Wishbone mounting points.

[anonymous-user]

I doing some research on the car, and intend to sprint/hillclimb with it when I get one. The weakest part seems to be the wishbone mount points, and the most common damage on a sprint is bending a wishbone. So my question is do the wishbones bend? or does the mound point bend/damage? If you do bend the mount point is it fixable, because I notice is seems to be extruded alloy epoxy welded to the chassis. If it is fixable is it DIY able?

Has anyone got any experience of chassis damage in motorsport and how its fixed etc?

Sorry for all the questions, but love the car and want to sprint it but I am thinking ahead.

Cheers

Doug

[bogie]

dunno...I used to sprint mine, trackdays etc, and never heard of that "being common" in 6 years ...where you getting the info from?

sure if you crash the car and go sideways into something hard at speed, you can bugger them up and you cant repair the chassis - this is how so many Elises are written off im afraid, but if you crash any car its not generally good news

[anonymous-user]

Ive done production and modified production for some time now, it does happen from time to time. If you are going to do motorsport, there’s no point entering if you think you need to be careful... you don’t get good times. I know the front and rear is pretty good, what I am interested in is if the wishbone bends does the mounting points damage? i.e. generally you can bend wishbones without damaging the chassis mounting points? Ive seen, caterhams, elans (spyder chassis), ginnetta's bend wishbones without damage to the chassis mount points.

I am trying to understand how much you can repair the chassis, I am not worried about the bodywork etc, I can put all that back together.

Hope I’ve explained a bit better.

Cheers

Doug

[bogie]

ah - right, well if you bend wishbones then new ones are easy/cheap enough

chassis wise - nope, I wouldnt trust a repaired one myself that had been repaired around that area, yes it is a weak point and many road cars have been written off after a big bang sideways breaking the chassis around that area.

Im sure some of the guys that have raced Elises for many years will be along with their comments

[Scuffers]

long and short of it is this...

if you hit the front wheels, then you have more than a 50/50 chance of ripping the top wishbine mounts out of the chassis, end of story, buy a new tub

Back end you can hit (almost) as hard as you like, worse case, you bend the sub-frame, no big deal, un-bolt it and bolt on a new one.

thus, if your going to bin it, either hit it head on, or back first, do NOT hit the front wheels, otherwise your looking at a new tub.

[anonymous-user]

Thanks gents, excellant info.

Doug.