How good or bad should the panel fit be on a tcs

[Sparkrite]

I have put in an huge amount of work repairing the damage of a rear end collision to my tcs and have done all the fibreglass work to as good a fit and finish as I could ever expect it to be. Now I just need to do a small amount of repair to the engine lid but the problem is the panel fit of the engine lid which is now identical to pre accident condition but that was/is pretty awful.The gap near the hinges is too tight although flush, but if I adjust it larger then the rear lip on the lid will stick out more at the back. The rest of the lid sits too low about a quarter of an inch all along the long edges where it meets to tops of the wings, and the top edge of the raised rear lip/spoiler also sits low, but with a good panel gap at the lower rear edge near the lock,so raising the lid will ruin that gap. As my car is very original and low mileage I can only assume it came out of the factory like this, similarly the front hood/lid which has never been touched would require a lot of surgery to get it perfect. So my question is how good a fit are these two lids on un restored cars

[BDA]

My car has not been hit in the rear and the engine cover doesn't fit that well and from my experience (admittedly not really that extensive since I have scrutinized few other TCSs for the fit of their engine cover but I have noticed some), the character of the fit is pretty common: the forward "corners" are raised about a quarter of an inch and that decreases as you go to the rear and starts to sit flush about 1/3rd of the way from the rear. The back edge of the lid sits proud of the rear body by a smaller amount. Let's call it 3/16". The ducktail is in good alignment with the body. For the most part, that sort of fit is pretty consistent with TCSs with some being a better. I have seen pictures where the fit is very good. Those seem rare to me and seem to be more often found on S2s. I don't know if the owner "messaged" his or if it just happened to fit better.

My bonnet does not sit flush at the rear but proud about 3/16" or a bit less. The rest is close enough that it's never bothered me but I wouldn't make any claims one way or the other.  I've attached several pictures hoping to characterize how my boot and bonnet fit. The bonnet picture labeled "front 3" is looking down from about the headlight on the right side. It makes it look worse than it really is. I think "rear 3" also looks a bit worse than I think it really is but maybe it's not!

So, in general the fit is not what we would expect now a days (i.e. generally not great).

What you describe sound a little different from those that I've noticed but that doesn't mean a whole lot. Here is a collection of Europas that have been up for auction on Bring A Trailer (https://bringatrailer.com/lotus/europa/) and you can see what their fit is like.

As you've already found out, fiberglass is a pretty good medium to work with. If you haven't itched yourself to death already, some of those issues could be fixable.

[EuropaTC]

Firstly, well done for sticking with the car and even better, doing the repairs yourself. I really felt for you after the accident, all that work and then you end up back where you started. Some folks would have given up at that point, so well done.

Now, panel fit....     Well, my TC hasn't, to my knowledge, ever been hit hard. There was what looked like a car park scuff on the NS front arch when I got it but since then it's been back to fibreglass twice for resprays and I've not found evidence of any significant repairs. So let's assume it's as it came from the factory ?

Panel fit on the doors isn't bad, not as good as a modern car but pretty good for the era and probably stunning for Lotus at the time. (the Elans....    well, you wouldn't use the term "panel fit" there)   But front and rear bonnet, boot is "mehhh". The front can be reasonable, I can get the hinge area ok but by the windscreen it always seems to be out at one side or another. The panel is most likely warped and I'm too lazy to do anything about it.

The rear deck was just as you describe, the panel was clearly never intended for this car and it had been like that forever.

And then in 2021 I fitted a rear deck lift and finally decided to do something about it. I adjusted the front hinges to get as neat a fit as I could, at which point the angle of the rearmost panel (where the lock is) stood proud of the bodywork and didn't follow the angle of either rear wing. I can't recall the exact measurement but guess around 0.5", that's probably the same as yours ?

I cut the hidden sides of the panel taking out a triangular wedge on both sides so that the rear panel now flexed easily. Push it where you want it to be, hold in place with gaffer tape, remove the panel and lay up new glass from the inside. 

But it still sits low in the middle section, nothing really to be done about that without a lot of glass work. Personally I think it's just typical of the period, these cars were thin, hand laid fibreglass and nothing like the method used on the later cars where there was much more control.

Brian

[Sparkrite]

Thank you for the replies guys. With a lot of the images Ive seen it seems the earlier s2 had better fitting lids,so maybe its something I will just accept as a tc quirk. I also wonder why lotus omitted the reinforcement x on the undersides, maybe to save weight.
Photo shows pre accident bad fitting lid which Ive now got back to the same.

[EuropaTC]

I reckon that's as good as they get. If mine had been as neat as that I'd have left it alone !

Brian

[Dilkris]

Don't know if the below is of any help - whilst I haven't started working on the body yet - I save all links that I come across that  may be of help to me when the time comes. See below:-

https://www.lotuscorps.org/wp/truing-up-the-body-fit-on-a-1973-lotus-europa-part-1/
Truing Up the Body Fit on a 1973 Lotus Europa – Part 2 – Lotus Corps

[Fotog]

I was just going to post those links.  I think really good articles on this subject!

Vince

[Sparkrite]

Thanks for the link Dilkris. I decided that I was not happy with my deck lid fit and decided to improve it. To my surprise the bad fit from the factory is down to the simple washers underneath the hinges at the forward end, as they are so large and butt up against the lip they force the whole lid to sit more forward giving a tight panel gap at the hinges and compromised fit at the rear. With that sorted it just left me to reduce the sloping angle of the back panel. Unlike the guy in the link who seemed to make a big job out of it by cutting the apex, I just cut the sides below the apex as it was much simpler and also one of my sides had already suffered damage there from the accident. The overall fit is now vastly improved and I am super happy with the results. I will post some photos when finished

[Dilkris]

Sparkrite - Sent you a PM