LOTUS GLUE REPAIR

[grober]

Killer's recent post on the AMG powered Lotus EMIRA led me to this interesting video on a diy Lotus bonded chassis repair.
It reminded me a bit of the original MARCOS 1800 sports car which used an Aerolite glued plywood chassis-needless to say adhesives have moved on a bit since then.

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[nyssa7]

The Elise chassis is bonded together from new, assume same applies to the Evora and would expect the Emira to be bonded also. Fits the Lotus ethos of being stronger and lighter than riveting

 

[grober]

I assume the chassis construction is mainly by manual assembly with the aid of jigs clamps presses etc. this may make sense for low volume production runs where lower tooling costs--no lines of expensive numerically controlled robots-just skilled artisans-- justify the higher costs of manual assembly.Where that arrangement falls down of course is that chassis accident repair is going to be expensive ---meaning I suspect a lot of these cars are going to be written off in the event of an accident.
reminds me of the late lamented ALFA 4c which had front and rear aluminium subframes and a carbon fibre tub iirc .
Alfa Romeo 4C - Wikipedia

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[Dippo]

The Lotus 'assembly line' used to be a bit different. I was in the trim shop in the factory during a visit back in the 90s. I noticed two guys pushing a car along the floor past the racking in the trim area. I hadn't realised we were standing on the actual assembly line - all the other plants I'd visited moved the cars along on conveyors.