Tingles ex C production race Elan Body

[garyeanderson]

I e-mailed Charles this morning and got a nice reply (see below) with some unexpected photos and they sure are great. I thought I would share them with everyone as Charles said its O.K.

Howdy,

I tried to post this directly to the LotusElan.net, but it's been so
long that I've forgotten my username and password... I can't believe all
the work you've done on that body. Terrific job.

I remember Don couldn't find the logbook when I bought it from him
although I didn't really press him for it. He did have a photo of the car
in action on the track (before the flairs). I gave him the section of
rollcage that had the SCCA stamp punched into it, I'm sure he still
has that.

I will keep track of your progress and please let me know if you need
more info...

By the way, Rob is an excellent caretaker of that car (maybe he will
give me first right of refusal if he ever decides to part with it).



Here are acouple of pics from "before"

Thanks Gary and feel free to forward this to the board.







Great photos, thank you Charles for sending them along...
Maybe Ray ended up with the log book and roll bar with the SCCA stamping?

[Briggs1]

Gary,

Nice work on the glass. It is a pleasure to see what you are doing - I've seen so many botch jobs on glass work that when I get to see someone doing clean work it is a pleasure to see the progress. Thank you for sharing your work.

Regarding the lattice in the door area - What do you think of filling the area with expanding foam and then skinning that over with a few layers of glass instead of reinstalling the lattice? I foamed some areas on the Europa and the overall resulting strength is phenomenal.

Seems a lot easier than rebuilding the lattice - just curious what you think - does the lattice do anything other than support the inner door sill?

Briggs Pletcher

[RotoFlexible]

just curious what you think - does the lattice do anything other than support the inner door sill?

It also provides the outboard seat belt anchor.

[garyeanderson]

Hi Briggs

Thanks for the comments. The start to finish time for doing the one side of Tingle's Elan was about 12 hours. There was a bunch of work that was done earlier like the jig for the bottom lattice so that speeded things up alot.
(see previous post on Andy Bodges sill replacement
viewtop ... 3657#73657 )
Andy's took longer as I had to cut out, grind, make the jig, and prep the area. Tingles Elan was all open and the glass sill top was new two years ago and no paint or other contaminates on it. I just needed to weld it in place and fiberglass the top rail of the lattice to the sill.
the back section was just points plotted on plywood with pencil lines connecting the dots and I bent the piece up using the same jig to bend it and have it all in the same plane but I didn't use any of the angles. I bent it and layed it on top of the plywood (burrned the pencil lines off in some areas) until it looked close. All of the lower sill area was in good shape as it hadn't been outside to long and Don always had it stored inside when he had it.

I don't like the idea of foam filled sills, the stuff you get in a can at home depot I would not trust. there is some good polyurethane foams but I don't have the experiance with them. I have thought about just glassing in the area of the lattice with a piece of layed up fiberglass cut to the shape of the interior sill covers but havn't done it as I like have a place to run the battery cable and wiring harness.

I talked to a Elan racer out at Steamboat Springs, Colorodo back in 1995 when I was there, his name was Gene Theriault from Casper, Wyoming. He had foam filled the cavity and thought it was a great improvement. He said something about bouncing of the hay bails without damage. I don't know whether he left in the steel or not but I assume he did. The seat belt anchor point can be done with the roll cage but it would need at least 3 points (main hoop, door sill bars and a tube back to the main backbone with additional triangulation. The Elan solution seems quite light and strong for the weight it adds.

Did I answer you question

6-11-2008
I found a couple of early photos so I thought I would add them.

when I first got the shell home


arch cut out


sanding the shell is about to start.



June 30th 2008

Things have been slow on this project for the last couple of weeks, its time to spend some money on materials and I just can't justify spending money on it at the moment. I didn't like the reproduction boot and bonnet that I had considered using and shown in the earlier photos so I looked around for something more suitable for an Elan that was one of the last early bodies with the S1 style taillamps. The body number on this Elan is 3709 invoiced November 17th 1964 and would have been about the 1000th Elan invoiced. Both boot and bonnet are from 26/4045 and were in fairly good shape. The boot had a small dip on the left hand side from a previous owner leaving something sitting on it for an extended period of time. The bonnet has a number of stress cracks radiating from the right front that were the result of an accident but is still more correct than the reproduction one. I found a windscreen frame for the photos and is probably won't be the one that this body ends up with, I need to check and see if its the original from 26/4020 before I make a decision. Most of the mounting hole that secure the bottom of the screen frame do not line up so I still need to check where its from. I also upgraded the the PC and 5 gallon pail stands I was using to a roll around cart.

















10-29-2009
I got a package in the mail today from Don Tingle, I guess he found something rolling around under his desk and when he went to investigate, he saw this steel pipe that was a section of the rollcage with the stamping from the SCCA N.E. Region. Thank you Don for thinking of me.


Wednesday August 15th 2012 07:30 am

A bit of an update, see the following topic for more details
elan-f14/sows-ear-chassis-t24752-120.html
elan-f14/sows-ear-chassis-t24752-135.html