[GTS930]

Had a minor accident today. Impact under 5 MPH. Police report taken. Damage is pictured below. Hard to see in pic, but directional lens is cracked. No further damage to vehicle. New clam? Fix existing clam? What say you?? :face palm

I'm located in New Jersey. Can anyone recommend a certified Lotus repair facility? All comments/suggestions welcome. Thanks guys!

 

[Aedo]

Hard to tell from one photo - but personally, I would have try that repaired for two reasons:

1. Likely to be more cost effective
2. Likely to be much faster

I had a little more damage and they replaced the clam... took forever even once they had the replacement clam. These are not like steel body panels for a mass production car - there is a certain amount of fettling required to get them to fit (and in the case of mine to get the headlight to fit - the headlight bucket hadn't been bonded on in the correct location so had to be removed and refitted).

 

[los]

you should try to call a few corvette body shops...they have the expertise in fiber class repair...

 

[Firefighter577]

I say all of the above, plus you keep the factory paint match at the doors.

 

[sturgeongeneral]

Mine had much less damage and I had it replaced.

 

[Noelsmith]

The bad news:
The front clam is going to set you back approx 5k, not including the cost of removal of old clam, painting the new, and installing the new.

Also there's always the problem with paint matching.

Repairing the damaged clam well will involve highly skilled fiberglass people, and likely some bondo and again, the color match issue.

The good news:
The repair will be MUCH cheaper.

IMHO go to a Corvette freindly repair place. They use the same SEM resins and can do a good job.

Good luck.

Noel

 

[glb]

This fellow does excellent work. Has done many plastic Lotus cars:


Larry Comerford, 908-526-6960 (Can't remember name of his shop in Manville.)

I'll be bringing mine there this winter.

 

[Lowtush]

so that little grill peiece that popped off requires you to take the clam off to put it back on. major design flaw lol.

 

[GTS930]

so that little grill peiece that popped off requires you to take the clam off to put it back on. major design flaw lol.

I know, right? I discovered that last week when I was removing all of the plastic pieces to repaint them (they were looking a little tired.) The center grill was easy. The little side grills... not. So, I just removed them at the time; it wasn't the result of my mishap. I thought to myself, no way am I taking the clam off for that... Looks like I will be doing that after all! lol :facepalm

This fellow does excellent work. Has done many plastic Lotus cars:


Larry Comerford, 908-526-6960 (Can't remember name of his shop in Manville.)

I'll be bringing mine there this winter.

Thank you for the referral, glb.

And thanks to all for your information and advice thus far, much appreciated!

 

[turblow]

so that little grill peiece that popped off requires you to take the clam off to put it back on. major design flaw lol.

Yeah. I just had my clam off to fix some damage and put in a new radiator. The car came with one of those grill pieces broken off/missing. I was trying to quickly get the car back together for an autocross and still didn't have that piece. So I'm going to get to do it all over again at some point. And man is clam removal a fiddly process. =/

 

[Micah]

I had some sorta similar damage and went to a shop that was so rangy looking - complete with Beware of Dog sign and friendly but smelly dog - and there were a bunch of new and old Corvettes in there, along with some very classic muscle cars and a Continental GT.

They did an AMAZING job. I could not have been happier when I went to pick it up. The guy fixed all of the existing rash and chips too.

EDIT: Oh, and I too am missing the little side grilles. I thought about going over there while the clam was off to see if I could stick them in but I figured that was somewhat ethically sticky and I didn't want to raise any doubts or ask them to do anything iffy.

 

[itslotawrk]

It will take you longer to take the clam off and buy the resin then it will to do that repair. Its that quick and easy. PM me if you need some help.