Pauls Exige 410 Sport

[Chunkv6]

3 hours ago, Paul_D said:

I'll send you a PM in a minute mate. 👍

Thanks Paul 

[Paul_D]

Today was stereo upgrade day. 

First job, same as many many Elise / Exige owners...swap the dash speakers for a set of Focals. As a side note, I highly recommend one of these miniature Bahco socket sets. Very handy.

 

Next up was the subwoofer. For this I chose a relatively new unit, the Pioneer TS-WX010A. The marketing blurb describes it as a unit designed for electric vehicles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gewYQm5828

What this means in practice is that it's light, small, low power consumption, and designed to be kicked when sat in the footwell. So it's perfect for the Exige. 

 

This is the rear of the sub:

I decided I wanted to Velcro it to carpet, same as people normally do. I probably could have stuck the velcro on directly, but made up a little mounting plate instead.

Thanks to this forum, I knew to remove this cover and route the cables along the channel behind.

Taped up the cables with some felt tape to make it all look a bit neater.

Then finally mounted the sub in the passenger footwell. There's a little step about halfway up, so I mounted it here to leave as much legroom as possible. Then cable tied the cabling to any convenient points.

 

After doing a bit of testing, I made the decision to power the sub from the head unit wiring. Neither the Sub or the head unit draw that much current in reality, and I am pretty confident that I will not suffer from any nuisance fuse blowing, even with the standard fuse only being 7.5Amps. The fuse should always protect the cabling anyway, and that will be rated to handle over 7.5 amps continuously. 

With the sub mounted in the location I chose, taller people won't even see it when they're sat in the seat.

 

Finally I fitted the new Pioneer SPH-10BT head unit and boxed everything back up.

I only had a very quick play, but it all sounds really good and I'm very happy. And it's another job off the list.

 

[Paul_D]

Next on the list of things to do was change the way my exhaust worked.

From early on, the car had been fitted with the Komotec remote control exhaust override kit. This let you choose either permanently closed or permanently open from a key fob. I wanted to get rid of this for a few reasons. 1) It seemed to be playing up a bit, and would keep randomly closing the exhaust when it should be open,  2) it's a bit risky as the exhaust will not open automatically at 4500rpm to protect the engine, and 3) fumbling for the key fob and pressing a button is not the most user friendly of activities.

I ordered the standard Lotus Switch and fitted it to the cowling.

 

The next step was to go to the engine bay and figure out the komotec kit and how to reverse it. Once I removed the plastic covers, this was what I was met with:

The right hand solenoid is the Komotec one which had been attached alongside the standard one. T-Pieces had obviously been added to the vacuum piping to supply it and the output tee'd into the tubing going to the exhaust. "This should be easy" I thought, "I just need to remove the pipes from the Komotec solenoid and blank them off.

I did exactly that, then fired up the engine. Pressed the button on the dash, and got 'EX OPEN' displayed. No change in exhaust note though. I could hear something happening in the engine bay when I pressed the button though, so I knew the switch and ECU were trying to do something. 

The exhaust works by having vacuum pressure applied to the actuator. When you want to open the valve, you remove the vacuum. But you also need to vent the pressure, otherwise it will be trapped and nothing will happen. I removed the solenoid from the car and blew into each port. At this point I realised it was bottom port which is vented to atmosphere when the solenoid is closed. As you can see from the photo the exhaust tubing had been attached to the top port at some point. I refitted the solenoid back to the car, swapped the top and bottom tubes around and everything now works perfectly. (The noise I could hear in the engine bay when I pressed the button was the vacuum tank being vented to atmosphere). 

The plastic covers I removed were looking a bit tatty, so while they were off I gave them a good clean, and a coating of CQuartz Lite to rejuvenate and protect them.

Before:

 

After:

[Chunkv6]

Top work Paul. I have the lotus switch fitted on mine really pleased with it 

[lotus muncher]

Nice tasteful modifications.. keep them coming.😁

[BlackyF1]

That blue look amazing Paul! 😎

 

My plate is a bespoke size to just fit the mounting holes.  I like your neat solution though for ease of removal. 👍

 

 

[Paul_D]

It's suddenly dawned on me that although I'd posted on Instagram, I hadn't been keeping this thread updated. There have been a few more changes since my last post. Some minor and cosmetic, some a bit more practical.

Starting with a couple of the cosmetic mods:

Decided that I preferred the look of a black outer ring on the fuel filler:

Next was something that really bugged me:

This massive 'AIRBAG' sticker looks rubbish and is quite distracting.

