Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Paul has posted some more photos on eBay, this one is rather interesting

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LOTUS-ELAN-C ... rk:16:pf:0

No connection to Paul, just a happy customer.

I think they are pictures of jigs used to check the accuracy of the fibreglass mouldings.

Who said Lotus didn't have quality control?

Interesting. I?ve seen lots of early factory photos and have never seen these gigs. It looks like they are placed on a painted body which doesn?t make a lot of sense. I would have thought they would have been ?measured? while still in raw fiberglass form.

Perhaps these jigs were used in developing the coupe, to make sure the openings would accomodate the standard parts to fit?

John

perhaps they are display photos showing the use of the items

or perhaps they were used to figure out what had gone wrong with a body in production

gus wrote:perhaps they are display photos showing the use of the items

yes, it seems to me that they are the moulding jigs used to glue the different finishing parts to the body, like boot water chanel, door jambs... (e.g. to make sure the bonnet will fit and the seam area is smooth it makes sens to use a jig for registering seamlessly all the constituting parts) - these moulding jigs are nicely triangulated to stay rigid

new gel coat is smooth and shiny like paint

I would think these jigs are parts of the main mold used to be attached to the main mold to create the details of window openings and bonnet aperature. Note there is a piece to mold the slide area in the front of the bonnet aperature. And then separate headlamp pod molds.

Roger

Lotus had multiple moulds on the go at any one time to get the production rate up which were made in sections from glassfibre reinforced with steel tubing and bolted together. There are pictures on the web of the moulds used by Lotus and by Bourne which look nothing like these frames.

The tooling in the picture looks as if it could have been used as formers to produce the parts of the moulds which couldn't be made by laying up over the original clay buck, not in the production of the final bodies themselves.

It would be very interesting to find out for sure.

Nice bit of 'Chapman spaceframe triangulation' on the support structures for the formers.

Andy8421 wrote:Lotus had multiple moulds on the go at any one time to get the production rate up which were made in sections from glassfibre reinforced with steel tubing and bolted together. There are pictures on the web of the moulds used by Lotus and by Bourne which look nothing like these frames.

The tooling in the picture looks as if it could have been used as formers to produce the parts of the moulds which couldn't be made by laying up over the original clay buck, not in the production of the final bodies themselves.

It would be very interesting to find out for sure.

Nice bit of 'Chapman spaceframe triangulation' on the support structures for the formers.

To get the panel fit on the new type 36 right? That would make sense.

When making a mold you just make it in pieces from an original, it is not necessary to do it all at once.

You could then make a master and start cutting it up to make internal details. So you make a faux body from the clay derived mold and cut the headlight holes door apertures etc out with a saw, form the details there, then make master molds from that

These are not mold pieces, and the excessive triangulation must be due to dimensional stability so it must be some kind of quality gear

To me they look like jigs for checking and trimming the openings to the final dimensions after moulding and before fitting the glass or headlights or boot and bonnet

cheers
Rohan

When I first started reading/posting on lotusElan.net all those moons ago, there was a US thread about the dimensional differences between the left & right hand sides of the car, when measured from a centreline down the body. Let?s just say that the cars didn?t have an equal width.....

So control can only be up to a certain level of ?quality?

Regards
Richard

rgh0 wrote:To me they look like jigs for checking and trimming the openings to the final dimensions after moulding and before fitting the glass or headlights or boot and bonnet

cheers
Rohan

this photo in particular made me think that the rain gutter or other small concave ends may have been glassed on the assembled body

Appears to be a window in place in that pic, unlikely to be a mold


I cannot imagine that these big clunky fixtures were used daily

feels to me more like proof of compliance for new molds or' WTF is wrong with this body' fixtures