Lotus Europa Community

Lotus Europa Forums => Garage => Topic started by: Dilkris on Thursday,September 24, 2020, 06:34:08 AM

Title: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: Dilkris on Thursday,September 24, 2020, 06:34:08 AM
Hi everyone - just got my TCS chassis back from refurbishment and I am very pleased with it.
Advice needed - am I allowed to mention who did it and post pictures, or is this a "no no" ??
 
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: gideon on Thursday,September 24, 2020, 06:59:20 AM
Yes and yes.
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: BDA on Thursday,September 24, 2020, 07:21:52 AM
Glad you've got a solid platform for your baby!

I would say we encourage you to tell us who did it and please post pictures!
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: jbcollier on Thursday,September 24, 2020, 07:28:58 AM
Bit confusing Mr G's answer.  So, to clarify, please do post pictures and tell us all about it.  We're a Europa forum with many members.  Some do all their work themselves, some farm it out.  Regardless, all of us are very interested in what you did and how you did it.
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: Dilkris on Thursday,September 24, 2020, 09:07:54 AM
Thankyou all - standby - will post all details and pictures tomorrow.
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: Dilkris on Friday,September 25, 2020, 01:51:10 AM
OK – it’s taken me 30 minutes to type the text – and then 2 hours to resize the photos; I followed LotusJoe’s instructions as posted on the 14th Jan 2016, and whilst admirably explicit, all I succeeded in doing was making the photo’s dimensionally smaller, they still however remained approx a 2.0MB file size each – I ended up using picresize.com, and just hope that has worked.

I notice my location on the forum just says “Shrewsbury” – sorry - this is in the UK.
 
Here are the photo’s of my refurbished TCS chassis, it was done by Spyder Cars, (www.spydercars.co.uk). The photos before/after, I think are self-explanatory.

I personally opted to go this route, as opposed to buying a new chassis, as overall it was the most financially attractive option; I also liked the re-designed front section affording easier access. (I am also not equipped or skilled enough to take on such work myself.)
 
The original chassis was shot blasted, front box section removed and replaced in its entirety, heater pipes replaced and painted. (Note: Not powder coated – this was my choice.). All the structural/alignment work is obviously performed on a jig.
 
Here in the UK, the Europa is very well supported and assuming you had a deep pockets, it would by possible, (with the exception of some minor items), to build a Europa from scratch - I don’t have deep pockets and am financing this project by “making my life smaller” (This translates to getting rid of all the “stuff” I have amassed over the past 67 years.) 

If I wanted to be pedantic, my only criticism would be that the replaced heater pipes have no tube beading at each end, (I will work a plan around this and therefore do not see it as a major issue)

Photo 7, is not my car, it is a photo of the upper and lower links fabricated by Spydecars and attached obviously to one of their refurbished chassis. I will be going this route also – when I sell some more “stuff” !!
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: jbcollier on Friday,September 25, 2020, 04:28:12 AM
Looks beautiful !!

Spyder does great work. My only issue with them is that they refuse to open a branch in the colonies.
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: 4129R on Friday,September 25, 2020, 06:18:16 AM
My only issue with them is that they refuse to open a branch in the colonies.

Maybe time for "The Empire to Strike Back".

You could call it "Spyder-Sense".
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: BDA on Friday,September 25, 2020, 07:17:45 AM
It really came out great! Spyder does do excellent work! I have a pre-space frame Spyder frame. My 'T' section is very similar to yours and I've found the easier access to the steering u-joint VERY handy!
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: gideon on Friday,September 25, 2020, 09:33:27 AM
It looks great, and you're lucky to be able to have Spyder do this for you.  One big difference is that Spyder have their own chassis jig and it's much easier to get the geometry of the chassis right, and be confident of it, if you already have a good jig.  There just aren't many chassis jigs around. 


Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: dakazman on Friday,September 25, 2020, 04:31:33 PM
  Wow they did a great job! The only thing I didn’t see, and may because on on my phone looking at the pics is the ground connection near the heater pipes. Get that connection to bare metal .
  If you have a apple smart phone,  select a picture and mail it to yourself it will ask what size. Select < 1mg , 750 is good . Then save that pic from your mail to photos. Then when here select attachment and chose file and nav to that pic just saved. This method takes 20 seconds .

Dakazman
Title: Re: Chassis Refurbishment
Post by: EuropaTC on Friday,September 25, 2020, 10:52:18 PM
Hi there and good choice on Vic Moore & Spyder, I've been a long time fan. 

I fitted one of their early chassis to my Elan just before the Lotus Lawyers got heavy on them for copyright and they changed to a spaceframe design. That would be 1980-ish and it's still on there.   I noticed last year I ought to tidy up/paint the rear end now as the powder coating looks to be going but almost 37yrs is a lot better than the original Lotus one !

I've also got their front wishbones on the Elan & Europa although mine aren't the adjustable ones. And their adjustable lower link on the Europa.  They've all been there a long time and still look good.

On resizing photos I tend to use Photoshop rather than Windows Paint, but the principle is the same. Normally I resize using pixels rather than percentages because these days we are getting ever larger photos even from the cheaper phone cameras.  For forums I usually set the width to either 800 or 1024 and if you keep the same ratios it will automatically adjust the depth of the image for you.  That should chop the file size down quite a lot but still be usable on a forum post and if anyone wants more detail then you can do it later.

Brian