A good friend James needed to go out to the Ring to pick up his Porsche GT3 Manthey410 and asked if I was up for a road trip - do the bears proverbially shit in the wood - I said yes straight away.


I checked all the fluids, tyres, brakes, paperwork and packed some spares. I was going to take the Lotus Elan to the Ring to christen it with a few laps. I had a couple of Ring cards and a free lap courtesy of Redline.








I would also get some pax laps with James in the GT3

On the Monday afternoon I drove over to Guildford to pick James up and head down to catch the train/tunnel. Traffic was busy but moving and we arrived with plenty of time to grab sandwiches and coffees. We got straight back in the car and drove round to the boarding area only to be stopped by security for an explosive search/test. This failed on the first pass and they had to do it again - there were about 8 cars singled out for this "attention". When they had finally finished (15 minutes later) we were allowed to proceed to loading, only they had shut the gates and we couldn't get on our scheduled train. Doh!!!! there was still about 12 minutes to go :-( We had to wait 50 minutes for the next one...........................not happy


This meant we would be even later arriving at Jochen's where we were staying!!! Nothing to do but eat our Sandwiches and drink our coffees. One bit of good news was that my Insurer added James to my Policy for three days for no charge!

The Elan has a slight problem with it's heater control valve and I am awaiting a new one so the cabin can get "cosy" especially with two people in it. So we decided as it was a nice afternoon we would put the hood down.

We got the next train and it was actually a few minutes early arriving in France, great. We set off with the hood still down blasting through France and into Belgium. We decided as it was a warm night to leave the hood down.........

So there we were in the dark blasting through Belgium with the hood down in the pitch dark. The Belgians must have been thinking crazy Brits :-)

We left the Motorway to cut across country towards Germany. Travelling along forest roads - when a huge wild boar (tusks and all black spiky fur) weighing about 300lbs lumbered out of the trees and crossed the road in front of us! Yippes - there was no danger of a collision but we were both thinking the same thing - if that had been a few seconds later we would have hit it at speed!
We got to Jochen's without further incident, although the sat nav took us a route neither of us had ever travelled before :-) got to love those sat navs..

Next day stared beautifully with blue skies and no clouds and the promise of it being 26 degrees - lovely perfect for a few laps of the Ring.

Jochen had to do a favour for a Norwegian friend and pick up his M5 from Storage/Tyre place. I gave him a lift to collect it in the Elan and Sofia gave James a lift up to collect the Porsche.

I went up to the Ring at 5pm to convert my Redline voucher into a Lap and to see how many laps I had on my cards from Easter. I had 12 in total so that was perfect. I found this picture through the Northloop website. I hope the photographer does not mind me using it here - free advertising for him :-)

I did one lap and did not enjoy it at all - nothing felt right. All of my 750 or so laps have been done in RWD and mainly in my E30 M3. So FWD was a learning curve even though I have driven it on various UK tracks.

I borrowed James' tyre gauge and discovered that the tyres were up to 2.2 and 2.3 on the rear!!! it was hot. So I let out some air bringing them down to 1.8 hot and went out for another lap - this was much better and I was getting the hang of it :-)


I was having to adapt my usual lines, choice of gear and braking a lot more than I would have thought. Importantly, I was now having fun.

Went for two pax laps with James in the GT3 - what a car so much torque. I am getting used to the Manthey "jigglyness" of the suspension, but I do not think I could get used to it on a permanent basis. No idea of the times but James is quick and has done a lot more laps than I have and takes some interesting lines.

I cannot do more than a couple of laps as a pax as I then start to feel nauseous.....

I went out for another couple of laps and they were starting to flow until a biker overtook me in the middle of Weirsiefen - WTF - just as I was turning in tight - so I had to take a wide line out which spoiled the run down to Briedsheid. Obviously has a death wish.

Called it a day after this lap and headed back to Jochen and Sofias to freshen up and have a bite to eat with James and Sofia - Jochen was meeting up with the Norwegians. After dinner James and I went up to the Pistenklaus for a couple of drinks and to catch up with Jochen. We had an early night as both James and I wanted to get to the Ring by 8am to get some quiet laps in.

James and I got to the entrance for 750am and as soon as it opened we were out lapping. It was very quiet and it felt like you were the only car on the track at times.

