AusPanda said:

I think I've found the problem. I had a closer look at the wiring harness, gently pulling at the wires at the back of the connectors and on female connectors checking that the pins lined up. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with it, and thought I'd give it one more go before shipping the whole thing back.

Well, no Engine trouble light on second start-up, and power is back. I couldn't tell driving around the block if it's much better; mid-range response does seem better than standard though. I need to get onto to a motorway and play around with the remote to see if there's a difference.

Black Parts has offered to send me a new harness FOC so I think that might be problem solved

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good, hopefully its harness problem.
please update us...

akoni said:

good, hopefully its harness problem.
please update us...

Click to expand...

So far, on the original harness, the ME111T seems to be working as it should (I am waiting for the new one to arrive). Did a 100km round trip on the motorway yesterday, and you can tell that the tuning box has an effect. As others have noted, it is not like night and day, but a subtle improvement. Well, maybe the mid-range has a lot more punch.

When accelerating hard in 5th from around 100km/h (with the 17in wheels), performance used to be pretty sluggish. It is now more responsive.

When accelerating around an open left-hand corner on the approach to the motorway, 2nd gear from about 40km/h, had wheelspin from inside wheel and TC activated. It never did that before on the 17in wheels.

In fact I think throttle response for low revs might be more crisp too. I need to play with the remote a bit to really know.

Fuel consumption over the 100km trip (I reset the trip computer) was no different to what I'd expect before; a best of 4.7L/100km cruising at 90km/h to an average of 6.4L/100km including some stop-start traffic and hooning.

I am going back to the standard steel rims today. I had them painted silver and am fitting Fiat centre caps, a look I much prefer over the wheel covers. This will accentuate the performance improvements with the ME111T (not the paint and centre caps, the skinner, lighter wheels is what I mean! )

Even though I thought the support from MM was lacklustre, Stefano at Black Parts S.r.l. has been fantastic. I can highly recommend Black. They are sending a new harness to me for free.

They also have the cheapest price I could find for the ME111T, 317 Euro (plus taxes) and that includes the remote. Shipping from Italy to Australia was pretty reasonable too, some companies really go to town with that and makes it hardly worth it.

AusPanda said:

Even though I thought the support from MM was lacklustre, Stefano at Black Parts S.r.l. has been fantastic.

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Did you tell Stefano that you loaded the 'XXX' software and have you asked him to e-mail you the official software for the TwinAir? Please, make us happy...

Do your car have the 'sobbing' phenomenon described here below?

The Twins said:

It's when there is some hesitation in the revs at they rise, particularly noticeable if accelerating hard through the gears. Instead of vroooom you get v-v-v-vr-oo-oom hence the term 'sobbing'

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AGH1965 said:

Did you tell Stefano that you loaded the 'XXX' software and have you asked him to e-mail you the official software for the TwinAir? Please, make us happy...

Do your car have the 'sobbing' phenomenon described here below?

Click to expand...

I emailed Pietro at MM yesterday and asked if the 'xxx' software I loaded into my tuning box (before my account at me100t was blocked) was the correct one. He replied overnight that it was.

The hesitation that people describe in that thread occurs in my car with the MM box too. I noticed it on the motorway, accelerating through about 90-100km/h with about 3/4 throttle.

I should also say that yesterday I was back out on the motorway, towing two different camper trailers, one weighing 330kg, the other 360kg.

I found it difficult to tell if the tuning box was having an effect; when stopped at lights, etc. I used the remote to go from 2 to 0 and back a few times. If there was a difference it was very subtle.

I then did some reading on the remote for the MM tuning box. MM do not give any info on how to use it, the only info I could find was from 500madness, a US company dealing in 500 tuning parts incl the MM box. They say to hold the button down on the remote for 5-10 seconds while pointing it in the direction of the tuning box, while the ign is on but the car is stopped. Seems strange to me that you have to press the remote for so long, but I'll give that a go next time, as I only pressed the button for a second or two.

I will be driving a 2000km round trip to Mildura next week so it will be a good opportunity to test the tuning box. Even though I'll be towing my camper, there will be ample opportunity on the Hay Plain to stop and reset the tuning box and test the different settings

I've just come back from a 2000km trip towing a 400kg camper behind the Panda.

I had the ME111T connected for just over half the trip. This was with the old harness that wasn't letting the car perform well at all then was after I pulled at wires etc. A new harness arrived in the post while I was away.

My conclusion from that trip is that the ME111T made no difference to performance at all. I did some rolling acceleration tests out on the Hay Plain, 40-80km/h in third, with the tuning box in '0', '1' and '2' settings. I only had my watch stopwatch to time these so the figures could not be precise. However, they should be indicative, esp when 15hp increase is supposed to be at hand.

I stopped and let the car idle while I changed the settings via the MM remote. I held the button down for 10 seconds as recommended by 500 madness, the US MM retailer (I cannot find anywhere else instructions on how to use the MM remote). What IR remote requires that long to effect a change though? Even my old telly remote changes TV channels in a sec or two.

