Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

The joint between the two body moulding on my Plus 2 nose is badly damaged and I'm scratching my head on how to restore it.

The easy fix would be to grind it off completely then glass it flush but I would really like to retain it for sake of being faithful in my restoration as it provides a clear cut off between the two distinct body mouldings and the main body colour

Any bright ideas?

One thought I had was to fix a strip of hardwood or similar and then glass over it?

I rarely attempt to repair damaged glass fibre and prefer to cut out the damaged area and replace that with a freshly moulded part.
For that repair, I would make good by whatever method to exactly replicate the original. Bring this to a perfect painted finish. Take a mould off each side of the 'panel joint'. Create new pieces from the moulds, starting with gel coat then lay-up. Cut away the temporary repair back to sound material. Grind the lay-up side to give a 2 to 3" feather edge. Cut the newly moulded piece to shape and similarly feather out. Fix the new piece in position and lay up in the valley created by the feathered edges. Grind a shallow feather edge depression along the join on the face side. Use tissue across the joint and finish with body filler.
Odviously you would be doing this for each side of the panel join. Bonding paste, per original join would be used when placing the second repair piece.
This sounds involved, but the lengthiest part is recreating the original and finishing that for taking a good gel coat moulding. The rest is pretty quick.
A repair done like this is barely discernable from original and remains the original integrity of the panels.
Dougal

to recreate an approximate curved rib profile (non seen during normal driving conditions) I sometimes use some foam backed with wood for fastening and rigidity, then protected with film (then usually I put some peel ply on top of the glassed material to help smoothing the actual profile) - likewise for recreating trunk rain gutters for instance. This may be difficult to do in a single pass, but you could do sections, then use the sections to fasten with glassing the missing sections...
I'm not sure I see clearly where this is, if it is structural to some extent, I would first make sure to taper out sufficiently the repair so as to anchor it on solid material.
Use of an electric file would probably be of great help for that type of repair.

good luck !

ps: nice collection of shop tool cabinets by the way..

You could, for the first repair side, attach the mould to the cut back and feathered panel and create the new part on situ. The second side would still need a separate new part in order to faithfully recreate the join.
Dougal

Same process for a gutter repair. Here are pics of a recent one.





Dougal

Many thanks for all the tips and suggestions - it sounds involved!

I've located a source of fibreglass profiles, including angle trims, and am considering whether it might be possible to modify and glass them in to replicate the damaged flanges.

Will let you know how I get on.

Cheers

Jon

Chris Fincham at Boss Motors has the original molds & can make whatever repair sections people would like. You could then graft the repair section into the floor panel & Sill.

He recently made me a footwell section to repair a bodge done on my car



I would not grind flush, it would look strange & you might end up with a Q Plate

Even better, Boss Motors will do the job for you if you take your car to them.
For me, they replaced the panel behind that seam (the one that the vacuum units bolt to) using a section from their original moulds.
They also repaired a smashed area about 8” diameter in the section below the bumper.

Well I cheated chaps!

I ground back the damaged section then screwed two timber battens either side of the moulding line as a guide then reformed it by forcing in SMC, fettled it and then a fine finish of fibreglass paste.

It's strong as anything and once painted you will never know - I'm now happy