Met up with Chilled, Dan, Nick, Mr Rooney and some other Northloopers - sorry didn't catch your names.



Jochen attaching one of his Frozenspeed stickers to a Norwegian GT2. Nice looking Silver Lotus next to it with a Frozenspeed sticker as well!

Some more laps and really getting into the feel of the Elan now - lapping quicker and quicker. Track still quite empty, but not for long. Scuderia Hanseat was on that week and all the Exotica started arriving - I have never seen so many Porsche GT2's in one place - there must have been more than a dozen of them. There was also a white Xbow, various Ferraris, two Gumbert Apollos, 4 or 5 R8's and some race prepped Seats.













The Ferrari's arrived in force with much revving of engines and all calling out to each other across the car park - all a bit "look at me". They do sound fabulous though.

But they are big and wide especially parked next to a little Elan












The Xbow was on Italian plates! usually a sign of some hot blood! and sure enough on one of my laps he came storming up behind me weaving all over the road behind me so I was unsure where he was going to go and he then overtook on the right - plonker.







Did another couple of laps with James in the GT3 - just love the noise it makes - getting more confidence in it's handling.

Some of the Ferrari's went out for a lap so it would be churlish not to go out an overtake them :-) Nick GT3 jumped in for a pax lap and I promised to take Dan out for a pax when we got back in. So off we stormed after the Ferrari's along with a posse of other cars. We eventually caught one going down into Breidshied bridge (being a mobile chicane) so I dived down the left side to get past. I then had the most monumental brake fade! and all I could think of for 2 seconds was "CONCRETE WALL" then gathered it up and carried on round and up Ex Mule, but with no brakes. Did a gentle lap back to the Grone Holle and had a look at the pads. Sorry Nick if it gave you palpitations!


I had checked them the afternoon before and there was two thirds of the meat on them so thought they would be ok. They didn't seem OK now but the outside ones still had meat on them but the insides sounded like they were down to the metal!!!! and I was leaving to go to Calais in 35 mins with James. Sorry Dan will give you a pax next time we meet up. Also at that point the track was shut for an accident.

At that point I got a message from James - he was over at Manthey Racing a back tyre had started de-laminating!!! so he needed a new tyre and upon checking the other rear he needed two.........and they are enormous tyres. Turns out he had to get four.......

I was able to go up to Hershbrioch and get my spare pads fitted - so by the time I got back to Jochens for a wash and brush up and finish packing the car James arrived. We had a bite to eat and hit the road.

I followed James on a route I had never driven before with new pads and James on new tyres! I asked if we could take it easy for the first few miles..........................ha ha James take it easy that will be the day. I did keep the roof down until it started to rain when we stopped for petrol in Belgium though.

Missed the train we were aiming for but got on the next one and all was plain sailing. Stopped at James' place to pick up some bits and then home to Newbury. About 1000 yards from home a huge deer jumped into the road in front of me and I had to do an emergency stop - we missed each other but my heart was trying to come through my ribs! I had to have a cup of tea and sit down when I got home.

Great trip but I was knackered having done a whole day at the Ring and then 8 hours driving to get home.

Finally got the Elan back

Finally got the Elan back and it does look good :-) It has had a few upgrades as you can see in the photo it has new wheels, roll hoops and a new registration.

Under the covers it has new front brakes with 4 pot Wilwoods, new rear disks, hubs and bearings and a new brake master cylinder. So it now stops really really well!!! Also took the doors to bits and replaced the external seals on the top of the doors, new triangular corner pieces and new carpet on the doors.

However, a group of us were helping a friend with a charity day for Help for Heroes down at Bovington Tank training facility. The elan disgraced itself - when after lunch and the first lap of the afternoon it dropped all it's PAS fluid in the carpark! So no more laps............ A friend had a big jack and took off the PAS pump belt so I could drive it home. When I got it home I noticed that one of the new rear shocks was leaking! I got a replacement from Avo (free of charge) and fitted it myself. The shaft in the leaking one had "corrosion" and marks on it - which caused it to puncture it's seals. Then I noticed I had an oil leak at the front and upon investigation it turns out to be slightly weeping Dowty seals on the oil cooler..............................I am waiting for new ones which I will fit when they arrive.

