sorry - potentially daft question

[theweeninjaguy]

right,

in a normal car when someone bangs your car while opening their door, you get an annoying little dent in your wing, door or whatever.

now, the elise doesn't have metal panels so what happens when you get some prat banging his door into your car? cracks?

ninja

[boggy]

Hi,

Well it's worst than that depending on how hard they whack it, best advice don't leave it to close to anyone.
If your unfortunate enough to get it damaged it can end up being very expensive, fibreglass repair's don't come cheap I'm afraid



Boggy

[Mutant Rat]

Like boggy says...depends how hard they hit it.

The good news is that while it is fairly easy to chip/scratch the paint, they would have to hit it very hard (much harder than the usual force used opening a door in a car park) to actually damage the fibreglass. Fibreglass is much more resilient than steel, so it will tend to deform and just spring back to it's original shape under minor impacts.

Bigger impacts will craze the gelcoat (grind off the damaged gelcoat, apply new, rub down and paint to repair).

Bigger impacts still will tear the fibreglass. (cut off damaged section of panel and graft a new one on, or replace the panel to repair, depending on the nature of the damage and the size/cost of the panel).

[lottie]

Friend of mine was driving his Elise behind a skip lorry when a chunk of CARDBOARD fell off onto his wing. Pulled over and the stuff had put a fairly serious dent in gelcoat!! Lorry of course had gone and now he is not sure what to do. Local repairers said it would be a full front clam repair costing a lot more than a cardboard box!!!

[Mutant Rat]

lottie said:

Friend of mine was driving his Elise behind a skip lorry when a chunk of CARDBOARD fell off onto his wing. Pulled over and the stuff had put a fairly serious dent in gelcoat!! Lorry of course had gone and now he is not sure what to do. Local repairers said it would be a full front clam repair costing a lot more than a cardboard box!!!

If it's just the top of the wing, and it is just a 'dent', as you describe it, it seems a bit extreme to replace the whole clam. I'd make the fibreglass repair myself and just take it into a spray shop for final paint, but then I've done a fair amount of fibreglass work and spraying before. It's not difficult though, once you get the hang of it, and cost would be trivial.

[lottie]

Will pass on your suggestion. And stand well back. He was not amused. His words were "somebody will pay for this"...

[theweeninjaguy]

thanks guy's i'm more concerned about accidental damage from some idiot trying to get out thier car and it sounds like this will be less of a problem than on a normal car.

i'm fairly used to fixing plastic from crashing my ducati regularly, and the damage you're describing on the top of your wing could probably be repaired very well by someone in a bike shop as they're far more used to fixing plastic, fibreglass etc

ninja

[theweeninjaguy]

also the bike guy's are likely to pay more attention to the quality of the paint finish as this is far more noticable on a bike than on a car.

ninja

[Mutant Rat]

Fibreglass is much easier to fix than the non-fibre reinforced (polycarbonate?) fairings on bikes, for sure. I used to help my mate fix the fairings on his KR1S (bet that dates me!) when he fell off it (regularly). Sod of a job getting the plastic to bond properly, it was...

Not sure bike shops are the best places, though, or that getting the finish reight is more critical on a bike. Cars tend to have larger surface areas than bikes, and I'd say that a minor imperfection in the middle of a big panel is more obvious.

Your best bet is a TVR or Lotus body specialist, if you don't feel inclined to do the work yourself.

>> Edited by Mutant Rat on Friday 22 July 21:56