With the Elise comes the blog.

Well I did it. I have been talking about it, threatening it, and promising it. But I finally did it. I bought an Elise.

Last Sunday my buddy Mike sends me a link to an Autotrader post for an 05 Elise, 9970 miles, Bordeaux Red, grey racing stripes, Sports Package, no Touring Package, Body color matched shift console, Maxogen/ITG Carbon cold air intake, complete StarShielf and Lotus Stage 2 Exhaust.

Its in Seattle, I start making calls, I completely bail on my Sunday plans for this car, and next thing I know I am flying Virgin America (first class mind you) to Seattle Monday morning at 7am, and by 3pm I am the owner of a used (and slightly abused) Elise!

Now granted, it aint no showroom perfect car, nor is it someone's baby that has been meticulously cared for, but I got it for a good deal, and it is going to be a track car that sees street use on occasion. here is a pic of it, looking filthy living outside in the Seattle weather.

Here is a quick little video i made walking around the car;

MY FIRST DRIVE / MY IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAR;
So my impression of the car after my first drive is that its loud, REALLY loud. The Stage 2 exhaust and the Maxogen Cold Air Intake make the thing nutty loud. Plus it doesn't have the touring package which adds some layer of sound deadening. You can hear the air filter 'whooshing' air into the car with a quick blip of the right pedal, and the exhaust groans like crazy and start wailing when you hit the second cam at 6000 rpms. When I mean loud, I mean loud enough that I could NEVER have a phone conversation while driving this thing the way it is. Whether I am OK with that or not is still up for debate. On top of that it does the little "lift throttle burbles" that P. so dearly loves.

My second impression is that these seats suck for comfort. I mean suck dilly sucktastic. They feel like pieces of metal with 1 inch of padding and some cloth thrown over em! If I wasnt so thin it might not be so bad, but when you feel your belt pressing into your pelvic bones, you know pain is on the way.

My particular car has crappy tires on it, Toyo Proxes F4, tires I would put on a Yaris, maybe, but definitely not an Elise. I tell you this because even with those crappy tires the thing is on rails. Thats my 3rd impression and the most important one, the thing frickin handles, its inasane how well. Also, because its so loud and I am not used to it even being at 30 and accelerating to 50 feels like a rush, its a measly 20 mph but the noise is so invigorating that you forget you aren't actually driving fast at all!

The car isnt perfect, at all. Its been used decently hard I am sure. The idle sometimes wanders a bit, and requires a little blippety-blip to get it going smooth. But hey, its got a CAI and an exhuast, I wouldnt expect it to idle perfectly. The seats have a little noticeable wear on em, but I doubt there is much you could do about that, and the body has lots of little road rash dings and scratches, which are mostly in the clear Starshield, so if I want to spend the money I could have pieces of that replaced. But its going to be a track car, and is going to see dirt, flying debris, and will get more mechanical attention than beauty attention, thats been my M.O. for my tracks car in the past.

WHY I WAS SO STOKED ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR CAR:
Well, for a few reasons. I have been looking for a car that had the Sports Package and NO Touring Package. The Sports package is key because it drops 20 pounds from the total weight of the car, and all of that is in the wheels. I personally like the look of the sport wheels much better, and it weighs substantially less, look at this comparison, stock vs. LSS (Lotus Sport Suspension);

STOCK

	Front	Rear
Dimensions	16" x 5.5"	17" x 7.5"
Bolt pattern	4 x 100	4 x 100
Weight	15.17 lbs (6.88kg)	20.94 lbs (9.50kg)

SPORT

	Front	Rear
Dimensions	16" x 6.5"	17" x 7.5"
Bolt pattern	4 x 100	4 x 100
Weight *	12 lbs (5.44kg) *	14 lbs (6.35kg)*

That's 3 pounds lighter up front per wheel and almost 7 pounds lighter per wheel in back! Thats 20 pounds of unspring weight, THATS HUGE! Thats the same (some say) as taking 80 pounds off of the car itself! Not only that but the fronts are an inch wider and come with more rubber (195's vs. 175's)

The Sport Suspension also comes with coiliver suspsension (Bilsteins), though it is not adjustable at all it is still supposedly stiffer than the stock. Most people say going with Nitron's makes a big difference, but then again I am a guy who ran stock ///M Coupe susspension for the entire time I had the car on the track and never felt like I "needed" coilovers. So we will see how long I keep these LSS coilovers.

Now the other thing is that the Touring Package adds 15 pounds to the car with sound deadening, leather trim on the seats and door panels, and it does have electric windows, which supposedly weigh less than the milled aluminum window cranks on the stock version like mine.

But really by having one and not the other I am down 35 pounds from a regular elise with just the touring pack, which is how most of them come. My car also has the stage 2 exhuast, which supposedly does absolutely nothing for power, but saves 8 pounds from stock, and is louder, these stats according to Sector111.

Now you have to understand that the vast majority of these cars have the touring package and NO sport package. I now know that I would probably be OK with a touring package with Sports package, and I would just remove some of the carpeting from the interior, and after I experienced the crazy loudness of my Elise I might have been OK with the sound deadening. But I REALLY wanted the sports package, because I think I'll end up running the Sports Suspension for quite a while before I feel like I need to upgrade, and the wheels, I dislike the stock wheels immensely and LOVE the look of the Sport wheels (and I love the lightness and wider fronts). To get a decent looking set of aftermarket wheels looks to cost about $2k, and I am just not willing to pay that for such small wheels when the Sport Wheels look so good IMO.

I also loved this car because this is one of the 5 colours I wanted for the car. Plus, I was already thinking of doing the racing stripes, so when I saw this car was Dark Metallic Burgundy WITH grey racing stripes it was one step closer to being mine.

WHAT I NEED TO DO TO THE CAR;
First thing for me is to take it to 3 places, one is a pin stripe repair shop, two is a Lotus mechanic that can give it a thorough inspection and do a complete fluid change for me, and three is an auto upholstery place that can add some padding to the seat and maybe make it even slightly more comfortable!

I called some shops and it looks like the BEST place for me to go is Sticker City, they specialize in automobile vinyl and the owner Andy is supposedly a Lotus nut, has an Exige himself. This is pretty obvious when you realize they have a page dedicated to all their Lotus product offerings! I need him to fix some of the racing stripe, and then to redo some pinstriping, these pictures make it clear as to why;

Once thats done I plan on taking it to one of 3 shops that came very highly recommended in the area to go get the final inspection and all the fluids swapped out. I really want them to go overboard, remove the underside panels, check all the bolts for proper tightness, give the engine a real inspection, remove the ITG filter, clean it, and respray it, clean the MAF, the works.

I just need to find a good upholstery shop that can add my padding and maybe add some more leather or perhaps alcantra on the worn parts of the seats.

Then I feel like its read for its first track day. I plan on running it in its stock configuration for the first day, leave it the way it is, with the less-than-stellar tires and all.

Stay tuned for the next blog post about the car's history, and all the items I already ordered and plan on putting on the car at the earliest opportunity........