I am afraid the Dowty seals did not cure the problem and a new oil cooler was required, had to drive down to Castle Coombe to pick one up. Now fitted and running well - fitted a replacement drop link I got off the LEC forum, I have kept the old one to send to Steve at SJSportscars.

Elan rebuild May 09

Carrying on from where I left off in the last post. The Elan is coming together bit by bit and is now ready to be masked up ready for the first coat.

Here it is - still with the old registration and the roll hoops not fitted.

Masking a car for painting in a booth is a laborious pain in the butt job. I think you would need to have the patience of Job to do this on a regular basis.

Here it is fully masked and being painted by Kieth who is originally from Louth - near Cadwell Park - one of my favourite tracks.

Next thing is for all those awkward items to be sprayed hanging up in the booth - Spoiler, bumper and bonnet.

This is a frustrating time for me as the car comes together slowly.

Update August 2009

Have not posted in quite a while as life has not been very good - cancer in the family :-( deaths, suicides, acid accident near blindness, more motoring woes and the Belgium accident is still ongoing.


On the Audi front the young lad has now changed his story saying I hit him trying to avoid the "phantom" car!!!!!! So that is 10 months this has been going on for.

Bashed the Elan into a roundabout after hitting some diesel on a roundabout the day after my birthday in January.


Other motoring woes - my son borrowed my "daily" and a big Audi pulled out and side swiped the car. To cut a long story short - it got repaired - lovely but the repairers damaged the other side!!!! WTF. After much gnashing of teeth and complaining to the Insurance company they repaired that also.


Finally found out what the "rattling" noise in the Audi was - some internal brake caliper part was fractured and this was causing the noise. You cannot buy this part separately from a whole caliper! So new caliper fitted and noise cured.


The green Excel has had a few issues - the new exhaust has been banging on the bodywork over deep potholes. Lots of adjusting and tensioning has sorted the problem, but while under the car I noticed both shockers on the back were leaking! Someone had removed them at some point using Mole grips and left marks on the shafts which punctured the seals.


Sent them back to Avo with the assistance of Lotusbits - thanks Mike for lending me the temporary ones while Avo refurbished the damaged ones. New shafts and seals and as good as new.


I got a pair of 4pot Wilwood calipers at a good price and thought I will fit them to one of the Excels. However, costs were mounting and so was the complication and time involved so I was going to shelf the idea until a friend (Uwe) who is a CAD/CAM engineer stepped in.

I went over to his place and he measured and measured and mocked up a bracket to fit the Wilwoods.

He then found a chap at Brands Hatch who could manufacture them in Aircraft Aluminium at a good price, excellent news.

Audi Repair and next disaster - The Elan

The Audi repair estimate came out at £3,600 and as the car is only worth about £4,000 I was sure they would write it off and at one point this is what they said they would do. However, they decided to repair it - the headlight units alone cost almost £700 without bulbs!!!!

The trailer needed one new light unit and some Aluminium welding - of course it could not be that simple :-( The unit was out of production and the one supplied as the replacement was completely different to the existing one and dramatically at a different height. This meant replacing both therefore increasing the cost of the repair. Which is when I found out that my trailer insurance did not cover accidental damage.....................

Still not to worry the ULR Insurance I have will recover that from the Belgian's Insurance. 8 months later I am still waiting for the repayment of my excess and the trailer repairs.

The next disaster I am referring to in the title is that on a gloriously sunny day in January 2009 I took the Lotus Elan out for a spin with the top down. I had a wonderful drive and drove down the Sandleford Link dual carriage way to the roundabout at the bottom, two lanes of traffic, quite busy, queued to get on the roundabout - stop start.

Then my turn in tandem with a red car we took off, not quickly, into 2nd gear, turn around the roundabout. Front wheels skid out, correct skid lift off throttle slightly, back end slams around, front wheels get grip car launches itself into roundabout - there was nothing I could do!


Here are some of the pictures of the damage - does not look too much......bumper cracked in two places bonnet and lights slightly damaged.

I managed to open the bonnet and take some more photos to send to a number of body shops. Everyone agreed it did not look too bad. I could see that the front had been pushed in by about three quarters of an inch.

The various bodyshop estimates ranged in cost from £3,500 to £5,600! Their engineer came to assess the damage and in his view it was an uneconomic repair and he recommended writing it off.

