Is this bad?

[Tom999w]

I bought this project car from the previous owner knowing that the front suspension needed work. It looks like part of the front frame rusted out. So my question is, has anyone fixed frame rust this bad without removing the body? I'm not removing the body or replacing the frame, so it looks like I'll have to cut out the rusted areas and fabricate pieces to reinforce where the rust was removed.

[Tom999w]

here's the other side..

[Richard48Y]

The basic rule of rust is that there will always be three times what is visible.
I do not think what you are dealing with can be safely repaired without removing the body.
The good news is that removing the body is not a horrible task.
The bad news is that once it is off you will probably find and want to make more necessary repairs.
Does the car run now?

S1, S2, or TC?

[BDA]

If I am anything (and probably for some, that’s an open question), I’m not a sheet metal guy or a welder, but that’s what we’re talking about. My opinion is that you’re talking about taking the body off. The ‘T’ is generally where the worst rust damage is usually found and that may be the most of it but given the amount of rust you have on the ‘T’, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more. If you are good with sheet metal and welding and motivated, you can probably fix it yourself.

If not and you can’t find someone who is, you’re talking about a new frame. I would first check with Dave Bean Engineering in California (www.davebean.com) or r.d. enterprises (www.rodent.com) for the availability of frames. If you strike out there, call Lotus Supplies (https://www.lotus-supplies.com/). Spyder (https://www.spydercars.co.uk/) makes a nice frame but a member recently received the frame he ordered over a year earlier.

Certainly a body-off restoration or repair is a serious commitment in time, energy, and money but it’s not as bad as it sounds and not as bad as it would be if you were talking about a steel car. If the frame is all you’re replacing, that could be finished a few months after getting your frame.

Good luck and keep us informed of your progress!

I just read Richard’s post and I think he is right on!

[Richard48Y]

Tom,

Here are some of my own frame repairs. http://www.lotuseuropa.org/LotusForum/index.php?topic=4056.330
I have not posted my frame head pics yet.
Mint compared to yours, but still in need of repairs.

[jbcollier]

Sorry, the body will have to come off to fix that.  Probably better off looking for another chassis.  I found a used one.  They are out there.

[GavinT]

+ one.

Sorry, I can't see any way of successfully repairing the chassis without removing it.
I'd say you're lucky the lower pivot pins haven't already pulled out.

[EuropaTC]

You probably won't want to hear this, but this vote to remove the body is going to be unanimous. I've done a bit of metalwork restoration on cars in general and there's no way I'd consider trying to patch that with the body in place. If you made up repair sections in small pieces and worked from the area of main access then I could see it going together but I'd have no idea about the resulting geometry when it's done.

No doubt you could get someone to stick a plate over the rust to make it look solid and this was a common bodge for the same area on the Elan chassis back in the 60s/70s over here.

But the trouble is that rust is like an iceberg, there's going to be areas you can't easily see and plating over it will just let it continue unseen, right up to the point where it does become visible, usually by something falling off !

With the state of that I'd be very surprised if there's not also damage where the pedals bolt down and also at the rear of the "Y" fork & around the engine bay. If you're unfortunate to have corrosion in those areas, then body removal is the only way to make sure it's solid again.

But as the others have said, lifting the body isn't a big deal on these cars and sounds far worse than it actually is.

Brian

[Richard48Y]

The steel was .069" thick when new.
After rust pitting it is tissue thin, and about as strong.
Attempting to weld it would be very frustrating as the hole keeps getting larger.
Welding under very flammable fiberglass is also a bad idea.

[TurboFource]

Mine was not nearly that bad and I took the body off...lots of pics in my "Europa TCST" thread on this site...

[Bryan Boyle]

Tom:

Your frame is roached in the condition it's in.  Period.  And should not be driven any further than from your driveway into your garage and parked. 

In a 50-some-year-old car, it's not uncommon to see frames in this condition (or worse!).  Lotus value-engineered these things; 16 ga sheet steel, bits from the common british parts bin where necessary, etc.  I'm pretty sure NO ONE expected these things to be on the road half a century later.  That's why replacements have become available.  There is no nice or gentle way around the diagnosis, though, and without dropping the chassis, there is NO WAY to safely weld around fiberglass in those close quarters, or investigate other areas of dissolved iron, even if you wanted to repair what you have.  If what you can see is that bad...pretty sure there are hidden areas that are even worse because of the inherent design.

In '07, I was faced with the same issue (some may remember back that far) due to bodged accident repair and a twisted front box.  I got two streams of advice: one was to part out and start with another car, the other was exactly the same as here: drop the frame (my original shell was badly hacked too...so I needed to find a shell to go along with the chassis!  Talk about starting from scratch!), get a replacement, swap the useable parts over from the bad to the good, drop the body back on, and go from there.

Started working on the latter in April of 2007.   On August 18, 2007, a bunch of friends helped me drop the replacement shell on the rebuilt chassis.  3 days later, drove it around the block.  It wasn't perfect, it needed an alignment, a head gasket replaced, and complete set of carpets and tires, but it ran.

Only you can decide which path, but, if you keep the car and you want to be safe, you're pulling the frame and either extensively repairing it or putting in either a restored OEM chassis or one of the replacements that are available.  Of of the latter...thinking once all is said and done, you'd be better off swapping out than attempting repairs to the existing based on the photos you've sent.  Just my $.02.

[Pfreen]

Tom,
Asking the question gives me pause.  I say this because it seems that your knowledge is not such that you repairing this frame is safe.  You do not want the frame to break under any circumstances while driving.  What you have is clearly unsafe.

I am sorry if you are a fully competent fabricator and welder.

The easiest thing to do is buy a new frame.  I think farming it out to repair would probably cost much more than a new frame, unless you find someone who has done it before.

I have not removes the body before, but there is a lot written on how to do it.

Good luck.

[jbcollier]

Cheapest option would be another used chassis.  After that, a new front t-section for the existing chassis.

[Richard48Y]

I am waiting to hear back from Spydercars about new chassis heads.
If that does not work out does anyone have blueprints of the frame head?
If necessary and there is a market, I could use mine to reverse engineer and fabricate them.
They are not all that complex and some additional strength could be added.
I see that some of the replacement frames appear to use box section steel in place of the folded and welded sheet.

[BDA]

Back when Yahoo ended support for the lotuseuropa group, EuropaTC collected all the files at the time and stored them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uOmTsXhIF3qlutvCvmY8sAaliwc8Rwbj

There are frame drawings here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uOmTsXhIF3qlutvCvmY8sAaliwc8Rwbj

There are pdfs and if you have Autocad, there are dwg files there also.

Presumably, the folks who migrated everything from the old lotuseuropa yahoo group to the new lotuseuropa groups.io migrated the old files too but there doesn't seem to be any organization to them