New on here so sorry if this has popped up somewhere else on the forum.
I have had my Exige about a year now and starting to get the itch for more power.
Got a N/A 05 - has anybody had one of these Vision Function supercharger kits fitted as I like the sound of 280 rwhp. $6300 seems like the best price for this kind of power jump but is it reliable?
Who can fit it for me? (I am in the UK)
Could I do it myself?
Will I need to upgrade my clutch?
Will it be alright with the standard exhaust manifold and cat?
Will any other upgrades be required to keep the car reliable?
I have a 2tubar 6"x18" thru diffuser, will this be o.k - on jim’s website he recommends the 8"x24" if you where going to upgrade with a supercharger at a later stage. Will I need to change this if I go for the kit? (never thought I would want more power when I first got it)
Still trying to decide if it is worth it, if anybody has any comments to help me decide please post!
I have a 05 n/a exige as well. My car is still under warranty as i bought it from a main dealer–will upgrade the engine once the warranty is finished. Ive been looking at a couple of options. You could go the Lotus official route–my understanding is they sort out the paperwork so your car is officialy a supercharged one making selling it on easier though u only get 220bhp.
The blackwatch racing kits look interesting too. They produce in the region of 260bhp. Good thread on this one at scottishelises. Use the search option.
Its the tunes u need to worry about from what i have read Everybody is going with the charliex or whatever they r called.
I was personaly very interested in a stroker kit.With intake mods and exhaust mods I believe one can get in the region of 210-220bhp. I think it would sound amazing:-)
unfortunately dont know much about the vf kits. Im sure someone will come along with a lot more info than me to advise u:-)
VF kit is basically the same Eaton MP62 supercharger in a factory Exige S, with a different placed A/A intercooler, uprated fuel pump, intake manifold, injectors & ECU map.
Standard Cat/Manifold should be OK but I’d upgrade them as you’ll generate quite a bit of heat and the last thing you want is a smoking clam.
Power wise your on the limits of both the engine and the gearbox. So any mis-shift or aggressive gear changes is going to seriously reduce the life of your engine/gearbox. Clutch wise you’ll need to upgrade from stock to the Lotus MS clutch.
Any spanner shop should be able to fit the kit, Sinclaires can do a custom map if you need it.
Not aware of anyone whose fitted it. Few rumours of Sinclaires importing it through their partnership with CharlieX. By the time you whack on import tax its $7,500…then you need someone to fit it + map it if the stock map works (which given its a US map I’d doubt it), that’s about another �1000. So for about �6k you get the VF kit fitted and mapped in the UK before you get it on any rollers to see if you lost some US ponnies.
For ~�7k in vat & warranty you can get Sinclaires to fit the same pieces with a Pro Alloy Charge Cooler setup. (Tsukuba)
Both the VF Kit and Sinc’s Tsukuba kit put out between 275 & 300bhp with around 200lb/ft.
Well that saved me a long reply, but certainly very competetive with the Sinclaire offering in terms of power and overall cost, if you can get it shipped and avoid some of the import tax, and get your ECU to the states and back while avoiding tax and it getting lost, you might save yourself �1k or so over getting Sincs to fit their offering, not sure it is worth the grief…
Personally, I’d stick with Sinclaires, even if the saving was “massive” - how much is peace of mind/backup/support worth???
Yep, I am very boring - that’s why I kept the Hondata ECU on my car when I could have easily swapped it for a different brand. As I’ve said many times before, I couldn’t give a monkeys (no pun intended!)for “pub talk, or max. figures” as they mean so little in the real world.
I believe Sinclaires will be selling and instaling the VF kit, when I last spoke with Wayne he had one on order. The VF kit also uses the same software as the ronin/katana kit so the tune will be spot on…
Here’s a video of my buddie Nick passin everyone in site with a VF supercharger kit on a stock motor…Take note of the dark grey Elise being passes, it is runin a built engine/TVS supercharger/EFI setup making more boost and had to make way…for the VF Elise…
I have been in one from sincs with the stroker kit which was s/c (engine built for a racecar that never happened so probably more mods than just that). It did seem a bit more torquey than a std tskaba (sp?) but why you’d want that on the std gearbox I don’t know.
I have seen a dyno graph of that car and it barely made any more peak power than mine, but mid range torque was higher by about 20lb/ft so the gearbox would just fail a bit faster
Pesky, hope your not mistaking blacktoy(stevey) for me, Blackstone(Tal)??
The VF kit takes the Katana/BWR kits to the next level. Better breathing + intercooler, with dynos and data proving that the intercooler really works to keep temps down.
I am in the process of ordering this kit from Dan. It is by far the best value SC conversion in the UK for the Yota engine. It is a proven conversion in the States and has been available for over a year with enough units sold to warrant my interest.
CharlieX is mapping the ecu for 97Octane for the UK market. He also has many maps to suit the majority of setups. I have a 2bular 4-1 manifold/decat/exhaust, Brians(LORDZ)VFIII car was custom mapped for the same setup. If I decide to go for the VFIII I can have my ecu flashed with the same map. So no need to go to Sincs for a custom map, in any case do they have someone to map cars at the moment?
As for stock internals checkout the link to Brian’s(LORDZ on LotusTalk) video of his VFIII on track. The car is running a 2.9" pulley to raise boost and Brian has limited his max rpm to 8K rather than 8.5k so as to go easy on his engine. He has covered around 3k miles on track and over 16 trackdays without a hitch.
The video that Frank posted is of the VFII(3.0" pulley). It sounds awesome and as can be seen, pulls like a train.
There isn’t a single bad word to be found about the VF kit from the people that have had it fitted, anywhere.
I for one am really happy that Dan has managed to secure the UK distribution of the VF kit here in the North, saves driving all the way down South. More over, saves me ordering direct from States and worrying about customs/sending ecu/lost postage etc.
Be great to see the this when it is done, still you will have to wait for the US to UK HP conversion to get a real comparison against the UK kits.
I am already running a 2.9" pulley and also have done for well over a year and I don’t run a lower rev limit, I’m not sure how that would stress the engine much less.
As for Sincs, they do hae a tuner to use he is just not there all the time so it takes a bit more organising
When the kit is proven in the UK I’ll be more than happy to spunk �3k on upgrading my Katana although my engine isn’t getting any younger (72,000 miles).