I took out the ME111T for the last 500km of my trip. Performance felt exactly the same, only the idle was a bit smoother.

So I have fitted the new harness sent to me by Black to replace the dodgy one. I have not had the chance to really test it but so far it doesn't seem to do anything.

I will disconnect the battery to let the ECU reset itself and try driving for a while before try to test performance again. Perhaps it was working initially last week when I thought it improved performance, or perhaps I was suffering from optimism bias.

All I know at this stage is that my $500AUD has been a waste of money. I will try for a bit longer but really, for a 'plug and play' tuning box there isn't much play going on so far.

AusPanda, I myself was disappointed too when I used the MM box/module on my previous 500. I clearly felt a difference when accelerating normally in city traffic, but I couldn't feel the expected power increase when accelerating with wide open throttle.

Therefore I did some acceleration measurements and the results were quite consistent with my feeling:



The few tenths of a second in 4th gear are hardly noticeable.

However, with the engine running in eco mode there were much clearer differences in acceleration times:



In fact, the module/box makes the eco mode much more drivable. No longer problems to keep up with other city traffic.

My conclusion: The MM box/module has the largest influence in part load situations (including the eco mode). It improves drivability much more than the real performance.

AGH1965 said:

AusPanda, I myself was disappointed too when I used the MM box/module on my previous 500. I clearly felt a difference when accelerating normally in city traffic, but I couldn't feel the expected power increase when accelerating with wide open throttle.

Therefore I did some acceleration measurements and the results were quite consistent with my feeling:

The few tenths of a second in 4th gear are hardly noticeable.

However, with the engine running in eco mode there were much clearer differences in acceleration times:

In fact, the module/box makes the eco mode much more drivable. No longer problems to keep up with other city traffic.

My conclusion: The MM box/module has the largest influence in part load situations (including the eco mode). It improves drivability much more than the real performance.

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Thank-you! That is really, really useful info. I will try the Eco setting to see if there is a more obvious difference. I suppose all I want to know is that the tuning box is working, and not faulty.

Interesting what you said about part-load improvement. This is where I thought I could feel the difference, but because it didn't seem better elsewhere, I started to think I was imagining it. Maybe I was imagining it, but I will try the Eco mode today with the different settings. I didn't realise that the Eco mode was also changed with the tuning box settings.

That was very helpful! Thanks!

I think I might send back my ME111T.

I can't find the reference, but I think I saw info that claimed that the tuning box took 1sec off the 0-100km/h acceleration time. This would make sense if there is another 7kW or so power with the box.

There just isn't that kind of power with my tuning box. I liked the idea that the Magneti Marelli tuning box was almost an OE fitment, but really it's just an expensive box and loom to fit under the bonnet.

The other tuning boxes are more expensive than the MM but maybe they work? I don't know.

This is pretty disappointing really. I will give MM one last call to see if there is some way of checking the software to see if that's the problem, but really I think that if my tuning box is working okay then the 7kW/15hp claim is bs.

AusPanda said:

I think I might send back my ME111T.

I can't find the reference, but I think I saw info that claimed that the tuning box took 1sec off the 0-100km/h acceleration time. This would make sense if there is another 7kW or so power with the box.

There just isn't that kind of power with my tuning box. I liked the idea that the Magneti Marelli tuning box was almost an OE fitment, but really it's just an expensive box and loom to fit under the bonnet.

The other tuning boxes are more expensive than the MM but maybe they work? I don't know.

This is pretty disappointing really. I will give MM one last call to see if there is some way of checking the software to see if that's the problem, but really I think that if my tuning box is working okay then the 7kW/15hp claim is bs.

Click to expand...

so sad that mm doesnt work...
maybe its time to try TMC motorsports or novitec as they use it in panda twinair...

AusPanda said:

I can't find the reference, but I think I saw info that claimed that the tuning box took 1sec off the 0-100km/h acceleration time.

There just isn't that kind of power with my tuning box.

Click to expand...

I think you are not the only person that doesn't notice the promised performance boost, but as I wrote earlier, I clearly noticed improvements in part load situations.

Did you know that Magneti Marelli removed all TwinAir engines from the application list of the tuning box? Magneti Marelli employee Pietro reported the following reason to forum member Corsasri:

corsasri said:

I got told by Pietro that the map was removed because people said there was no gain fitting the module.

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AGH1965 said:

I think you are not the only person that doesn't notice the promised performance boost, but as I wrote earlier, I clearly noticed improvements in part load situations.

Did you know that Magneti Marelli removed all TwinAir engines from the application list of the tuning box? Magneti Marelli employee Pietro reported the following reason to forum member Corsasri:

Click to expand...

I phoned MM just now and spoke to Pietro. He said that the Twin Air was pulled from the application list because of problems with it. He said that with some Twin Airs, the module worked very well, others it didn't improve performance (as he told Cosari, above).

When I asked why the difference, he didn't know.

So I give up. sending the box back.

Thanks,you just saved me $500+

Anyone else try any of the other tuning boxes out there on the market?

This is for a Fiat 500 twinair 85

Thanks.