Flatter than a witch's tit!

[Splat]

The origin of this goes back quite some time. The trigger was events of late summer last year, but the germ of the idea was set much earlier.

Having removed my engine for some remedial work, I unwrapped the exhaust manifold to find it badly corroded. It would see out the rest of the summer, but would need replacing sooner rather than later. So I placed an order for a new manifold with Westfield. It only took them about two months to deliver and when they did the results were disappointing to say the least. I've posted before about the quality of Westfield's recent fabrications, and I've written a thread about the manifold too, but as a reminder, here are some snaps of the new and old pipes together. They're identical; close-up iPhone shots make the new pipework, a mere inch or two to the rear, appear to be half-scale:

[Splat]

Being a fussy sort, I decided not to bolt the new manifold to my carefully ported head, but to return it to Westfield instead. (Maniflow made me a beautiful, big-bore system within a week for much less than the price of Westfield's junk. It's lovely and they've kept my old manifold as a pattern should anybody else want one.See my previous post on the subject.) Westfield, showing levels of customer service to rival their fabrication work, refused to refund me, offering me a credit note instead! They claimed that, as they'd had nil stock when I ordered, they'd had to have the manifold made especially for me. This rather ignored the fact that I'd had to wait two months for it as it had been manufactured alongside those for the latest batch of kits and they'd offered to replace it with another from the batch. (An offer I oddly declined!)

So, I was left with about £400 of credit with Westfield.

To be honest, I should have made a fuss. Their expensive product was junk and their customer service lousy. But I had designs on that credit note......

[Splat]

I must stress that the following is only a matter of opinion; many of you won't agree with me.

I DON'T LIKE THE HUMP!

So, I've owned my ten-year old car for about six and whilst I originally loved the shape, I quickly grew to dislike the head faring. For me, it spoilt the lines. With the single-seat bodywork fitted, Elevens look absolutely awesome (Gbilawsky's recent conversion of his silver car makes me a little stiff!!!). But, save for a handful of Team Lotus Le Mans cars with their wide chassis and high rear decks, the hump was a removable fabrication and not fitted when the full-width screen was in place.

After six years, I'd not only completely restored the car and heavily upgraded the chassis and running gear, but made such cosmetic "upgrades" as a much more period-style dashboard and the stripping-out of the carpets. Time to complete the transformation to Lotus Eleven Sports specification.

A call to Westfield confirmed that they still had the mould for the Sports bodywork, so the order was placed. I was surprised to find that the price is considerably less than the Le Mans clip. The "hinge" is supplied separately and is an extra charge (more of which later.....).

The rear clip was ready for collection from Kingswinford about six weeks later. So in mid-December myself and Karl, the boss of the paintshop that I've been using for almost two decades, took his works van to pick it up. Back at the paintshop, the clip went through the oven several times to ensure that it was thoroughly degassed.

(As an aside, Specialised Paintwork was started by Karl's father Alan, an ex-Rolls Royce apprentice. They've been Lotus approved for decades and are now to be found behind Porsche Reading, which is also the HQ of Porsche GB. Today they had a couple of Defenders, an Esprit, an Evora, an MGA, a Dino, a Ghost, a DB9 ,a 991, a Cayenne, a Gallardo and a Huracán! I've seen 250Fs and the Aston Project 215 there in the past. They're seriously not-cheap, but their work is top notch!)

[Splat]

The rear hinge (a mild-steel tube with five pieces of mild-steel plate welded to it) finally arrived in early January. Almost three months to (once again, badly) make a piece that is now thankfully mostly covered-over by fibreglass. This was good timing as the car was due at the paintshop later that same week.

In addition to fitting the Sports rear clip, I wanted to sort out several niggling faults concerning the front. The bonnet shut line was awful. The trailing edge of the bonnet also lifted at speed. The Dzus fasteners I've always found fiddly and I wanted to lose as many of them as possible. And the front of the clip was malformed, as you'll see later.

I stripped the old clips. I also drilled all the fittings on the new rear and did the actual build-up along with numerous other jobs, saving myself a substantial amount of labour costs. The springiness of the fibreglass meant that a method of holding the sides of the front clip in place had to be thought up. The result was vertical pins (fabricated from old tent pegs!) glassed into the inside of the wings that locate into a slot in the sill on either side, just ahead of the inner arch. I'll post detailed photos of this at a later date; there's still a little tidying to do here before the public reveal! There is now only one Dzus fastener on each clip, centrally positioned and really only there for location (and to stop the front ballooning).

