okay, i will say it, this 2007 Lotus Exige S, was the single most difficult car i have ever worked on...bar non...i have worked on a few tough ones, but to me, none of htem comes close to this car...whcih i think is abit tougher even than the elise.

here are my gripes lol (have to vent )

1. tiny car, with huge wide door sills (think dodge viper), meaning you cannot find a comfortable position to work on things in the car hehe

2. no real carpet or trim pieces, so only place to run wires unseen is through the center tunnel/console (NOT FUN! lol)

3. extruded aluminum all over the place and an almost fully enclosed dash cavity means a ton of cuts and bruises all over your hand

4. having to run power wire and stuff from trunk to the interior via the engine bay

5. entire car is pretty much screw/speedclipped together, with very few real clips, half hte speedclips wanna fall off the minute you remove the screw...

i can go on and on, but thats enough lol...

anyway...the goal for this car is simple:

1. to be able to hear the audio system at any thing above 10 mph lol

you may say, "hey its a track car, why need a stereo system?" well, thats the customers choice but i say "around here, you still have to drive an hour or more to the track, and the super charged toyota four doesnt sound anyhting like a porsche flat 6 or ferrari v8 "

okay...so here goes:

the car:





the headunit is an Pioneer avic N4 flip out nav (yes, that means even more wires to run lol



front stage is a set of DLS ultimate R5i 5.25" component set. the woofers in the stock location, and the tweeters on the pedestal mount on the dash. the tweeter mount may be temporary, as i couldnt find anywhere to mount it with in the time nad budget...it does sound good this way being on axis, but we may eventually go back and do fiberglass tweeter pods for them beside the midbass







a custom foot well subbox was built and houses a single Image Dynamics IDQ10, the front face of hte box is vented blacket carpet, if you look closely, the side of hte box visible through the center tunnel is trimmed in CF vinyl





majority of the work was behind the seats of course. a set of DLS 426 component coaxials went into the stock rear locations. and every speaker in the car is driven by a DLS RA50 5 channel amplifier. I built a CF vinyl trimmed cover rack for it. the pasiver xovers for all the speakers are behind the driver seat. as you can see, the exige has a stock harness bar (virtually impossible to remove) whci makes removing the rear trim impossible...so took quite a bit of head scratching to get all the wires through hehe

but in the end, athe only time you really see barewires is where it comes out of the passive xover

these pics are with the roof and seat off:













this is about the best picture i can get after the seat and the roof went back on:



and finally, a shot of hte pioneer backup cam i put on..(yes that means even more wires to run through the car )



anyway, it sounds pretty good, top notch SQ or fancy install was never the goal, but it certainly sounds good enough and loud enough to be fully audible at full throttle blasts

now i gotta go soak my mangled hands and bruised body in ice...

 

Wow Bing,,I can only imagine what a pain THAT was to work on. Very good job,,,not feeling the tweet's,,,but as you said "temp"....Glass pods for the tweets would look much better.

Again, top notch, clean install AS USUAL! Props!

 

yet another nice install. nice pics. PS...did you get a chance to read my PM concerning sound deadening?

 

<~~ Jealous!!! Nice work!

 

Good job Bing. You did great despite what you had to work with.

 

Scions to Z's to Lotus'..... talk about variety!

Nicely done.

 

Bing heres an idea for those From Tweeter pods and 5.25"
Make a pod that mounts flush in the area of the oem speaker then build the tweeter pod in the corner. I attached a picture to help picture it. My photoshoping isnt the best.

 

Very nice work....

 

you just doubled the weight of the car

 

lol that was a good one

 

thats about what i had in mind...

except one part, if you look at how close the grille comes to the windshield at the front corners, it relaly cannot be raised at all anymore, anymore would mean you have to face hte spekaer into the windshiled to get it to fit.

my plan is however, to mold a tweeter pod not unlike what oyu drew...though it hink ti make it look right, it robably cant be that much on axis, cause the dls tweeter is kinda big bahind there...having a little hump would make it look less integrated then if its more of a gental flowing rising mold...


but the customer didnt seem to mind the mounting, so we will see...


dude, i probably trippled the weight the instant i sat in the car lol

b

 

Wow that is something else...

Next stop, Ducatis' and Yamahas'!

 

HAHAHAHA

 

I love Lotus.. They are my all time favorite car. Don't care how outdated or whatnot they are when I get a house, job married.. I plan to own an Elise or Exige.

 

i like the set up. good job.

 

Head-scratchingly good work as always! Very well done!

First thing that popped into my head was exactly what you mentioned; why do this on an Exige since those guys are so very careful about any added weight. May be this owner opted for the factory "A/C delete" option to make up for some of it!

 

hehe no there is an AC, but there are a few performance mods that perhaps frees up a few ponies?

 

i am glad my advice helped....i warned you about the cuts tho...i remeber the elsie was a PITA!!!!!!

i still have scars from that car

 

i just worked on an elise yesterday and i will agree it was a pain in the **** and all i did was throw an aux cable in for the deck it had.. they are wicked little cars though.. i plan on owning one one day.. when the z is paid off and im filthy rich