I hit a traffic sign. Engine braking.

[dakazman]

Wow that’s a lot more substantial than I first imagined. Seeing the later pictures first , and the seat and pedal assemblies on the ground , I thought it was RHD. Glad it isn’t and your OKAY.

 Hopefully the insurance people will repair it and not total it out . Then confiscate it. I really hate dealing with insurance companies. Since there is damage to a sign post they probably will need to get involved.

Dakazman

[Lyngeled]

I have one thing to consider and talk to a friends friend to get an advice, before I will "reveil" what I have almost decided. (Not to get more "attention" and maybe a bit silly   )

But outside parts is the least damaged. It's really the passengers floor just under where the knees would have been, that have broken into the smallest pieces. One of theses pieces must have made that triangular cut the carpet on the tunnel.

I am very sure that I did not down shift and I am sure that I let go off the throttle. After that I was not sure what I did beside of this, but the car never before had locked the rear, always the front.

More from that afternoon: I was with 6 other Lotuses (and a Fiat ), and was going drive a 100 km trip (and eat out after that). Just a few minutes later this happened. I did not look at the speedometer just drove in the middle of us eight cars. I called for an tow truck, while waiting and after tidying up I tried to get it loose from the sign (it was both under and over), and after get all loose, and reconnect the battery, and started it, we decided drive it home (cancelled the tow truck). Only the windshield wipers didn't work. I even got help from another friendly "normal car" owner with space for a door. Then I tried to be a passenger in a RHD Elise.

[dakazman]

Great story.
Start collecting some large cardboard and some heavy plastic sheeting. Get some glass fiber and some polyester resin and form the basic panel shapes . cut and glue some 2” trim to the outline of the existing body. Then add in the piece you made . Coat with resin the underside of the panel screw in place. After drying bevel a good 2” 45 degree on old and new section and glass over a 4” band. Done😀

[JasonH]

What kind of shocks/dampers are you using?  I am still using old Konis, and mine and are currently set to the softest setting (I need to change this)  I had a similar situation where I lifted and almost spun the car.  However, this was on a dry racetrack so all ended up ok.  At this setting the lack of rebound will allow the cars weight to shift forward abruptly even at a slight lift, and induce a snap oversteer.   Especially in wet conditions. If you are using the Konis definitely have a look.

[Lyngeled]

Hi, I don't know wich shock I use, or if it just a normal reaction. I want to know more about what happened.

But, about the damaged car. I later had decided that I wanted to repair it, and that I wanted to do it myself, because that I had earlier spend a lot of time fixing very old GRP boat, and I have got a lot of experience out of that. Now I have to convince my insurance company that the car can be fixed for less than to be totaled, as they are talking about. I did not expect that.

I think that I know a lot about GRP and that it repair is ok easy. Yesterday I was putting the broken pieces together and it looked better that I thought. It seemed rather easy to rebuild the vertical walls of the foot well, and I found a prefabricated sheet that could make a new floor, and a stronger on than the original. The outside looked the easiest from the first view, so that i would look forward to.

So now I am focused on how I can save, and keep this car.

I already have plans how to do build it, and to document it, just now this have to wait.

regards

[BDA]

That's a troubling situation. I don't know how it works over there but over here, if your car is totaled, you can buy it back from the insurance company. That might be one tact you can use.

I assume you have educated your insurance company that you haven't damaged the "structure" (i.e. the frame) of the car. I remember reading that shortly after the Europa was introduced that some insurance companies had to be educated about the economy of the bolt in central backbone frame. In your case, you're willing to do the work so maybe you can work a deal with them to pay for materials, a little for your labor, carpet, and paint. That should make their cost VERY reasonable.

If you're not already, you might look into an insurance company that specializes in classic and antique cars. I have a policy on my car with Hagerty who is very understanding about the issues these cars can have as well as their owners.

It might take a bit of educating on your part but I would think that you have a shot.

Good luck!

[lotusfanatic]

Hello Lyngeled,

first of all, I'm glad that nobody was hurt in your spin....
good luck with the repairs, it seems that you have the necessary skills to mend your lovely car.
(I hope your insurance company are sensible too)

Mark

[Rosco5000]

Man this is quite the accident.  I am glad no one was seriously hurt.  It seems the fiberglass crumpling so easily probably save the frame as well and just lucky you missed the front wheel.  Good luck with the repairs and definitely keep us posted it is a great looking S2 you have there and looks to be worth saving.

As for the spin I was thinking a little bit about it and was wondering how old your tires are.  Maybe they have heat cycled one to many times and become very hard and not able to provide much traction anymore?  Just another idea as you try to figure out what happened.

Cheers,
Ross

[TCS4605R]

I have lost control of my car three times - each time it was over steer with the rear end trying to point the way down the road.  All three times were in the dry with Yokohama A008R tires.  Twice I recovered, but the third time was the charm - went ‘off road’ and bent the frame and cracked a lot of fiberglass.  I can’t say that my speed was excessive in any case, but I did commit the sin of backing off the throttle in a turn - learning had not occurred.  I am convinced that the engine/gearbox unit moves fore and aft on the rubber engine and gearbox mounts and the trailing arm mounts under power and braking thus changing the rear toe-in.  In my rebuild, I will replace these mounts with ‘hard’ mounts to see if this improves the handling.  The front end has Spyder A- arms with sperical joints.

