Bought a new car... Major slowdown in work on skyline powered BMW predicted... PICS

[newman]

Cool. Best of luck with it. What are the next plans? Intercooler, meth inj., water bar spray, mild insanity?

Nothing performance THIS year. Just want to enjoy the reliability for the time being...

I hate you. SO much.

The Exige S240 is my favorite car and I WILL own one someday.

Looks amazing by the way.

:) thanks! I like it 432959843 times more than my old elise...

[newman]

After owning an elise and appreciating it's spartan interior, I'm kind of pushing this car to be a little more... "nice" inside. That said, even though i think the exposed aluminum inside the car is "racey", I'm going to try and "class up" the interior of my exige a bit... So i decided to get rid of some of the exposed aluminum by vinyl wrapping some of it... I figure if i hate it, i'll just peel it off.

Was kind of a pain in the butt to do the floor. Had to apply it dry, because the contour of the floor made it impossible to squeeze out misted water. Each one took about 4 attempts and almost an hour to get installed.

Also wrapped the center gusset, which isn't a gusset at all and is only held in place by 4 plastic tabs... Go figure.

BEFORE:





AFTER












I might put the lotus sport logo down there in silver, just to rice it out a little bit:
(PHOTOSHOP I DID)

[newman]

Did a few more little things...

1) Installed LEDs in the parking lights
2) Installed Bane's stealth bulbs
3) Blacked out the front amber side markers
4) Installed LED festoon bulbs in the license plate bracket

1) I have DDM 6000K HIDs. The incandescent parking lights did not look good next to nice white/blue color of the HIDs (obviously)

Here is a pic of HIDs + OEM parking lights:


Here is a pic of just the OEM parking lights:


I purchased two types of bulbs from superbrightleds.com

in WHITE


and

in COOL WHITE


I probably should have gotten the wled-x6 in "natural white, because it turned out pretty blue. However, it wasn't a big deal because the -whp9 looked SOOO much better.

Installed:
-x6:


-whp9


It's hard to tell in the pic, but the whp9 illuminates MUCH better than the -x6. Definitely the better choice (and 3 times the price!!)

Here's a pic of both -whp9 with the HIDs on:



2: Installed stealth bulbs in the turn signals... not a lot to say here, you used to be able to see the amber bulb lurking inside the small inboard housing, but not anymore.
Reference pic:


Here's a pic:


3: Blacked out the amber sidemarker... Used overlays that i bought for my first lotus from stickercity.com that i never wound up installing them. Somehow i managed to not lose them. I only put them on the front for now, i think it might be a bit much if also installed on the rear. I hate amber, but i don't mind red. I like the way they look!

Some pics:




4: Lastly I installed these LED bulbs in the license plate area:


Got "cool white" it's definitely pretty blue, but not as blue as the pictures seem to show. It's probably about equivalent to an 8K hid bulb. I think it looks really fu!cking good though, especially because there are no other "white-ish" bulbs in that area. (rear end is now red, white, and blue-ish!!! sooo patriotic)

Stock:


LED:

[accident]

God man, I'm so jealous. I really want a Lotus. Before I saw your car I was really hot for the Elise, but now I'm not so sure lol

[stevofthahill]

Just when we all thought you ruined an mtech1 valence....

but you've gone and completely redeemed yourself!

Car looks absolutely amazing. Major congrats on the purchase, I'm sure you'll have fun with it.

[newman]

Oh, i also forgot to mention:

I also machined/installed a short throw shifter that i designed and prototyped for a guy in the summer (he had to send me all his parts, i designed the part and prototyped it, now he sells them). Since i obviously still have the cad drawing for the part, i whipped one up on the mill (only takes about an hour to make by hand).

looks like this:


here's a crappy pic of it machined and installed on the shift linkage:


Feels really nice. The 2,4,6 portion of the shift is in the same location, the 1,3,5 portion is substantially closer to the driver, which is nice.

This animation flashes the difference between 1st gear w/ the stock, then 1st w/ the short throw... (this is a picture from a customer's car)



And here is what it looks like in 2,4,6

[Hick]

autodesk inventor? god i love that program.

where did you get the licence plate bulbs? i wonder how those would work for interiors

[newman]

autodesk inventor? god i love that program.

where did you get the licence plate bulbs? i wonder how those would work for interiors

They work pretty well for interior lights.

Check out superbrightleds.com, specifically the "festoon" section... "Natural white" is probably your best bet...

this link MIGHT work, they're about 1/2way down the page.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=CAR&keywords=&cart_id=9340177.7401&next=50

[Hick]

Awesome. thank you!

Car looks great, BTW. Im green with envy, would love to run that thing around a track

[Ral]

how far did the BMW swap get?

[Miasma]

You make me want a lotus.

[newman]

how far did the BMW swap get?

I need to finish sanding it down, then paint it. Once it's painted i just have to put it back together and wire it up.

[trashcop 80s 80s]

I put superbrightled leds in the interior and license bulbs on my e46. Every single one of them started to flicker or do not work at all anymore. I don't know if it is an e46 thing...

[newman]

I put superbrightled leds in the interior and license bulbs on my e46. Every single one of them started to flicker or do not work at all anymore. I don't know if it is an e46 thing...

i bought some spares, but we'll see... i had them in my elise w/ no problems.

[Tree18is]

well thats bad ass! I bet there are some good forums for that car.