[16psibrick]

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...

[Vince]

Another great install! Not many people can say they have done an install in an Exige. Hell, I've never even heard of one before reading this thread.

[tayedrumma]

Wow, props to you... if a buddy of mine brought that to me i would charge a pretty penny for labor... cuts and bruises just add to my costs hahaha

[irq21]

Looks good as always... its really nice to see you doing a different type of car.

Keep the sweet installs coming.

[z-lite]

Wow, very nice! Did those tweeters come with the stand-up pods? Any pics of the floor/seat?

[BulltC]

Originally Posted by 16psibrick

he he, the little basketballs are staring at me!

Looks great!! That center tunnel does not look like fun to deal with...at least the left all those nice holes in it for you!

[16psibrick]

thanks guys

sometimes, everyone should just take a look at once of these in person, then you can get a rough idea of what i am talking about

yeah those are standard DLS mounting for the UR1 tweeter.

b

[Typo_Knig]

Nice improvisation, Bing. I love that car and they are fantastically fun to drive.

Although, I can't imagine why anyone would go to those lengths for a barely street legal race car. I suppose the customer gets what the customer wants.

[StealthBox]

That is an excellant solution to putting real audio into a street driven race car...

B-

[jakle]

Why- because Lotus is well known for having awesome cars when it comes to handling and this thing is supposed to be the closest thing to F1 style racing on the street. How many other cars actually create down force on the street. Only problem- There is no way my fat *** could be comfortable in that car even standing still.

To get any system in that vehicle is crazy. It just wasn't meant to have it. The fact that you got anything in there is amazing. That fact that it looks that good is far beyond that.

[shane]

Originally Posted by Vince

Another great install! Not many people can say they have done an install in an Exige. Hell, I've never even heard of one before reading this thread.

i live next to watorford race way. its most scca bit there was also the ama superbike there last year. exiges are winning there all the time. sweet cars but id like to have a v8 esprit