I have been having trouble with my 2005 Elise for about three months now. There is a seperate posting regarding the CEL that came and some of the diagnostics I tried to clear the P0171 (mixture too lean) code.
Since then I have had a mechanic friend of a friend take a look at the car and we tried all the obvious things (MAF, O2 sensor, checked for intake system leaks (he even used a smoke system that you put inside the engine that creates positive pressure to check for leaks), cleaned the injectors, checked the fuel pump pressure, we tried reducing the diameter of the intake by putting a spool piece inside it ... none of this cleared the problem. At this point I have to give kudos to my mechanic friend who did all of this in his spare time and basically charged me $100 for his time spread over 6 weeks :clap:
However, we still had the same problem. Whenever we ran the car over 3-4K rpm, the ECU would throw a 'pending' P0171 code, then next time you started the car a full blown P0171 code would be thrown and the CEL would come on. We worked out that this is because the subsequent engine start is the second drive cycle and hence the very next pending code is combined with the existing pending codes to throw a CEL.
My mechanic buddy was out of ideas and needed the Lotus specific scan tools to get more information, so we took the car to our local dealer (Motorcars of Georgia). Now I am not a fan of dealers but I must give the mechanic (Roman) at Motorcars of Georgia credit, he basically swapped parts between my car and another 05 they had in stock until the found a problem. When they changed out the ECU the problem cleared itself. They then put my ECU back and the problem came back. It seemed pretty obvious that the ECU was the culprit. The Motorcars of Georgia guys tried to reflash my ECU and could not get the updates to take, they said the ECU as damaged and sold me a new sport ECU to replace it ($875)
Now reading one of CharleX's old posts, it may just have been that they did not have access to the correct tools to do a complete reset so I may have ended up buying a new ECU when CharleX may have been able to reflash it for me.
I drove the car for a couple of days, no CEL and it ran great. Then after a couple of days the CEL came back on again (same basic code and pending code). I took the car back to the dealer and they have now checked the code and lotus sub-codes. They have then discussed this with Lotus USA who say the Lotus specfic sub-codes indicate that the ECU is unable to learn because the air intake is out of tolerance and the recommendation is to put the stock intake back on. I purchased the car used about 10K miles ago and it had the TurboXS intake on at that time. I have since spoke to the orginal owner who had the TurboXS intake fitted and he ran it for approx 20K miles with no problems. Hence I am a little hestitant to spend the $1000+ that they want to supply and install the stock airbox.
I guess my main question is to CharleX or other ECU experts - is there an after market reflash that will modify the ECU for use with the higher air flows of the TurboXS intake - if so which one and how much $$
Also, am I better off spending much less than the $1000+ for the stock intake and purchasing a different aftermarket CAI (I have read many postings about the TurboXS causing P0171 CEL codes).
Any other comments would be welcome.
Since then I have had a mechanic friend of a friend take a look at the car and we tried all the obvious things (MAF, O2 sensor, checked for intake system leaks (he even used a smoke system that you put inside the engine that creates positive pressure to check for leaks), cleaned the injectors, checked the fuel pump pressure, we tried reducing the diameter of the intake by putting a spool piece inside it ... none of this cleared the problem. At this point I have to give kudos to my mechanic friend who did all of this in his spare time and basically charged me $100 for his time spread over 6 weeks :clap:
However, we still had the same problem. Whenever we ran the car over 3-4K rpm, the ECU would throw a 'pending' P0171 code, then next time you started the car a full blown P0171 code would be thrown and the CEL would come on. We worked out that this is because the subsequent engine start is the second drive cycle and hence the very next pending code is combined with the existing pending codes to throw a CEL.
My mechanic buddy was out of ideas and needed the Lotus specific scan tools to get more information, so we took the car to our local dealer (Motorcars of Georgia). Now I am not a fan of dealers but I must give the mechanic (Roman) at Motorcars of Georgia credit, he basically swapped parts between my car and another 05 they had in stock until the found a problem. When they changed out the ECU the problem cleared itself. They then put my ECU back and the problem came back. It seemed pretty obvious that the ECU was the culprit. The Motorcars of Georgia guys tried to reflash my ECU and could not get the updates to take, they said the ECU as damaged and sold me a new sport ECU to replace it ($875)
Now reading one of CharleX's old posts, it may just have been that they did not have access to the correct tools to do a complete reset so I may have ended up buying a new ECU when CharleX may have been able to reflash it for me.
I drove the car for a couple of days, no CEL and it ran great. Then after a couple of days the CEL came back on again (same basic code and pending code). I took the car back to the dealer and they have now checked the code and lotus sub-codes. They have then discussed this with Lotus USA who say the Lotus specfic sub-codes indicate that the ECU is unable to learn because the air intake is out of tolerance and the recommendation is to put the stock intake back on. I purchased the car used about 10K miles ago and it had the TurboXS intake on at that time. I have since spoke to the orginal owner who had the TurboXS intake fitted and he ran it for approx 20K miles with no problems. Hence I am a little hestitant to spend the $1000+ that they want to supply and install the stock airbox.
I guess my main question is to CharleX or other ECU experts - is there an after market reflash that will modify the ECU for use with the higher air flows of the TurboXS intake - if so which one and how much $$
Also, am I better off spending much less than the $1000+ for the stock intake and purchasing a different aftermarket CAI (I have read many postings about the TurboXS causing P0171 CEL codes).
Any other comments would be welcome.