This is stunning work mate. I can not believe what I am able to learn on KZfaq. I'm looking for a car to restore as a hobby. Thank you for uploading this. Bless you mate

Thanks for the input - have you seen the structural analysis video I did? So the plate in the middle is the gear lever translator mount so has to remain unless I switch at some point to a sequential box. it actually does a fair amount to stop the main back bone collapsing due to that huge cut out in the top. What's also not shown here is how busy it gets inside the backbone when all the cooling pipes, oil lines and junk go back in. Its also dip galvanised, I've tried to TIG weld repair before on other zinc'd parts and really struggle with the porosity, the major issue is you cant always get to the other side of the metal so if you have full penetration you start getting weld contamination, so not too keen on tackling this - but it's a worthy mention though because it's similar to the avenue I want to go down, which is to bond and rivet a C shaped cap over the gear lever aperture. The surface area of the bond is considerable, there is no risk of welding causing issues and burning off the zinc. I plan on riveting it in the corners to prevent peel. The chassis will also be supported by the fully roll cage I want to introduce - I think I can increase the torsion to a level where the lightness of the car wont really impact it. I'll probably get around to doing it this winter as I get more time. I have to select a glue and try and run some physical and virtual tests to ensure it will work. Appreciate the thought.

Awesome, I hope the GT2 project will not be my last. Before I bought the Esprit I had a busted Elise, early Elan and Banks Europa in negotiations. The Elan would have been a great investment but my heart is always going to be with the Esprit - but who knows another Lotus might be on the cards one day, I'd love to do something different. Possibly Graham Arnold, I've seen them with different initials on them, they're all over the trim panels as well.

I know, right? 😂 Joking aside, as soon as I have more time I will finish the other design studies I have done. Glad you liked it.

Thanks for the kind comment - more to come on this subject and the suspension soon.

Thanks for the kind comments - it is very much appreciated.

Thanks, I hope I did it justice, because I doubt I'll have another chance to do it :)

Thanks for the kind comments - I hope I did it justice with what I had to hand at the time. As someone who works heavily in mechanical engineering it's been a real privilege to have been able to study this (in the comfort of my own home).

Cheers, hope to add more at some point.

Thanks as always Erik, you're too kind ;) It could have been a lot better - the camera shake, no textures on the animation etc really bugged me, but I have to get on.... luckily I had a good end to the month so I am going to invest in some new equipment for the next episode. Might even buy that impact driver I always wanted 😋

Thanks Dean. I was looking back over the history of the car a few days back and it's obvious the main owner doted on the thing and the chassis is in such good condition. It came up almost as good as new (in some cases it is as new). I didn't go too crazy on the nylon wheel as I want something to key onto when I try painting it. Def check out the chassis beam, it's common on all the turbo cars to a greater or lesser degree but if like this its only surface rust it's easily treated and a heat shield applied over the top.

I have to clean mine to see that exhaust heated area. I am curious what color you plan to paint it.

@@SlippingTime haha so am I, with the cost of the paint I bought it' going to be what ever they sent me - I've had it 3 months, it's supposed to be aluminium which from what I have seen is a dull metallic grey. It was actually a hard choice, they do some great monotones. Light colours show up rust breaking thru and damage a lot easier in my opinion so I went with that.

Thanks a lot of effort went into the model and animation. Be interested to see the EV project.

Thanks - really like your work as well. Animation took a long while, had to run it on 2017 in the end and it crashed every 10mins or so, I was so glad when it was finished !

Thanks, glad you liked it :)

@@JonHimself seriously. I found your channel because I’m an automotive design engineer interested in the POP2 scanner, and in other videos you have reviewed it in a way that told be everything I wanted to be sure of, so I subscribed, and now this! Although you didn’t say so much about the scanning this time, I can imagine where you did and didn’t use it, and the whole context of its use reinforces my belief that POP2 is right for me. …And your animated assemblies in CAD take a lot of time and skill to prepare, and they’re really clear… and the chassis itself! What a job you have done so far. I’ll stop now but could go on much longer about how impressed I am. Did I mention the coolness of the background music? … 10/10.

