That is my car on the rollers at Syvecs. We have been working with them for some time now. The car runs and drives as it should. The cold start and cold running are at least as good as OE, the variable traction and launch control all work as they should, the dash works as it should.
We have had a fly lead made up with all original plugs, so it really is a simple plug and play job and off you go (so totally reversible). Kits will be sold with a base map. That map is basically done on my car, so a 240bhp performance pack car with standard cat and standard silencer, but with the 260 fuel pump.
It’s not about numbers, it’s that it’s running for now. I am guessing they’ll be working on base maps to get the thing running.
Syvecs are working with JSR to get the thing to be plug and play and support all the functions of the various local dash options. The best bit is that it is probably the best ecu option there is for road cars at a reasonable level without going for the very high end motorsport stuff (which they can do too).
With syvecs being approachable and in the uk it will evolve to support whatever JSR want it to do and the best bit is it was built by enthusiasts who are in to tuning cars.
As a standalone ecu it provides a much better option than reflashing the stock ecu, and is MUCH more powerful. I’m really excited about this.
My car has been running on Syvecs for a couple of days now. The map is still to be finalised and Syvecs are doing the mapping. We are going to end up with a couple of different base maps, that yes will need optimising for individual cars maps.
It’s not about numbers, yet, either. We will get to that though as time goes on.
The cold start and general running is as OE as I mentioned earlier.
As has been mentioned there are some really cool things the Syvecs can do. For example it can monitor oil pressure against revs, so if it sees 1.5 bar pressure at idle, then that is fine, however if it sees 1.5 bar at 6,000rpm then it can take action and turn the engine off or do whatever you want it to do. There is loads and loads of great logic built in that can be used for stuff like that.
As of today, its in, it works as it should and it is all looking great.
So wiil it make me into a driving god? Can I have a 350bhp base map? and how much will it cost? Is it more than the 50p and bag of Quavers I have set aside for it?
Wont make you a driving god, but can map the throttle to give 100% at the engine, even if you back off by 20%, thereby ‘flat’. You can have a 350hp base map, but there’s no gaurantee that the rest of the supporting hardware will achieve this. We do not take quavers as payment for any of our work, sorry.
I dropped my car off today for a pre next season check and had a good chat with John on what this means for us ‘normal’ exige owners - ie anyone running standard bits etc sub 260bhp.
All of the following is my thoughts from the conversation with John and may be complete boll****
As is always the case the first elephant in the room is the stock gearbox so any ECU change, manifold or pulley upgrades to get more power seem pointless without the box issue being dealt with. So for me it looks like this
Uprate gearbox - either Jubu or ‘other’ option
Change manifold - Tubular seems to be the best option
Smaller Pulley - not sure on size yet
550 injectors
ECU - new JSR sourced Syvec thingy
All of this based on rough costings is looking like 6-7K with a final possible power figure of between 300 and 350bhp. After that it looks like engine internals become the weak point & would need modding to go any further from a power perspective
So now the whole ‘Audi’ conversion starts to look like a sensible option with a lot more ‘ceiling’ for power and mods
The downside for me is my 260 Cup is not a normal Lotus anymore and any resale values could/would be affected.
So do I throw 6K at my car and it remains to all intensive purposes ‘std’ with around 350bhp or bite the bullet, sell it and get a cheap S2 and Audi it
Or just buy a V6 Exige next year when the dealer demo cars are around 45K
Can this EUC be mapped (for an NA install) at somewhere like Minster? Or is it better off you guys doing it after the engine install? I’m keen to keep my existing ECU for my present set up as a drop in replacement.