My Insurer called me to say they were writing it off and did I want to buy the salvage? I said I did even at £2,200 plus my excess of £175 and as it was on an agreed value I would get almost £6,000 payment. Excellent news I thought as I knew a chap with a good front clam.

I called him up and we agreed a price. A few days later I hired a van and drove up to near Peterborough to pick it up. However, on the way back I had a call from the Insurer to say they had made a mistake and would not be writing it off!!!!

Here is the new clam prepped and undercoated ready to be fitted to the car.

The good news is that the Insurer will pay for all my costs...

The Elan went to a local bodyshop - Woodlands, in Newbury. They seem good people and have done work for other people I know - a very good job on an early Porsche 356a.



As the Elan was dismantled more damage came to light - the front top subframe was damaged beyond repair and the fiberglass crash box was slightly damaged. A new top subframe was ordered from SJSportscars, but would take 4/5 weeks to get manufactured.




It is very interesting to see the Clam construction being dismantled. This was the forerunner to the clam technology that is in the Elise. You can see the dismantled headlights on the ground. These are the early "Opera" headlights and some of the parts are no longer available. I had been given a couple of the parts as spares when I bought the car and in the Lotus sale a couple of the other parts were up for sale. So the headlight mechanisms were rebuilt.

I had purchased Roll Hoops and these were going to be fitted to the car while it was up on the ramps in bits....

Another job I thought I might as well do while it was up on the ramp for a number of weeks was to clean and rub down the underside. I also scraped and rubbed down the suspension components . Then I painted them with rust inhibitor and black hammerite. A long and boring process but worth it in the end with the knowledge that they were all secure and now free from surface rust.

This is some after shots of the painted wishbones and chassis.

The car looks very strange with the whole front clam and bumper missing - it seems a lot

smaller for some reason.

This photo is prior to the new brakes being fitted - I will finish the rebuild off in a new thread.....................to be continued :-)

Sh*t Happens or "If it wasnt for bad luck I would have no luck at all...."

Sorry I have not updated the Blog in a long while but a catalogue of motoring "issues" have not made my car experience one of joy................

In Sept 08 on the way back from an excellent Ring trip I was involved in an accident on the link motorway to the Brussels Ringroad. I was in the Audi A8 towing the car trailer with the BMW E30 M3 on it.

It was wet, grey and greasy and I was not going very fast (about 45mph) in the inside lane. I caught an odd movement to my left and looked up to see a young lad in a large E class Merc sliding sideways beside me. It was immediately obvious he was a passenger and had lost control :-(

He hit me on the nearside corner smashing the indicator and bounced away. I hit the brakes hard and the trailer fishtailed smacking the armco which is very close to the road at this point.

He came back and hit me in the middle of the bumper and bounced away - I was still braking hard, very hard. I almost managed to keep the whole rig in my lane, but bringing over 3300 kilos to a halt quickly is a challenge!!!!

He then hit the armco and came to a complete halt - there was nothing I could do but plough into him T-boning his car's doors.



We got out to inspect the damage and it was not a pretty site, I cleared the debris from the road and we called the police. In Belgium they have to attend every accident and take statements. I put up the warning triangle and the traffic flowed around us.


I was not a happy "ted" as I could foresee months of aggravation sorting this one out :-(

He spoke very little English and my Flemish and Arabic is none existent.............



The headlights of the Audi had been pushed into the cavities behind and the bumper was severely broken in places. Here is my masterful repairs with gaffer tape............they still worked but just didn't quite point in the right directions.
The indicators also still worked but were now silver instead of orange.

Miraculously the mechanicals had not been damaged - so there were no oil or water leaks and the air con still worked.



His car had a fair bit of damage to the doors, bonnet front off side wheel and front lights as can be seen in the photos below.
He called his "Uncle" a friend of the family who asked me if I had seen the car the car which Clipped him?

I said I had been too busy trying to avoid the Mercedes and to control my car and trailer.






There was no damage to the rear end of the Merc and if you look at the wheel in this picture it has a different alloy and different profile tyre to the other three - 35 profile as opposed to 55 profile! I believe this was the cause of his skid!!!!




The police arrived and took statements and said that the liability rested with him and his insurers. He could not give any details of the "phantom" car.

The trailer had lost one whole light cluster at the back as it had been mashed against the armco and the number plate was broken.