My experience has been very different with tuning boxes. Yes some of the Ebay specials were crap, but I did a rolling road shootout a while ago with a Nissan Navara I had purely for towing my powerboat. And the owner of diesel tuning uk lend me his box as a comparison for the shoot out.
Let's just say that after the shoot out I send him my money and kept it Even the guys from the rolling road were impressed. I regard Andrew now as one of my best friends, even been to his wedding whole day event. Anyway I took my car up and had a different map put on the box as I wanted a little bit more lower down. He ended up providing that map as standard as one of the three options.
On our Mercedes-AMG I really didn't want more power, but did put a pedal box on it to get some of the dead spots out of it.
One the VW Golf R I didn't want more power, but he send me the full suite of petrol tuning gear anyway (bastard) and wow, just wow that was so good. Ran with that for 4 years without any issues. Managed to do Santa pod in 11.76s in a flipping 5 door hatchback...
I would not have any hesitation to recommend nor use Dtuk. https://www.diesel-performance.co.uk and I'm not saying that because he is my friend.
On my FFRR I'm going a different route though due to the supercharger; so pulley changes and remap it is. But if I had a diesel that would be the first thing to do.
Black smoke is often the case of overfilling or too much power. I've heard and seen it so many times before over the years in various threads, many people seem to wack the settings up to the max and then boom lots of smoke and sometimes even an engine warning light. Especially engines with a few miles react differently, I would start low and slightly increase, keep an eye on temperatures and exhaust fumes. A well setup box from a quality supplier would breathe new life in some of gutless engines.
But the pedal box is the biggest transformation. I still can't get my head around it, and I wouldn't have ordered one as in my mind you can do the same with the right foot. Except you can't, they really work. I got one send for free, and liked it so much that I paid for it, and ordered one for our Mercedes. My wife noticed it as well and asked whether I put a box on the engine which I didn't.
So if you were to start, I'd start there first. And then if you want more then also get a tuning box.
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