As I write this, I'm on home standby (1400-2200hrs). This meant that after a few miserable grey days, I was able to take advantage of the beautiful weather this morning and take the two trains and a bus required to get over to Calcot and collect the car. So, apologies for the following photos, but they were by necessity taken in the low winter sun and shade on my driveway this lunchtime. I'll try to take better ones later in the year and I'll also update this with details of the front clip locating pins once I've tidied-up the (for now, rather rough) slots.

I'll start with the misformed front clip. I hope that I won't cause offence when I say that it initially looked like my car had suffered a stroke! A light mild-steel frame provides a little rigidity and has pulled the face straight. I think that these photos illustrate the point:

[Splat]

Sticking with the front clip a little longer.......

I've never deliberately taken photos of the trailing edge of the front clip; it wasn't a feature that I'd wanted to draw attention to. The shutline varied from Rizzla paper to thumb thickness. But the first couple of shots were taken just after I'd stripped the carpets out and polished the tub and give some idea of how poorly it fitted. The third one is the "now" shot. If you click/tap on any of the photos then they'll expand to full size. Only then will you see the black-anodised Dzus fastener at the centre of the trailing edge!

[Splat]

And so to the rear...... (and again; only one of my disliked Dzus fasteners).

[Splat]

One or two things still to do. I'm waiting for the glass of my vintage, wide-angle rear-view mirror to be returned from resilvering and then the centre, bullet mirror will probably go. I may reuse it as a nearside mirror, matching the offside.

And then it's the 15" wheels. After two years of nil stock, word is that Dunlop will be remanufacturing the R-section 15" tyres later this spring.....

[jonclancy]

Nice work there, Splat. Thought it had gone a bit quiet your end... Clearly busy!

When I bought my car, Gary at Loaded Gunn sorted my front and rear clip fitment. He glassed some quadrants into the front wheelarches, changed the Dzus to a single, central, CamLoc fastener. Terry springs do the main job of securing the panels, and seem to work well.

One other method suggested, but not used, was glassing in some 'rope' to stiffen the bonnet.

Good news about the tyres. I've always liked the look of 15" wires... Where are you planning to source the rims? MWS? Borrani?

[Simon Marks]

Hi, Splat,

That's certainly quite a transformation. I'll be interested to hear if the airflow makes the ride less calm without the hump behind the driver. The only slight discomfort I have experienced when driving mine is a slight draught around the neck on cold drives leading to me wearing a neck warmer, or hoodie (with the hood rolled down) if appropriate. That is possibly exacerbated by me being generally a rather warm-blooded individual that tends to be out with less layers of clothing than most other folk I see!

I have never been enamoured with the front clip fit. Now I have finished my winter maintenance / upgrades, I am going to take my Eleven to a specialist firm near Newbury that repair boats, planes and cars to do some touch ups, take out moulding flaws (particularly on the rear clip) and to install a stiffener into the trailing edge of the front one. I actually put a couple of extra Dzus fasteners there (partly to stop the bonnet flapping about at noise test on my IVA) so hope to use the presence of these to give me strong points to which to tie down the centre of the clip.

Simon

[Splat]

Ha! Quite the opposite. I will now definitely have to start wearing earplugs! And the recirculation behind your head is noticeable. I'd expected both of those. What I didn't expect was the effect on the tonneau. I often drive with the half-tonneau in place over the passenger's seat. The tonneau was heated in the paint oven and stretched into place under an overhead electric heater, with me perspiring gently. It's not "drum head" tight but it's not bad; tighter than it was before. But at 70-80 it started to balloon alarmingly and I had to detach it on the fly and stow it in the footwell. I'm thinking along the lines of lightweight fibreglass tent poles?

As for moulding flaws and blemishes........ Hours and hours were spent flatting and filling. The rear clip had an extremely noticeable vertical seam running down either flank. And the rear peaks of the rear wings turned out to be no thicker than about 2mm!! The front clip trailing edge received a lot of attention. There's a strip of pukka bonnet tape mounted with copper pins on the scuttle and then the lip of the trailing edge was sanded-down to suit. The Dzus fastener is mounted to a really nice ally bracket from Demon Tweeks. I'll take some photos over the next couple of days and post them up. Presently bored out of my tiny mind on Airport Standby at Heathrow.