Introducing Dave Walker. For those that haven't heard of Dave Walker he is the author of Engine Management: Optimising Carburettors, Fuel Injection and Ignition Systems. Dave has been tuning cars for about as many years as Corky Bell has been working with turbo chargers and is also the creator of the Emerald ECU system, which was recomended to us by several reputable rolling road companies that we spoke to.

Anyway as they say the proof is in the pudding. On Tuesday (11/7) of this week Karl drove our BEGi T28 fitted car with Emerald wiring already installed up to Norfolk and spent a head scratchingly difficult but nonetheless very enjoyable two days with Dave getting the Emerald up and running on the MX-5.

Dave Walker expertly dyno tuned the car on the rolling road and the dyno is printed out below. With the the car running at 12psi of boost the car made 261bhp and 238lb ft of torque. N.b, the car still has a normally aspirated exhaust which accounts for the late spool.

 
What was more fun though was the drive home. The car drives like it is in an OEM fit. There are no idling problems, no hesitancy, no problems as the boost transition takes place. Instead the car just drives like it was always supposed to have a big turbocharger on it, effortlessly and adrenaline pumpingly fast and yet still remains easy to drive around town.

What we really like about this ecu though is the whole package. Dave Walker could not have been more helpful and with the dyno tuning prices for the Emerald being very reasonable, there is no need to try to cut costs by road tuning the cars. Now dyno tuning on a rolling road by a long time professional is standard as part of our stage 3 BEGi kit installs.

And what about support ? We are obviously learning how to tune the Emeralds ourselves quickly, but also the Emerald is well supported by professional tuning rolling roads all around the country. We are also working on plug and play harness adapters to make the wiring easier. For the first cars fitted with Emeralds, Karl will be doing the wiring for the same estimated price as the loom adapter.