Unfortunately it's attached in such a way that you can't simply remove it.

I had a few thought of simply covering it with some black vinyl or something, but then I reached out to Dan at Divine Handcrafts and we came up with a solution which I was really pleased with.

Custom sized plaque:

The 'installed' photo is blurry, but it looks so much better in real life. People wouldn't know it isn't a factory item I reckon.

The final cosmetic mod was a quick paint of the towing eye ready to get on track:

Next up was the 'big' job - Harness bar and harnesses.

Roof off, seats out and trim removed:

Rear speakers fitted which made sense to do whilst I had the seats out:

Harnesses pre-fitted to the bar in the comfort of my lounge and then installed:

And all back together.

And finally a little test to see how the HANS felt. (Whilst desperately praying my neighbours didn't walk outside...)

Next up was to fit something that I wanted before I even had the car, the AIM dash. 

Installation went smoothly, and no issues so far.

The only other thing I've done is swap out the brake fluid for Castrol SRF. I've had it on good authority that the standard fluid copes fine, but I already had some and I know it's bulletproof on track.

 

That's pretty much all of the planned jobs complete now. I was supposed to be at Snetterton for a track day weeks ago, but very annoyingly got food poisoning and couldn't attend. Even worse was the current backlog to be able to book a trackday.

I am now finally due to be at Snetterton this Wednesday. I can't wait to finally drive the car properly!

 

[Paul_D]

There was obviously one other thing to address before my first trackday...noise.

It was quite obvious from reading the forums that a standard 410 is unlikely to pass the noise tests. The problem is that I really like the standard switchable exhaust, and didn't want a quieter one fitted all the time. I also didn't want the hassle of swapping a quiet exhaust onto the car for each track day.

That only really left me the option of some sort of temporary 'bolt-on' type device such as this: https://www.komo-tec.com/en/lotus-exige/mk3-toyota-v6350380/exhaust/144/db-eater-kt-track-v6 , although that seemed like a lot of money for what it is, and I couldn't find any reviews of its effectiveness.

With that in mind, it was time to see if I could cobble something together myself.

What we need is: A universal silencer, a 90° bend, and a reducer.

I painstakingly ground down the narrow part of the reducer until it slid perfectly inside the existing tailpipe. Then all the parts were joined together. I fabricated and attached a bracket to the underneath of the silencer, and the whole lot ended up looking like this:

To attach it to the car, you simply slide it inside the existing tailpipe, and the secure it in place using two springs in holes on the flat metal bracket.

It ends up like this:

So, now that we've established that it looks rubbish, how does it perform?

I was at Snetterton on Wednesday, but unfortunately they were not doing static testing in the morning. I would have liked to have got a reading with and without the silencer fitted.

Initially I went out on track without it fitted. Predictably I was black flagged as soon as I started getting up to speed. The drive-by limit was 92dB, and I was apparently hitting 95dB.

I fitted the silencer, and was made to do a static test before I was allowed out. This test was conducted in the pit lane while the circuit was live, so that may or may not have influenced the readings. He did two tests with the engine at 5000rpm. The readings were 104dB and 101db.

I then went out on track and had no more problems for the rest of the day. So all I can say for definite is that it reduced the drive-by value by at least 3dB.

So in summary:

Pros: (1) Cheap - Total cost around £100 (2) Very quick and easy to fit - Literally 30 seconds. (3) Straight through silencer - No restriction 

Cons: (1) Looks sh*t. (But you can't see it when you're driving, can you) (2) Total effectiveness / actual noise reduction still unknown. 

I'm at Donington Park in three weeks time, so we'll see what happens there.

[Paul_D]

On Wednesday I finally made it on track, after missing out a few weeks ago due to food poisoning. It was then nearly 8 weeks for the next available date!

The weather forecast kept changing daily, but luckily when I arrived I was greeted with this weather:

I just love how purposeful the Exige looks, especially at certain angles.

The drivers briefing is still being done online before the event, and with no static noise testing either I probably could have had another 30 minutes in bed. 

I got the car in the garage, unloaded all the tools, and fitted the towing hook ready for action.

 

After letting the initial flurry of cars die down when the track first opened, I headed out. Wow. This car really feels good round the bends and on the brakes. I was grinning from ear to ear inside my helmet....well, for a little while anyway.

Coming up to the second hairpin I saw a load of smoke in the air. My initial thought was that somebody had massively locked up or something and it was tyre smoke. As I slowed for the hairpin the car suddenly felt very strange. I was steering left to go in a straight line. I was convinced something had broken or was loose. I pulled straight off and checked the car over. Everything seemed fine. I then found out that the smoke was from a Megane blowing it's engine, and the contents of it's sump were on the circuit just before the hairpin. I felt a bit stupid when I realised I'd just been sliding on the oil, but I was only braking very gently in a straight line and it didn't feel like sliding.

