Tag Archives: fabrication

You Spent 5 Hours on What?

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I’ve had the Lotus for twelve years now. I still love it. But sometimes it’s a bit of a chore.

Leaving last month’s LoCo meeting, Chad pointed out that my driver’s side headlight is out. Sigh. Here is where I try to make a joke. How many Daves does it take to change a lightbulb? On the other hand, I wonder how much I might have been charged had I taken it to the Lotus dealer for the replacement? Note that the Lotus dealer is Ferrari of Denver.

The process is not exactly straightforward. You start by taking the front wheel off. From there, remove part of the wheel well liner to access the back of the headlight housing. The manual says to remove the three “socket head bolts”. That’s probably just a poor translation from English to American. I wouldn’t call them “socket head bolts” as they’re properly removed with an Allen wrench. In this particular instance, there are two rather than three.

After removing those fasteners, you just lift the cover off and it’s a relatively easy task to get the old bulb out and install the new one. It probably only took me half an hour to get to this point. Halfway there, right?

But why only two bolts?

Cheap-ass plastic.

The bolts thread through threaded clips and the clips are slipped over plastic tabs. And the plastic tabs break. One was completely broken, which explains my shortage of fasteners.

When I went to put it back together, it quickly became clear that it was a hopeless task. So I called on my resident mechanic to supervise.

I asked him if he had some glue that would do the job, but I knew it was a bad question as soon as I uttered it. Almost immediately I asked if, perhaps, we could bend some metal over it and fix it that way.

I’m not a fabricator, so I don’t have any bits of metal easily to hand. I thought maybe we could use some aluminum from a pop can, but as soon as I cut one up it was obvious it would be way too thin.

Luckily, Michael is a fabricator of sorts: he customizes die-cast models of big rigs. He found a piece scrap of scrap sheet aluminum that looked like it would make a nice repair. So, snip here, trim there, find some appropriately sized nuts and bolts, drill some holes, et voila! Job done. Well, something like that. We had to do this with both bolts. (And I probably should have done it for the missing one, too) It took a bit of fiddling to get things in the correct place, as all this has to line up with the holes in the back of the housing. But we made it work, and the cover is now more securely fastened than it was when we started.

And it only took 5 labor hours: 3 for me, 2 for Michael.

Battery Tie-down

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Twice now I’ve had the battery break loose at the track. It’s held down by two small clamps that clearly aren’t up to the job. I’ve searched high and low for a solution, but nothing looked good to me. I found a couple of commercial solutions, but they are for the small marine or race batteries. I don’t want to downsize the battery because I don’t want to be forced to keep the car on a battery tender all the time. I want to be free to take my road trips that span as much as two weeks.

I found a couple of DIY solutions that looked promising. These were variations on using an aluminum bar. I found something at Home Depot that might serve: an aluminum bar 36″ long, 1 1/2″ wide, and 1/8″ thick. But I don’t have a vice, so it might be tricky to bend. A similar bar 1/16″ thick might be better, but I didn’t see one.

Instead, I picked up a tow strap. I looked for some material like this, but I couldn’t find anything that was just the strap material. Seems a bit of a waste to spend $20 for the little bit I need, but at least this way if I mess it up I have plenty of material to give it a second shot.

First, I measured the battery to figure how much strap I’d need, and added a couple of inches for safety margin. I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to cut this strap, or how much it would want to unravel. So I started by taping both sides of my cuts. I mounted a fresh blade in my utility knife and started cutting. It was pretty easy, just five or six passes and I cut through.

To keep the thing from unraveling, I hit the cut ends with a torch to melt the material, cauterizing it, if you will. Sorry for the poor picture. A few seconds on each cut and it was a nice solid end.

Next problem was how to put holes in for the bolts. I picked a drill bit just smaller than the bolt diameter and went for it, one person working the drill and another holding the strap in place. Then we cauterized the holes. They’re just about perfect; you actually have to thread the bolt through.

The photo above shows the finished strap. The bolts and washers shown are the original equipment. We found a couple of bolts a little longer and with bigger heads, and an assortment of larger washers so there’s much more surface area holding the strap.

The finished product

I’ve had it installed two ways. One with the “5000 LBS” showing and one all black. Obviously, the two bolts won’t hold 5,000 pounds, but I think the strap is a big improvement over the stock batter restraints.