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Hey all, just picked up my IS-F yesterday after it spent two weeks with master installer Bing of Simplicity in Sound, in San Jose. It's a full stereo system upgrade, using the stock ML nav as head unit.

Here's the equipment list:
Audison Bit One
SEAS Lotus Reference front components
Hertz HCX 165 rear coxials
IDQ12v3 sub
(2) ID Q 450.4 amps (2x75 for tweets, 2x200 for mids, 2x75 for coaxs)
ID Q 600.1 amp (1x600 at 1 ohm for sub)

I'd always thought the stock ML system was a bit lacking, mainly in the bass. My initial thought was to just add a sub, and maybe wire it up with the option of upgrading the front components later. But one thing led to another, and here we are!

My first impression is WOW!!!!!! The sound is just so smooth and balanced at all volume levels, and so detailed that I really feel like I'm sitting right by the stage at a concert. Bass is right upfront and blends nicely. I could just sit in the car and listen for hours.

In terms of the install itself, Bing blew away all my expectations. He has a great eye for aesthetics along with top notch technical skills. His attention to detail is second to none and he goes well above and beyond in his efforts. Just a small example: in the trunk, he determined that the stock light was too yellow and didn't show off the equipment appropriately, so he located a white bulb that fit and had it overnighted so that he could install it in time.

Anyway, onto the build log. I've copied and pasted the following from Bing's post on the DIYMA forums here: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/...cs-galore.html

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Moving on to the goals for the system:

1. To achieve a high sound quality though the Stock Mark Levinson system
2. Keep things as integrated as possible on the interior
3. Build a very simple and clean design in the trunk (focus was not on show due to budget)


Let’s get started.

First is the 0 gauge cable and circuit breaker installed near the battery:



Next a quick shot of the 416HP 5.0 liter beast that powers the car:



Moving onto the interior. To best integrate the stock amplified system, and Audison Bitone was chosen, I ran a USB cable all the way to the glove box, so here is plug n play quick tuning from the front seat via the laptop:



Due to budget constraints, the owner's direction was to just double stick tape the bitone controller on the driver side dash, where three blanking plates give just enough room.

After giving that a shot, it just looked really non integrated, having this big silver box just sticky taped there. So I decided to build some kind of holder for the controller just to make it look a little better.

so here it is, a vinyl wrapped holder with the controller flush mounted, still sitting where it was suppose to be, but with only the front fascia of the controller showing:

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This actually turned out to be a pretty difficult and time consuming task since I had to be very precise.

I first laid down a few layers of glass onto the stock panel to serve as back mold:



Once that cured, I carefully trimmed the piece so it’s within a few mm of the edge, this way, once I add in the thickness of the vinyl, it should sit almost flush:



I then glue together strips of hardboard to form the front baffle for the holder, careful to leave just enough room so the controller will slide in with the vinyl attached and be pressure fit in place.



Then I pulled grille cloth over the entire shape, applied resin, and then reinforced it from the inside by pouring a mixture of duraglass and resin:



Once that cured, a quick sanding session, and then I pulled vinyl over the entire shape. This was one of the toughest vinyl jobs I have ever done, because it is so small and so square. I used 4 way stretch vinyl with plenty of heat, but finally got it to go on right:



then I ran a screw through the center hole, into one of the blanking plates, and then put a speed clip at the back, fully bonding the holder to the stock trim panel, after that, it’s just about pressing the bit one controller in place.

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Moving onto the front stage. A set of Seas Lotus Reference 6.5" two way components was used. The midbass went into the stock location at the lower door. But first both doors were sound proofed using a combination of foam and deamplifier, and new wires ran into the door:





Then I build a few baffle plates both for the front and rear doors. The thin ring at the left is for the fronts, as I utilized the stock speaker mounting baffle to mount the seas, it lined up perfectly, I just had to space it up about 1/8" to ensure it cleared the window properly.



These were then coated with truck bed liner:



So here are the lotus midbasses secured to the stock mounting baffle with a spacer ring in between. The holes lined up perfectly



and how it looks from the back, the inside of the stock baffles received some more sound proofing, though you can’t see it in this picture's dark lighting.