I then went out to have another try and that's when I got black flagged for noise. The add-on exhaust sorted it, and thankfully that was almost the last of the drama for the day.

First impressions of the car are that a) It's brilliant, and b) it's going to take me quite a while to master it.

It became very clear I'd been spoiled by using 'flappy-paddle' cars on track, and driving a manual on track again felt surprisingly difficult. I immediately decided that I wasn't even going to attempt to heel and toe today, and that I'd just start learning the car itself. 

Over the course of the day I felt more and more comfortable and the car impressed further. I definitely don't regret my decision to get it.

The official photos from the day have not been published yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing those. Hopefully there are some nice shots.

The AIM dash was brilliant, and it's nice have the data logged so that you can make fancy videos afterwards.

This one is my second fastest session, with the best lap starting at 9m30s into the video:

And this video was mainly because I wanted to play around with the RaceRender software and add a rear view:

 

I went through two tanks of fuel, and the car was quite low as I pulled off after the final session.

I had a couple of full petrol cans with me, so I put 5 litres in which I thought would be enough in total to get me home. I was wrong. I embarrassingly spluttered to a halt just 1 mile from home, after a 45 mile journey. Thankfully I had the second can in the boot, so it wasn't a major issue. Amazingly, not one person beeped or gave the 'w**ker' sign to the idiot with the sportscar stood at the side of the road who'd ran out of petrol.

I called @Hangar 111 during the week for a quick chat. The car is now booked in to have the alignment checked and tweaked next month when I can make it over to them. Will be doing the usual of trying to get some more camber on the front.

In conclusion - I love this silly car. 

[tactical lizard]

Good idea with that exhaust, was also something I was thinking about.

You can get away with the standard exhaust at a few tracks by strategically lifting off near the microphones. 

Should be fine at donnington by lifting past the pit or short shifting. Main issues are static tests. Cadwell I just snuck on at 105db static with stock exhaust. 

On track did you leave the esp in normal or did you venture into sport mode?

These cars certainly slay fuel on the track. I did a tank and a half on just an evening session at donnington so make sure you're stocked up!

[Paul_D]

It was just the drive-by noise readings I was worried about really. I know I’ll always be able to pass the static test using another little trick I’ve got up my sleeve if absolutely necessary…
 

I started off in Sport mode for a couple of sessions, then used Race mode for the rest of the day. I didn’t use normal mode at all because of the lower Rev limit and I thought the electronics would be too intrusive. 

[Paul_D]

A few of the official MSV photographs from Snetterton:

 

[Paul_D]

Another little cosmetic mod carried out this weekend, and one which some will like and some won't.

I've always felt that the end plates on the rear wing let it down slightly. I wish they were made out of carbon fibre like the rest of it. They just seem a bit of a cheap after-thought in a way.

 

I kept looking at photographs of the cars with the union jack decals on the end plates, and although I generally liked them on other peoples cars I wasn't sure if they would suit mine.

I definitely didn't think the full colour version would work, and even the greyscale version seemed like it might stand out and be too obvious. 

Then I saw a instagram post (by jcxmig) who had a monochromatic version, and I got me thinking about different options. I had a chat with Dan at Divinehandcrafts, and he said could do a 'blackout' version which has a black background and then the flag in a single colour. To make the design as subtle as possible, I asked for the flag to be in the darkest metallic grey that he offered. The decals are now applied, and I'm very happy with the result. The effect varies depending on the ambient light, and it's definitely quite subtle in darker conditions.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Paul_D

[Paul_D]

Had some bits turn up today, so got another little modification done. This one was back to the practical rather than cosmetic side.

Now I've got a few track days booked, the wheels will be coming off quite regularly for tyre and brake inspections. Based on that, a stud conversion seemed like a good idea. I've looked at some stud conversion kits previously, but a lot of them seemed to be quite long and didn't look particularly nice. I ordered a couple of individual studs in different sizes first to have a play and see how they would look. After the test I decided to go for it, and ordered slightly different sizes front and rear. Overall I'm quite pleased with the look, but obviously the main thing is how much easier it is removing and refitting the wheels now.

Studs fitted:

Front wheel:

Rear wheel:

 

[DangerousDave]

Just curious about the exhaust what if I went with the lotus track quiet exhaust and did a flapper valve to bypass the muffler when I wanted would that throw any weird codes?

