Spent yesterday at DVA�s house helping him fit his drivability kit to my Exige.
Having come from an Elise with perfectly mapped 160hp K series I was finding the mapping and general drivability of the VHPD was really getting on my nerves, it was particularly weak in the midrange and very poor on part throttle openings at low revs.
My car had already had the 190 kit fitted, which as it turned out was an almost total waste of a previous owners cash.
The kit consists of: Emerald ECU and verniers and includes fitting which involves retiming the cams, balancing the TB�s and setting up the ECU.
First job was cutting and joining the loom to fit the Emerald, I did all this as Dave has bad back and what a bastard fiddly job it was, cramped in the back of the cabin for about 3 hours.
Dave then checked the cam timing which was well out, over 15 thou on the exhaust, and over 25 thou on the inlet, not the worst he has seen but still makes a nonsense of the 190 upgrade pulley. My car also had a badly leaking cam oil seal, which Dave changed at the same time as fitting the verniers.
Once the engine was back together, we lost over an hour because the pillock who had done the wiring (me) had failed to join the wire to one of the coils correctly and the engine was only running on two. Dave then spent quite a lot of time balancing the TB�s and tweaking the standard Exige map.
Now time for a test drive. The idle has improved a lot especially when cold, the engine is much stronger in the midrange, with the power delivery being much more linear. Top end feels much the same. All the low rev/part throttle stuttering has disappeared, it will now rev from less than 2,000 revs in top with no problems. In other words it is now as it should have been in the first place.
On balance the kit wasn�t cheap, I paid just over a grand, it would have been more but since I did all the loom Dave didn�t charge the full amount, but for me it has been well worth it. I also figured that it gives a good basis for future mods or that the ECU etc could be sold for good money if I should decide to change engines in the future.
I would also highly recomend DVA himself, top bloke who knows the K series from back to front.