A quick shot of the wiring termination at the front door midbasses. The reason why there is foam on the back of the magnet is from a lesson I learned from other IS installs. When the window is down, and you slam the door, the bottom edge of the window tends to move a bit, and when you are within 1/4" from the back of the magnet, this can result in the window contacting the magnet, causing a ringing sound. Since there are no vent holes on the back of the lotus, this was done to prevent this contact.





The speakers were then bolted in place with the stock mounting screws:









The front door panels also received a layer of sound proofing, to help prevent resonance and rattles:

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The front tweeters were molded off axis into the A pillars. I pushed them as far forward as possible and also high enough to clear the big wiring harness behind the driver side. After spending an hour flipping through my vinyl books, I found a color that matched the dash almost perfectly. The lighting makes it look darker but in reality, it’s very close









Now for a few build pics of the pillars.

First, the pillars were stripped clean of their stock covering, and rings were carefully aimed and attached:



grille cloth was pulled over the shape, resined, allowed to dry, and then the duraglass/resin milkshake was pour onto the inside, making the walls very rigid, you can tell where this milkshake went into by the darkened color showing through the grille cloth.



Then the whole piece was sanded smooth and blended together:





Vinyl applied and the tweeters wired up:



And finally, the finished product ready to pop back into the car:





On the back side, I applied a few more strips of sound proofing around the tweeter area:

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One stipulation the customer had was to have rear amplified speakers for his child, so it doesn’t get too claustrophobic back there. He supplied me with a pair of Hertz HE coaxial for this purpose.

So the same process was repeated on the back doors, sound proofing and new wires ran into the door:






Termination of the Hertz Coaxial:





And finally, the hertz installed with the baffles I made earlier:

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now a few shots of the wiring bundle going back, all the wires and cables are zip tied neatly every 6 inches or so to the stock loom, and runs up the sides of the back seat divider into the trunk via the stock grommets:



















So that’s it for the interior, I also removed the stock sub on the rear deck to open it for better venting into the cabin.

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Onto the trunk.

The goal here, originally, was to utilize a side fiberglass box and a very simple, carpeted rear facing amp rack. The focus is to remain stealthy and save space.

Looking into the car with everything covered back, it’s hard to notice much:



Closer examination reveals the side fiberglass box, with its press fit grille, and a rear ward facing rack with a cover featuring a raised Lexus F logo. The entire rack ate up only 7" of space at the very bottom, and 3.5 at the top.

A quick note on the box, it is built by my good friend Nick Johnson, a badass installer who currently runs Science of Sound: http://mysosinc.com/ he builds a variety of custom fit fiberglass sub enclosures under his own brand name and also for 4080enclosures. His boxes are some of the BEST products of this nature I have ever used, and this IS box is just awesome, everything from the mm exact fit, to the super thick walls, no drill mounting, and the beautiful pressure fit grille. As I always tell my customers if their cars can utilize one of his boxes, “I can’t build a better box regardless of how much you pay me, so just use this one"

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While the original plan was for no flash at all and just plain black carpet. I quickly decided to add a little bit of extra flair to the build, just because this car is cool from the exterior standpoint. It isn’t much but I think it adds just the right amount of show factor to it.

Popping off the two grilles, and you first see an image dynamics IDQ12v3 in the subbox.

Three ID Q amplifiers power the entire system. A Q450.4 bridged into two channels powers the seas midbass with 200 watts RMS per side, another Q450.4 sends 75 watts to the front tweeters and the rear coaxial, and a 600.1 powers the IDQ with 600 watts.

The clean black finish of the ID amps really makes for a smooth look, but I felt that simply butting the three amps together would make for a pretty boring black on black design. so instead, I spaced the amps apart with 1/2" acrylic tubes, clouded over with 150 grit, and set on top of a strip of MDF topped in white vinyl, so the tubes, in daylight, gives off a white appearance to compliment the exterior of the car. I also decided to do a trim cutout in white vinyl, to future give it a nice two tone look.