[Paul_D]

Do you mean take a the Lotus Track exhaust and modify it so that you can open a valve to completely bypass the muffler? I can't see any reason why that would throw a code, but I imagine it would be horribly loud in 'bypass' mode.

[ramjet]

On 20/04/2021 at 03:34, Paul_D said:

Today was stereo upgrade day. 

First job, same as many many Elise / Exige owners...swap the dash speakers for a set of Focals. As a side note, I highly recommend one of these miniature Bahco socket sets. Very handy.

 

Next up was the subwoofer. For this I chose a relatively new unit, the Pioneer TS-WX010A. The marketing blurb describes it as a unit designed for electric vehicles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gewYQm5828

What this means in practice is that it's light, small, low power consumption, and designed to be kicked when sat in the footwell. So it's perfect for the Exige. 

 

This is the rear of the sub:

I decided I wanted to Velcro it to carpet, same as people normally do. I probably could have stuck the velcro on directly, but made up a little mounting plate instead.

Thanks to this forum, I knew to remove this cover and route the cables along the channel behind.

Taped up the cables with some felt tape to make it all look a bit neater.

Then finally mounted the sub in the passenger footwell. There's a little step about halfway up, so I mounted it here to leave as much legroom as possible. Then cable tied the cabling to any convenient points.

 

After doing a bit of testing, I made the decision to power the sub from the head unit wiring. Neither the Sub or the head unit draw that much current in reality, and I am pretty confident that I will not suffer from any nuisance fuse blowing, even with the standard fuse only being 7.5Amps. The fuse should always protect the cabling anyway, and that will be rated to handle over 7.5 amps continuously. 

With the sub mounted in the location I chose, taller people won't even see it when they're sat in the seat.

 

Finally I fitted the new Pioneer SPH-10BT head unit and boxed everything back up.

I only had a very quick play, but it all sounds really good and I'm very happy. And it's another job off the list.

 

So is that sub like in 'submarine"?  

Other than that, you have been quite busy, haven't you?

[Paul_D]

Well I suppose it is below the surface out of view like a submarine... 🙂

Yeah, I have been busy. I made the decision to do all the mods I want to do as early as possible and then just enjoy the car. I've fell into the trap before of delaying things I want to do, and then you're not getting your moneys' worth out of them before you sell the car. 

[DangerousDave]

6 hours ago, Paul_D said:

Do you mean take a the Lotus Track exhaust and modify it so that you can open a valve to completely bypass the muffler? I can't see any reason why that would throw a code, but I imagine it would be horribly loud in 'bypass' mode.

Yep so quiet 95% and attention whore when i want the valve open 5%.

 

[Paul_D]

I think the only way you’d get a weird error code on anything to do with that part of the exhaust is if you left the vacuum solenoid valve electrically disconnected, as it detects the open circuit. 
 

It sounds like quite a difficult diy project, but would be interesting to see how it turns out. 

[DangerousDave]

Straight piped v6 doesn't seem that loud then again u can't even hear the ferrari's or porsches.

 

[ramjet]

Nah. Not that loud. Not at all.

 

[stephenwhyte]

43 minutes ago, DangerousDave said:

Straight piped v6 doesn't seem that loud then again u can't even hear the ferrari's or porsches.

 

Pretty sure that 380 Cup met a fiery end! And I think it was exhaust related from memory…. 🔥😰

[Paul_D]

Wednesday was another track day, this time at Donington Park on the National circuit. I'd only been here once before, and it was about 6 years ago so I was basically starting from scratch again.

The day was really (too) busy, with lots of very fast cars there including a couple of full on touring cars. Paul O'Neill of BTCC was in the garage providing coaching for one of the guys. Had a brief chat with him as I was packing up at the end of the day. Really friendly nice guy. 

Because of the amount of traffic it was really hard to get a few clear laps and find the flow of the circuit again. I definitely need to start experimenting with damper settings, as the car felt like it was rolling around a bit too much through Craners and some others.

Made friends with a very nice chap called Viren, who had a black 350 which was fitted with an Alias23 induction kit. To be honest, there wasn't much difference in pace in a straight line. 

Overall it was a fun day but I know I can be a lot smoother and faster there, so I'll definitely be going back.

Oh, and the bolt on (ugly) exhaust did it's job again as I didn't have a single warning all day.

Some photos from the day:

 

 

 

 

A short video showing a couple of clear(ish) laps.

 

 

[Exx]

What did you do to get the brake pedal information ? I don't have any info on obd