fairly aggressive setting at the moment and it catches me out at times. I was trying to ease through a gap into a vacant lane on a roundabout approach to go straight on where 99% of the traffic was queuing to turn left onto a dual carriageway.
I brushed the pedal and the car just took off! I felt a bit of a tit but it did make me laugh out loud!
On a moderate setting it makes the car feel punchy without getting a bit hyperactive.
The tuning box itself works well enough.
If VW dig deep enough they can find evidence of anything you’ve fitted from ECU readings. They’re only going to dig that deep if you suffer catastrophic component failure in all probability.
It’s just a risk you run.
Forums aren’t full of people suffering huge failures and getting warranties refuted.
These stories would spread like wildfire on the internet.
Keep the settings at sensible levels, don’t overtax the car by driving it flat out whilst running vastly higher boost than standard constantly, warm the engine thoroughly, change the oil often... just common sense stuff should minimise potential issues.
A tuning box is reactive. It picks up signals going to sensors downstream of the ECU and changes them. The ECU will then change boost and ignition timing to compensate for the modified signals the tuning box sends back to the sensors. So there’s a bit of two step dialogue going on.
The ECU is always compensating under load when a tuning box is fitted. Not ideal but also the reason the tuning box is harder to detect from diagnostic equipment.
An OBD remap has the boost and timing settings already sat waiting in the ECU itself so is easy to spot with diagnostic equipment but performs much more efficiently (assuming the remapper was any good) as it’s not being reactive.
A JB4 is about as good as a tuning box gets.