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.