Yeah - what is really interesting is the torsion for the std chassis. I wasn't expecting that small vertical part of the gear lever tray to play such a large part in stiffening the beam. Most of the solutions are not cost effective though. one of the ones I thought of was to put a similar capping plate to the under side on top of the beam as the return would really strengthen it up - but would it put more stress into the interface area? End of the day for me the roll cage is what is going to happen so the central beam is not going to be so critical, and I still want it to be a Lotus chassis.

Sadly time is the killer at the moment - I will mainly be looking at the flexing and stressed areas of the chassis to determine any mods I need to make, anything other than that will be back burner stuff as the priority is building the car. The video should be out sometime next week if I can resolve one of the issues I have right now with the simulation failing. As with most things I am trying to split them down into bite size videos, one of the future steps is to look at the roll cage design for example. The other consideration is to ensure the info I put out is accurate and true, so i am getting the results professionally validated - any feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks, I'll do an update on it sometime - it's got a lot more done to it.

@@JonHimself Do you have a Europa Twin Cam Special or Elan +2 in your stable to do similar CAD work? I work in Aerospace & Defence and CAD tools as you well know are used extensively from early concept proposals all the way thru final design. And by the way I have an original Europa TCS w its factory chassis. My +2 still has it's original chassis however a Spyder tube frame will go into it.

@@edwarddemas5685 I wish I had, barely enough room for the Esprit I'm afraid.

I agree, the more I studied it the more you realise just how good it is. If you look at "Soup Classic Motoring's" series 2 chassis from the 70's its very similar, yet Lotus were able to massively increase the spring rate and over double the engine horsepower with the V8 using an almost identical design. Bonded reinforcement has advantages structurally and practically over welding, which threw me initially, but I will cover that fully in a later episode when I have finished my research. Thanks for kind comments :)

Yep I really wanted to do this but I have zero space to carry it out and I am rushed to get this car finished - those compromises are hard to bear as I'd love to delve a lot further into this, given having a stripped down chassis is a fairly unique situation to be in.

Firstly I just looked over it to see how it would have been constructed and identifying the piece parts. Due to the primitive shapes most of the parts didn't need to be scanned - I used manual measuring such as dividers, rules, an inclinometer and wire triangulation to determine each part which was then individually modelled as shown in the assembly animation. I also have access to Lotus' jig dimensions from the workshop manual so I could check the critical dimensions. Scanner was only used to grab some of the complex shapes such as the engine mounts and the gearbox mounts to speed up the process as the chassis obviously cant fit on a desk so the next best thing is to digitise and work off a virtual model instead of walking back and forth to take dimensions and risk getting things wrong - 100x faster too. Oddly if you scanned this part it would probably be less accurate due to compounding / stacking tolerance errors of the scanner which is why I use wires, same way as you would jig an aircraft. Also this is a 'live' part which has slight fatigue and actually flexes when loaded up so this model is actually simulating the chassis when it is full loaded. I took great effort to get it right, about 1 month of 1-2 hours every evening to ensure it was as accurate as possible, as I don't intend to do this job more than once :)

Yes as someone who works in engineering and is into design, it was a great opportunity to really study it. When you use different materials you should change the design to benefit from them. Making this out of aluminium (depending on the grade) would be cost ineffective and over weight. When you look at the Elise for example it is similar in weight but a lot stronger in torsion due to the way it is constructed and bonded (tub construction) to take advantage of the design material. Aluminium significantly weakens around 600c, the turbo has damaged the zinc which melts at $20c so I dont think an aluminium stressed member here would be a good idea.

@@JonHimself Thanks for the explanation. So the esprit uses the best material for its specific design. I’d love to see a bare chassis CAD model of the Elise and the Alpine a110.

@@brayworkshop427 maybe one day - if I finish the Esprit, a lunatic Elise is certainly on the cards.

Hi Matt, send me an e-mail so i can reply better that way (link in the about page) - I can convert the rear tube section to an STL which should help.

@@JonHimself Hey Jon, sent you an email earlier today. thanks.

Cont'd similar for fiberglass monocoque Lotus Elite which is commonly thought of as another Lotus backbone chassis csr

yep, there was the birth of the composite monocoque right there in the 1950s