The standard 260 software is good for 300 bhp with the right hardware …
Gearbox issues come into play before any need for mapping in my experience.
Maybe people live a long way away from Essex Autosport, maybe they like tinkering with bits and pieces and don’t want to take it to them every time they change one component on the car, maybe there are some features that the standard ecu cant do.
No one knows until you try. As you say Frank, R$D costs man!!
So what’s the ECU JDS is referring to then?
I’m trialing the Syvecs over christmas as that is quite easily one of the best value ECUs on the market for its capabilities.
Which Syvecs are you trialling?
I think its the S6… I’d have to check to be sure.
As I said before you can just put in a AEM if you have the need to tune your own engine. Or have a shop like Essex just tune it and be done with it… Playin tuner on the side just means that you will toast your engine and blame the ECU…
As for tooting my own horn let’s see a video of your 680whp Exige drivin around the twisties…
Why screw with new setups ? I can tell no one here has ever tuned a 2ZZ engine from scrach to perform better than OEM or do you guys have a clue as to how much dyno time and street tuning is really needed to get it right…The cost of the ECU is nothing…
Knock yourself out, I’ll just sit back and laugh my head off when the engines start to go pop…
Frank… if you want UK people to ‘get’ your car and think it’s awesome, you need to post some footage of it being well driven (by that I mean a good driver, driving it hard) around a track for 20+ mins…
A few drives up and down some windy roads does NOTHING at all to show off your vehicles performance or reliability of ‘tune’.
Get some track footage up with it playing alongside some other vehicles of various shapes and sizes and performance…
That would be far more impressive.
I have 8000bhp and drive around some twisty roads… my car is so awesome. It just doesn’t work to impress anyone IMHO.
- sorry - thats not meant to sound as bad as it does… I’l just trying to help.
Is there an ignore button on this forum?
Who said that? 
What??
[quote=frank]As I said before you can just put in a AEM if you have the need to tune your own engine. Or have a shop like Essex just tune it and be done with it… Playin tuner on the side just means that you will toast your engine and blame the ECU…
As for tooting my own horn let’s see a video of your 680whp Exige drivin around the twisties…
Why screw with new setups ? I can tell no one here has ever tuned a 2ZZ engine from scrach to perform better than OEM or do you guys have a clue as to how much dyno time and street tuning is really needed to get it right…The cost of the ECU is nothing…
Knock yourself out, I’ll just sit back and laugh my head off when the engines start to go pop… [/quote]
Err, so why did you go AEM? Totally agree that it takes a looooong time to get close to OE mapping for every occasion, but its not impossible to do. Has your AEM tune gone pop yet?
AEM does look a great solution, but the ones mentioned here are UK based, so simply easier/cheaper to comunicate with the maker/developer, take a car to if issues arrise, the list goes on.
I will stick with my OEM ECU till it can no longer meet the needs of my tuning or I can no longer get it mapped, for me the �300 it costs to get a remap done is cheap and simple, plus the car runs so well why should I change, will an ECU give me more “safe” power?
much better control of parameters, possibly better cruise fuel consumption, potentially more power, if not then at least safer power.
Remote diagnostics, datalogging, automatic engine shutdown if oil pressure or oil temperature drops - that kind of thing.
Also, adaptability if you want a different engine (which I think I do).
User controllable traction control, launch control, antilag, and much more.
Can I have a ride in your car before you switch the engine ower? I’d love to see what 320HP is like in one of these cars, but if it doesn’t rev to 8k I’m not so interested - especially if its turbo charged with a flappy paddle gearbox.
[quote=DaveP]
Frank… if you want UK people to ‘get’ your car and think it’s awesome, you need to post some footage of it being well driven (by that I mean a good driver, driving it hard) around a track for 20+ mins…
A few drives up and down some windy roads does NOTHING at all to show off your vehicles performance or reliability of ‘tune’.
Get some track footage up with it playing alongside some other vehicles of various shapes and sizes and performance…
That would be far more impressive.
I have 8000bhp and drive around some twisty roads… my car is so awesome. It just doesn’t work to impress anyone IMHO.
- sorry - thats not meant to sound as bad as it does… I’l just trying to help.
[/quote]
Tunes don’t change in the ECU so there is no reliability of ‘tune’, it is ether spot on or it’s not…
The track tells you nothing about a cars tune other than it can make power and any fool can make power, it’s getting a car with power to drive around town like an OEM setup and that’s my point…
So you need a review by a Brit to make things more real ? Ok so here is Chris Randall’s take of the tune and the car after spending the day driving around Vegas and the twisties along with a few warp speed runs… :whistle:
Driving Ronin�s rockit pig
by hofmanns � Sun Nov 08, 2009 8:31 pm
I�ve been out in Vegas for the last week taking in the West Coast Lotus Meet, the SEMA show, the strip and also got the chance to drive Frank Profera�s (AKA Ronin) monster car, which has been the highlight of the trip.
Frank seems to think that, for some reason, there are people who doubt that his car works with all it�s compound charger trickery so I said I would give a little insight into my time behind the wheel.
Like him or loathe him, Frank has a great ability to bring a challenging project to fruition and his car really is an amazing bit of kit in the flesh. The detail and finish of the car is very high and, although the looks are bound to divide opinion, the quality of the work that has gone into the car is exemplary. Being in the lucky position of driving many fast cars it�s rare that I get excited about the prospect of driving another but this one really did set my pulse racing.