Tom
74 TCS - 4605 Rp

[jbcollier]

Almost every car will exhibit some trailing throttle oversteer.  Even front wheel drive cars as well.  When you back off the throttle, weight transfers from the rear to the front.  If it is a rear wheel drive car, off throttle also induces engine braking which can be quite strong if the revs are high.  Finally, rear weight bias adds considerable momentum to any resulting movement.  Best place to practice this is a very large, and very empty, parking lot.

Having done a lot of winter driving in air-cooled VWs, I used to briefly go off throttle to induce a rear slide and drift around the corners.

[EuropaTC]

(part quote)
 I am convinced that the engine/gearbox unit moves fore and aft on the rubber engine and gearbox mounts and the trailing arm mounts under power and braking thus changing the rear toe-in.  In my rebuild, I will replace these mounts with ‘hard’ mounts to see if this improves the handling.

I'm not so sure about the engine mounts allowing enough forward movement to affect the rear toe, but I'm on the same page as regards the trailing arm mountings. There's a lot of rubber in there and with the heavier TC cars plus a different angle on the arms, I've often wondered if that's the reason Lotus specify so much rear toe.  I could imagine a car set below the minimum values going to toe out during heavy braking. Admittedly off topic but back in the UK the very first SW20 MR2's were claimed to go toe-out if you lifted off on a corner giving oversteer and it was changed on subsequent models.

It's interesting that Lotus do a polyurethane mount for the later Esprit which looks a lot harder to deform than the rubber in our cars. And IIRC Colin Ham replaced the radius arm bushes with a much stiffer set up for race prep on the TC.  Perhaps spherical joints will transmit too much noise for a road car and that's the reason Lotus went for large rubber bushes ?

Going back on topic, the more I think about it the more I'd want to check the rear suspension for toe and/or any worn components - UJ/bushes/bolts/etc. The description (baring some weird road condition) sound very much like going rear toe out.

Brian

[Lyngeled]

Yesterday I was at location I crashed, and was surpriced to see how short a distance is was. It looks like 100m (109 yrds?), and I ended in 3rd gear. I don't know my speed but I wanted to decrease it (I felt I was going too fast), and maybe this engine brakes more because of more compression?

I will have check my tires, I think they are from 2014. The treads looks to work in rain.

I don't believe it is going to be "totaled" (is this what it's called?), even though they earlier talked about that. The rules are that the amount of money it will cost to repair it back to how it was may not be more than 75%. And that is by using danish labour and that is expensive. It doesn't matter if I do the work, it is calculated with a proffesionals hourly rate.

But there is "room" for a lot of hours for the work, when I subtract materials.

This a link to a S2 for sale in Denmark, but not as nice as mine. My engine is worth more, my interior looks better, so if this price is realistic mine is worth that at least.
https://www.dba.dk/lotus-europa-16-s2-benzin/id-1058233048/ (1 Dkr = 0,148 USD = £ 0,122)

There should not be problem. So it just how it should be fixed. I think the cheapest would be to rebuild from the larger pieces that broke of, and reconstruct the floor which is in many pieces. And then it is only necessary to use "local bought" materials, and then I want to do it myself. Because I know a lot about GRP.

[BDA]

That's good news that it probably won't be totalled! From the few pictures I've seen, I don't imagine you're likely to find as nice an S2 as you have much less for reasonable money.

Keep us posted, and good luck!

[Lyngeled]

So I have some to tell from this "story". At first I investigated a lot in rules and laws, the insurance company and the state. I found some experts to help me in insurance questions, which gave good answers and guide me to the laws that concerned this case. So I have learned a lot and as I hear many people don't understand the rules or how this works. Persons in the insurance company do not know the laws concerning classic cars either.

So the biggest question was about when will a car be totaled. There are two cases when it can happen, one because of the law and the second if the cost of repair exceeds the cars market value (which is not written in the law). In Denmark (here I live) there are laws that says that if a certain type of car is damaged to a cost of repair which exceeds a certain percent of the cars market value, then there shall be payed a new registration fee to get in on the road again. The insurance company will not sell the wreck to the owner, but wreckers can bid on it. So they can rebuild or parts it up, as I understand it. Usually the handle newer cars and I don't think these are being rebuild, maybe expensive ones. A lot of people says that you can buy the wreck as owner, and some have done it, but the insurance company says no. Then the most interesting law says that all this does not apply to a classic car . So it's only if the repair would exceed the cars value, and that I have in control - I have got an Ok for repair plan to about 20% of my cars market value.

[Lyngeled]

The next question was who and how it could be rebuild. I wanted it to be as good or better than before, and because I have worked a lot on GRP dinghies and I know that craftsmen do some job sloppy, I wanted to have lots of control of how it would be done. The insurance company says that I am allowed to do (some) work on the car. They have responsibility for that the car is repaired in a way so the car is as safe as it was before. So then all fiberglass work in the is going to be made by a professional. Because of I had difficulties getting an agreement/answer from Banks, I decided to make my own moulds for the inner and outer shell, and let the professional worker build the rest in those moulds.

I had a long pause doing a lot of other things before I felt ready to begin this rebuild, but now I have almost completed the inner shell/foot well, to soon building to first mould. So the parts is put together for making the mould, and not to look good or being strong. Then I will rebuild the outer shell, and a second mould. When the two mouldings is done, the areas I have build will be cut out again and the new parts "mounted". At last it's painted and all parts mounted.