Sad day, as probably one of the worst nightmares for us Elise owners became a reality for me.
During some spirited driving today with my local auto club, I went against a guardrail. A left turn with some gravel/debris plus a mistake on my own for going to fast into the corner, landed me sweeping the very hard guardrail.
Luckily I’m ok, as I hit the rail at approximately 35 mi/h, but the angle of the impact meant that most of the force was transferred to the wheel and then to the control arm and finally to the frame.
Car was immediately put into a flat bed and sent to my shop.
Even though I was still in shock, I could not help to start removing the front suspension components to inspect the extent of the damage.
This is a pristine, artic silver Elise with only 5,000 miles bought from a forum member back in 2012.
So, with a big hole in my stomach I present to you the aftermath.
First, the replaceable stuff:
Crash structure is intact , the front clam… not so much….
The headlight is gone
The radiator support structure has a couple of cracks….
The front wheel that took most of the impact.
The radiator support separated from the clam and cracked pretty bad.
Now the ugly….
Front strut…. Broken
Front-rear upper control arm mount…
Front lower…seems fine.
Now the real ugly.
Front upper control arm mount…completely ripped off the frame.
Tomorrow morning I will start taking parts off to look closer.
Obviously it’s a total loss according to US standards, but this car is located outside the county. Only 2 Elise in the country, which puts me in a very big dilemma; Collect insurance on the car or try to fix it. It may not seem like a dilemma to most, since it usually one of both alternatives in pretty much every accident…… the problem arises in the fact that I can't buy anything as fun as the Elise with the payoff from insurance.. The second option is also very debatable, since the front structure “Cant be repaired”
I have been reading pretty much every forum post regarding repairing the front structure damage, and sadly could not find any project detailing any alternatives in repairing. Most were 2-3 years old.
Has there been any advance in that front? I don’t know if you can still get a new chassis from Lotus, some post from 2010 have quotes of over 12K.
Some people were “experimenting” with bonding and riveting some supports and inserts into the front aluminum extrusion… but could not see any of them come to an end.
Anybody in the states managed to repair the control arm mounting points in a sort of professional way?
The parts list so far:
Tomorrow will talk to insurance agent to see where do they stand, need to revise appraised value to see the alternatives.
Sorry in advance if there are typos or grammatical errors.
It’s been a hard day.
Thanks!
Daniel
During some spirited driving today with my local auto club, I went against a guardrail. A left turn with some gravel/debris plus a mistake on my own for going to fast into the corner, landed me sweeping the very hard guardrail.
Luckily I’m ok, as I hit the rail at approximately 35 mi/h, but the angle of the impact meant that most of the force was transferred to the wheel and then to the control arm and finally to the frame.
Car was immediately put into a flat bed and sent to my shop.
Even though I was still in shock, I could not help to start removing the front suspension components to inspect the extent of the damage.
This is a pristine, artic silver Elise with only 5,000 miles bought from a forum member back in 2012.
So, with a big hole in my stomach I present to you the aftermath.
First, the replaceable stuff:
Crash structure is intact , the front clam… not so much….
The headlight is gone
The radiator support structure has a couple of cracks….
The front wheel that took most of the impact.
The radiator support separated from the clam and cracked pretty bad.
Now the ugly….
Front strut…. Broken
Front-rear upper control arm mount…
Front lower…seems fine.
Now the real ugly.
Front upper control arm mount…completely ripped off the frame.
Tomorrow morning I will start taking parts off to look closer.
Obviously it’s a total loss according to US standards, but this car is located outside the county. Only 2 Elise in the country, which puts me in a very big dilemma; Collect insurance on the car or try to fix it. It may not seem like a dilemma to most, since it usually one of both alternatives in pretty much every accident…… the problem arises in the fact that I can't buy anything as fun as the Elise with the payoff from insurance.. The second option is also very debatable, since the front structure “Cant be repaired”
I have been reading pretty much every forum post regarding repairing the front structure damage, and sadly could not find any project detailing any alternatives in repairing. Most were 2-3 years old.
Has there been any advance in that front? I don’t know if you can still get a new chassis from Lotus, some post from 2010 have quotes of over 12K.
Some people were “experimenting” with bonding and riveting some supports and inserts into the front aluminum extrusion… but could not see any of them come to an end.
Anybody in the states managed to repair the control arm mounting points in a sort of professional way?
The parts list so far:
- Chassis
- Front clam and fitting
- Radiator support
- Front right strut
- Front control arm
- Lower control arm
- Front splitter
Tomorrow will talk to insurance agent to see where do they stand, need to revise appraised value to see the alternatives.
Sorry in advance if there are typos or grammatical errors.
It’s been a hard day.
Thanks!
Daniel