Frank took to the wheel first and quickly showed me how the car could light up the tyres at 70mph but I felt perfectly at ease and sat back and enjoyed the warp speed and sound track. If you like forced induction cars then you will love the scream of a supercharger, the whoosh of a turbocharger and this car has both. It sounds unreal and not in a chavvy way, more of a sci-fi meets terminator meets star ship enterprise way. Basically it sounds REALLY cool.
It didn�t take long for Frank to kindly entrust me with the keys so I jumped in the drivers seat and pulled away and instantly felt at home. There isn�t really anything to fear with the car at normal speeds, the clutch being reasonably light, the gearchange positive and slick and the engine tractable. You can felt the extra inertia of the SC and turbo on the downshifts but it doesn�t take too long to account for that in your driving and the cars generally feels very OEM. Setup wise the car felt terrific, but that�s exactly what I had expected seeing as Frank had fitted a set of my dampers and taken all my advice on geo! Until I got comfortable I was fairly gently with the throttle and at low engine speeds the performance feels very similar to a top spec SC Honda with a linear power delivery. What really does grab your attention is the way that, once you have settled into the car, it will pull all the way to the red line, in every gear, just building and building speed in a way that�s quite unreal. On the big open American roads you don�t get the same perspective of speed that you do in the UK but on glancing down at the speedo after only a few moments of full throttle you will see the needle threatening to jump off the end of the dial. If the car were mine I would travel everywhere at 160+mph as it�s just so easy to reach silly speeds. You can stick it in 5th at 70mph and nail it, there will be a whine as the SC starts turning, followed in very short order by a whoosh as the turbo spools and the car will set off and start building speed. As the revs climb the engine pulls harder and harder and harder until the point where you remember it�s Frank�s toy and not yours and that you really should slow down. At speed the car is stable and comfortable, and I�m sure it would feel that way all the way up to whatever silly speed it would reach which has to be 180+. Luckily for me I got to spend a decent amount of time behind the wheel, taking in some sight seeing a normal speeds and some twisty bits at silly speeds and at all times the car was fantastic. On the road there is nothing to touch it and what impresses most is the breadth of its power delivery, with massive urge from 2000rpm through to 8500rpm and this makes complete sense of the tall gearing.
So, the car gets a resounding thumbs up� I was pained to give back the keys! My thanks go out to Frank for entrusting me with his fantastic toy. I know Frank can be abrupt on the forums but he is a generous and warm person in real life, very entertaining company and very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about cars.
And if you want to ignore what I have to say it’s ok by me since I’ve seen so many chumps eat their own fieceis tryin to do the ECU…
As for my using the AEM it allows me to use it to control the boost along with proper warning functions for my staged dual fuel Alcohol/Gasoline injection system which is used to turn a 91 octane pump gas into blend of 104 octane race gas when needed… The stock ECU is still mounted in the car just incase there is an issue with the AEM…
The stock ECU with a retune has been in the car for 5 yrs. with various tunes up till the dual fuel setup… Still to this day I haven’t seen one guy selling ECUs to the Lotus crowd do this and make 680 whp…This is over two years ago with the compound setup installed…
[video:youtube]- YouTube[/video]
Is it just me, or does anyone else on reading Randy’s account think of the car bit in an 80’s Penthouse?
It is a sexy bit of rocket pig…and everyone loves bacon…
I don’t think that anyone doubts what you have done works, does what it says on the tin or that its what you were aiming to achieve. Would love to have the roads that you have over here, without having to worry about potholes, other people, caravans, horses, cameras, police, etc, but over here they are few and far between. So most get their kicks from track days. Don’t think we’re too far different in our goals, just different approach for a different set of circumstances and requirements.
The bit I can’t get my head around, is that you can tune an AEM ecu, but no one else can tune any other aftermarket ecu, that is being developed for a Toyota platform Lotus, by the makers of the ecu?
My point is why bother with any aftermarket ECU when a reflash tune will do the job…
I don’t think there are any other mental cases out there like myself doing the constant mods I seem to do…really who has two fuel injection systems on a 1.8 ltr. 2ZZ or any other car ?
I’m just tryin to help Lotus owners save money… It takes a few thousand bucks in dyno time to get things right and days and days to get the street tuning done and then it’s back to the dyno to see what you really have left at the end of the day…
And don’t forget when and if you make the big power you are lookin for you still need a gearbox to handle the torque…
I always enjoy watching guys tryin to reinvent the wheel only to see it go flat again and again… Take advantage of the R$D that others have done or spend your money and come up with your own blown motors and gearboxes… 
Funny that, these are your words from the Emerald thread - One day on the dyno and 3 hrs. of street fine tuning and I have a perfectly runin 663bhp Lotus…
Agreed, gearbox is an issue, but not insurmountable as you have shown. You may be surprised how many people want the new, best widget on the market, and my understanding is the Lotus ecu doesn’t like the new best widget just bolting on. If you’re spending big money on engine, chargers, manifolds, injectors, pulleys, turbos, whats an ecu in conjunction with that, dyno time you were going to have to pay for anyway. A reflash might do it, but only one place in the uk, and they’re not particularly central, have a decent length lead time to get your car in and in the grand scheme of things, not that much difference in cost after a couple of new reflash’s.