Exige engine in Elise?

Does anyone have experience with this? What problems will i encouter?all advice would be greatly appreciated

Lotus have built quite a few Elise Sport 190s with essentially the same 190 bhp VHPD engine as the Exige, and the VHPD has been available as an aftermarket option for the Elise for some time. You shouldn’t have any problem fitting this engine except that you will lose your boot space to the air box.[This message has been edited by Brendan (edited 14 April 2002).]

Thanks for your reply, Brendan. I do realise that the VHPD engine is essentially the same as the Exige engine, but my main concern is the wiring loom. Simply swapping the Elise ECU for the Exige ECU sounds too simple too be true. There must be a catch…

Go to www.sport190.com by Tim Skipper to find out about 190 Upgrades.

The wiring loom is split into a car side loom and an engine loom at the rear bulkhead using two big multi way plugs. The offical cars built at the factory had a standard engine harness using a Rover MEMS ECU. The factory kit now adapts this to a Lotus K4 ecu as used on the new Elise.

Just in case you haven’t, drive an Exige before you do this. Unless you intend to use the car mainly for track work, more power but a lot higher up the rev. range, with minimal increase in, and a peakier, torque curve does not make an ideal road engine.

This topic is actually not too relevant anymore… I now have a Honda K20A engine ready to drop in soon… Can’t wait!!! Screw these Rovers!