Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Mine is 0306N built July, 1972. I think the boating industry certainly has figured out how to have metalflake gelcoat--sparkly boat finishes abound--they're the ones that redid my roof when I recognized it was too yellowed to remain and they matched the flake density and size perfectly. Mine as well had metalflake on the cowl and dash platform and down into fiberglass areas proximal to the roof/body line. Mine was painted over when I bought it with the PO indicating it came to him as metalflake. I've seen a couple where the owner swears it was monocolor and metalflake is revealed underneath during restoration. I think it would have been a job to changeover mold procedures rather than just shooting the whole car if monocolor was requested. Lotus must have thought they had something in gelcoat management when the early Esprits and fourseaters had the entire car in gelcoat color--again, a current boating practice. I may have seen one total silver metalflake car for sale in California about a year ago but wonder how many of those were finished and whether that is shown in the archive records. Thanks always for your help Graham. Gordon Sauer

Totally silver metal-flake?!!! Now that's cool.

@+

Vernon

Section B47 of the plus 2 workshop gives details of how to refinish using metalic flake in Acrylic blend clear over a flatted area; then add a number of acrylic blend clear coats to finish. However I still think that the simplest way to achieve the metalflake finish is as I described in my previous post - however, we really need an original worker to tell us how Lotus actually did it, anything else is just speculation.

Just ask Frank at Options 1. He is probably sick of metalflake, but does a good job!

Jeremy
(high in the tuscan Mountains)