The Tesla is amazing but pricey. It uses the same bonded-epoxied all-aluminum frame as the Elise. It will out-accelerate the Elise.

 

I would ignore quiksilver24r and all of the other A$$HOLES like him, who's only ability is to bash. If he's going to come to the CHI regional forum and be a drama queen, F*** him. I certainly wouldn't stop posting here because of that D*ckhead.

I love your car and I don't take your post as threatening. I live near Fox Valley Motorcars so I've seen all of the color / wheel combos. What an awesome car! Did you buy yours there?

I'd love to know where your "'secret' romping grounds" are.

 

thanks rdck. I appreciate the encouragement.

Yes, I bought mine from FVMC last year.

The romping grounds are up in Lake County, IL. Lots of great back roads to drive out there.

Recently I addressed one of the known issues with '05 through '07 Elise/Exige/Exige S, the lack of HID lights. Lotus puts the $ into the frame, body and suspension. Powertrain and drivetrain is rumored to be pretty cheap as Lotus has a good deal with Toyota on these components. I guess lotus figures you can upgrade the headlights yourself if you like.

Here's how the stock light (passenger side) compares to the HID I installed.


I had to drill the radiator support component to allow mounting a bracket that will hold the ballast:


I took the headlight cover off to realign the headlights and take advantage of the added light intensity:
closer look at the HID low beam:


Prior to this I disabled the DRL which activates the low beam whenever the engine is running. This is not good for bulb life if your updating the low beams to HID. This was simple enough. First I took the engine start panel off:

2 screws and the panel comes right off:

Then pull a connector (green wire) apart and the DRL feature is off:

I used these tools to get to the connector:

and pulled the 2 wires apart:


I updated the front parking laps to 5 point wide LEDs so I will always drive with my parking lamps on. The Elise is a pretty small car so this is a safety thing for me to do every time I drive the car. Here's how the car looks now on the front with parking lamps on:


and finally the Finished product:


In real life the lights are not as blue as they appear in these pics. I did not adjust the White Balance in my camera and thats probably why they appear very bluish, in reality they are only very slightly blue.

Outward vision is so much better than stock now. I am glad I upgraded the headlights.

Thanks for reading.

 

so when do the mods to the riding mower start? hehehe...

 

LOL! Let me see.....

 

Nice... that looks great... I can't believe that the Elise doesn't have stock HID

 

Tell me about it! Luckily a guy I know makes a custom harness that uses stock Lotus parts that plugs into the factory harness and makes it essentially a plug and play mod. I didn;t have to splice into any wires or break out my soldering gun. Still I do agree, it should come with HID lights already.

I'm fortunate that my '06 came with LED tailights. The '05s did not. There are quite a few '05 owners who converted their rear lights to '06 LEDs.

These cars are small and need to be seen as much as possible on the road. For that safety reason I run with my parking lamps on every time I drive the car.

 

It's been a while but thought I bring this thread back from the dead with some recent pics. I hope everyone had a good Summer 2008! I know I did!

 

wow talk about a bump from the grave

 

Yep, same car so I thought why make 2 threads when I can keep it all in 1?

 

NICE PICS!!!! what filter did you use to make the lights so sparkling? or thats a photoshop effect?


funny story: there was an idiot on youtube who raced a tc with his corolla xrs and he said that hes got a Lotus engine :D
omg i had a huge fight but i couldnt do anything.
then now another stupid is telling me that the other guy was right because this engine was designed by toyota and lotus.. ergh... omg.. an other idiot retard.

this engine was designed by toyota and yamaha.... whatever

 

Thanks CSOCSO! No filter, the camera was mounted on the end of a tripod and sticking out of the window. The legs were strapped to the passenger seat. Since it was dark I had the camera set on Auto aperture and set it to wide open. No filter was added to make the lights look that way, i think the shutter speed was more than 1 second. I cropped the pic and there is very little photoshop used. The image is very much out of camera.

The engine and 6 speed manual transmission is from a late model Celica GTS/XRS. 2ZZ-GE.

just a brief history:
When Lotus was looking to break into the US market : a problem they had was how to get the Lotus Elise pass U.S. federal emissions laws. They thankfully dropped the Rover engine and made a contract with Toyota to use their 2ZZ-GE engine. At the time, the 2ZZGE powerplant produced the most power for its lightweight and this characteristic fell right in line with the Elise concept. If the Elise did not have its Toyota 'soul' I would not have bought one.

Toyota and Yamaha have worked together to design engines since way back. Its nothing new. I am glad they do this since Yamaha know how to design a good flowing head .

 

those are amazing pics!

 

thanks man, i had fun taking them!

 

i know.. they used the rover K engine

 

pics look great. Nice meeting you at CIR last night. I still cant believe how long you were plannin on racing

 

woah nice pics! What kind of camera are you using?

 

Nikon D300 with a Tokina 11-16 f2.8 lens.

 

Nice meeting you too Justin! I wish I could have hung out with you guys after the racing.

lol! Yes, I am a racing addict.

It was really nice to see you guys come out, I hope everyone had a good time.

 

So I know this is a dead horse thread on the lotustalk forums, but what do you think about an exige s as a daily driver in chi-land?

I'm seriously debating ditching the tC for one, but there's a large part of me that doesn't want to drive a beater in the winter.