A quick look at the super snug fitting box:



And a close up of the amp rack display:

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On the driver side, I raised the floor of the stock storage holder:



And the audison bitone, is within easy access below it



A quick shot of the trunk from a little further back:



Those acrylic tubes do more than just add a little color; they are also wired to glow with white LEDs inserted at both ends. So here is the car in the dark, the trunk light turned on (I also switched that bulb from the stock yellow to white), and the tubes light up:





overall, I am really happy with how the trunk looks, despite this being one of the most simple layouts I have done...I don’t know what it is, if I think about the individual portions, nothing really stands out, but for me, looking at it as a whole, perhaps in combination with the unique nature of the car...I am a proud papa. I don’t usually get this giddy, but I can’t help myself with this one.

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So...onto the wiring and builds pics.


The stock amp's output wire is tapped only at the front channels, since the bitone will control the fading and subwoofer controls. the front channels consists of front mid/high and front woofer, so here you see the four pairs of speaker wires tapping into the stock signal.



These were then neatly bundled, and then ziptied to the stock loom all the way to the driver side of the trunk and the bit one.





Here are more wiring pics, the two bundles entering into the car from the interior, and the RCAs and other cables from the bitone to the front. Everything is routed so the stock carpet piece goes on without much if any, modification.

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A quick shot of the driver side storage bin cut with the new floor made:



And a shot of the subbox outside of the vehicle:



Here are the mdf strips and the acrylic rods, prior to sanding and vinyl wrapping.



Here you see the rods clouded over, and the top of the mdf strips covered in white vinyl, along with the four white LEDs that I will insert into the ends of the rods after pre drilling them.



And here you see the rods secured to the top of the MDF strips, with the leds secured in place. The whiteness of the vinyl shows through the semi transparent rod to give it a more whitish appearance.

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As it turns out, this amp rack was quite an exercise in space conservation. The distance between the ceiling and the floor was only about 2" taller than the amps on either end. And the two ends only had about 1.75" to spare. So with in this confine, all the amps cables, distribution blocks had to be wired so it fits.

My decision was to pre wire as much as possible outside of the car, and using barrier strips on all the connections. This means that once I install this rack into the car, I only have the main power and ground cables, the various cables to a barrier strip spot, and the RCAs to plug in.

So here is the beast that came out of this effort, everything done to ensure it still will fit inside the space:

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Then this rack was loaded into the car...its fits extremely snug against the top and bottom, further secured by four bolts. Here you see all the wires hooked up to the amps:



A few quick shots of the trim plates. First is the cosmetic trim panel, before vinyl application:



And after, the edges of the board were painted black, since white is such a contrasting color, I didn’t want any sliver of whiteness showing through the edges of the front board:



Here is the main front panel, before and after carpeting:





And the front grille plate with its F logo:

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After some tweaking, I have to say I am pretty impressed with the bitone in this application. I encountered no problems and the sound is really good. Stage is nice and high with good center focus, width is not too bad, and is actually outside of the A pillars because they are a little further inboard than most cars. Tonality wise it’s very pleasant, and from doing earlier ISs, I can tell the Bitone did a good job of flattening the stock system. Going in, I was worried about potential issues with the unit, but really, it was pretty smooth sailing. I do still prefer the infinitely adjustable 10 band parametric EQ found on the Zapco DSPs, but giving that this is also an OEM interface and summing device, it’s a good overall package. I do think the instructions manual needs to be written in a more simple and easier to understand manner. By far the best sounding second Gen IS I have done...with some more tweaking, there is a good chance you may see this car at norcal MECA comps once in a while for fun

I want to thanks Eric at ID, who found a Q600.1 when non was in stock, Bikinpunk, Chuck Music and many other guys on the various forums who gave me tips on the bitone and the lexus system, Nick for his awesome box, and Larry at elettromedia who also gave me some great info on setting up the bitone.

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End of content copied from Bing's posts on the DIYMA forum: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/...cs-galore.html