As I have stated, I am looking at the 260 upgrade for my S240. I got quote 1k from Lotus for the new ECU, and fitment. Obviously I would have fuel pump price on top of that.
However, I am just interested to find out what peoples thoughts are on the after market MAPs.
It obviously works out a fair bit cheaper. I was looking on Hanger111 and to send the ECU away, have the 260 Map put on It is working out about £400 cheaper than Lotus.
I will probably just go down the lotus route, as I am adamant on keeping the car strictly lotus upgrades. How long that will last, who knows. My reasons for that at the moment are purely down to how insecure my job is. When the car is paid next year, I will be keeping It from that point, so would not get too upset about after market.
But interested to hear your views guys on what routes you have went down when doing this?
That is kind of my thinking also, despite the fact I know It is not always the best route, dependent on your long term goals.
At the moment and for the forceable, I would not be heading anywhere over 260, as quite frankly I cannot justify the funds to the other half.lol.
It is always good to hear though, what others have done and why?
My car was mapped by Essex Autosport, to me this gives me long term future proof as I can now have my car mapped for any further changes, exhaust pulley size charge cooler etc. The Lotus upgrade does not allow you this, does the Hanger 111?
It can depend on how long you want to keep the car and if ultimately you want more power or not?
Sadly, it there is no magic if you go over xxx hp then bad things happen. We have a customer that broke one with a 240 car, and heard of more than 1 on an NA.
For the most part, use is as much a factor as anything else.
I’ve got the Hangar111 260 map on mine. Had an uprated fuel pump put on at the same time and swapped the intercooler for a 2/11 one. I appreciate that it’s not OE but Hangar111 have a good reputation and I don’t think it diminishes the value of the car. It’s not for sale anyway!
It is one of those ones. Some will stay clear If you were selling because It is not Lotus tagged. And flip side, some folk don’t give a toss as long as Its done properly.
If I did go down after market route, then I would be looking for a bit more than the 260. I’d do Manifold, then custom remap.
I have the CN 260 in for the past 3 or 4 years now and it’s given no trouble. Through-the-range torque, there is a bigger jump from 240 to 260 compared with 220 to 240 Lotus maps. Despite some of the trackday dogs over here threatening to go s/c on Honda and 2.2 GM engines I plan not to take the bait in an arms race. Last time I did some rough numbers it looked like the total cost of running a reliable 300bhp for the driving I do, could easily have me zipping around in an F360.
I think £8k is what you need for a reliable 300hp. £4k to deal with the gearbox including oil cooler stronger gears and decent clutch, £4k for a decent exhaust manifold, chargcooler, pulley, injectors fuel pump and remap.
i’ve had the 260 upgrade on my 2010 240S with essex and it was plenty faster but stalled at idle quite a lot, essex had no interest in fixing this, seemingly because they couldn;t fix it
had it remapped by another company recently and it’s taken over 4 fucking months to get the car back, they smoothed out all the crappy mapping from the 10 year old charlie x software essex used then introduced a temporary higher idle point when dipping the clutch to stop the stalling, this fix introduced a problem with the maf sensor on warm starts bringing on an engine warning light which they’ve finally ‘fingers crossed, it’s not error’d out yet’ fixed by toning down the temp idle from 1500 to about 1100 rpm. How this took 4 months and 1000 phonecalls to resolve i’ll never know
long story short if i could do it over again i’d have done the 260 upgrade with 260 factory ECU and not fucked around with all this bullshit incomplete aftermarket software, it’s been a massive massive ball ache though to be fair 300bhp is class and i don’t seem to have had any gearbox problems in the last 2 years tracking the car quite a lot
John - thanks for the advice man, i was all up for pulling the trigger on a 260 ECU but suddenly their stance changed from ‘we’ve spent days on this and we don’t want anymore to do with it’ to ‘one of our guys has fixed this at his first attempt while out the country on his laptop’, they’ve done a good job finally but the customer service was a shocker
