Lotus Elise Busted . . .
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CL Community Team
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 30,259
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From: Canada
Lotus Elise Busted . . .
This story hit the EliseTalk forums yesterday -- it all starts with an Lotus owner in Orlando, FL who took his Elise into Goodyear to drop a new set of tires on his canary yellow grip-tight speedster. And the result was -- well, let's just say we'd be laughing if we weren't crying so hard. Here's the story, straight from forum member and dented-Elise owner qball:
First of all, I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to except stick around and watch.
Dropped my Elise off to the local Goodyear shop to have new F1G3s installed. My Father-in-law is the service manager and has been for 10 years. He is out on medical leave, but he met me at the shop this morning, because he understands the uniqueness of the car.
I handed them the tire tools and opened the Owner's Manual to the jacking instructions so they would be clear. We went over all the instructions and they assured me I was in good hands.
We left...1 hour later I get a call about the "accident" and that I needed to come down...
WTF!
So this is what I found... (see pics)
It get's better... They said they read the manual, but not to the point where it spoke about the 4-point lift. After the crash, they continued reading. Yipee for me.
The damage is inclusive of the rear clam, front clam, underneath the driver's door, and a nice puncture through the bottom diffuser around the passenger seat area.
source : jalopnik
First of all, I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to except stick around and watch.
Dropped my Elise off to the local Goodyear shop to have new F1G3s installed. My Father-in-law is the service manager and has been for 10 years. He is out on medical leave, but he met me at the shop this morning, because he understands the uniqueness of the car.
I handed them the tire tools and opened the Owner's Manual to the jacking instructions so they would be clear. We went over all the instructions and they assured me I was in good hands.
We left...1 hour later I get a call about the "accident" and that I needed to come down...
WTF!
So this is what I found... (see pics)
It get's better... They said they read the manual, but not to the point where it spoke about the 4-point lift. After the crash, they continued reading. Yipee for me.
The damage is inclusive of the rear clam, front clam, underneath the driver's door, and a nice puncture through the bottom diffuser around the passenger seat area.
source : jalopnik
.
Lead Lap
Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 451
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From: Oregon
I'm crying with you!! It is interesting to see the flat floor pan and notice the second pic, you can see what looks like three NACA air ducts behind the passenger compartment. Cooling for ?? or air flow management?
Loves Snickerdoodles!
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 19,740
Likes: 74
From: San Diego, California
This reminds me of an incident my brother ran into about 2 weeks ago. He was in the shop and had an Aston Martin DB9 on a lift, he proceeded to lift the car, then he noticed one side wasn't secured properly. The car started to tip and looked like it was going to fall over. Luckily my brother's co-workers saw what was happening and came to his aid.
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Lexus Fanatic
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 6,231
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From: Los Angeles/Vancouver
lol
my guess is the guys had no idea how balanced the car is or that the car is rear/mid engine
so they were putting the 4 jacks too close to the front
just my guess
oh well, elise isnt a terribly expensive car and it isnt carbon fibre so shouldnt be too insanely expensive to fix
tough luck but if i had an Elise, i wouldnt bring it to that place although ur supposed to trust your father-in-law i guess
my guess is the guys had no idea how balanced the car is or that the car is rear/mid engine
so they were putting the 4 jacks too close to the front
just my guess
oh well, elise isnt a terribly expensive car and it isnt carbon fibre so shouldnt be too insanely expensive to fix
tough luck but if i had an Elise, i wouldnt bring it to that place although ur supposed to trust your father-in-law i guess
lol
my guess is the guys had no idea how balanced the car is or that the car is rear/mid engine
so they were putting the 4 jacks too close to the front
just my guess
oh well, elise isnt a terribly expensive car and it isnt carbon fibre so shouldnt be too insanely expensive to fix
tough luck but if i had an Elise, i wouldnt bring it to that place although ur supposed to trust your father-in-law i guess
my guess is the guys had no idea how balanced the car is or that the car is rear/mid engine
so they were putting the 4 jacks too close to the front
just my guess
oh well, elise isnt a terribly expensive car and it isnt carbon fibre so shouldnt be too insanely expensive to fix
tough luck but if i had an Elise, i wouldnt bring it to that place although ur supposed to trust your father-in-law i guess
the tirechange place didnt help much since they used a wrecker to hold it up so it didnt come crashing down but they attached the lines to the front wishbones :/ which are aluminum alloys so likely bent.
and dont forget that this is a tiny Mid-engine RWD car, so the entire rear of the car is built of the motor/transaxle and frame.
oh, and the Elise has a laminate/composite frame, which im pretty sure is bent up pretty nicely after being used as a giant lever.
i wouldn't rule out the possibility of it getting wrecked.
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