I’ve cross posted this from SELOC just to get some S1 exige owners reactions before forwarding this link on…
I’ve currently going through the process of selling my S1 Exige to a buyer from abroad - for obvious reasons, he wants to satisfy himself that he is travelling to view a good car and not a total wreck.
To that end, he has been requesting photos of various parts of the car to check for damage or evidence of damage and one picture has him worried. The thickness of the clam around the windscreen appears to be thicker than he expected. He has copied me a picture of his elise clam where the ‘lip’ is shallower and states that he can tell from this that the front clam has been replaced.
I’m not sure whether he thinks it is a more recent clam design or whether he thinks the clam is non-lotus. Ideally can folk take a look at the picture of the titanium car below and tell me if their clam looks similar to mine (the Titanium one).
I should add that to the best of my knowledge (and the previous owner’s) the clam is original and knowing Lotus tolerances suspect that it is totally unimportant. Also the car passed an HPI check a couple of weeks ago…
I’ve since been advised that the exige clams are hand laid so some differences from the elise pictured are to be expected…
Ideally, everyone will come back and say their’s are all different and I will be able to point him to this thread to show him that the tolerances are typically British
Finally, can anyone advise if there is anyway to prove the crash structure is original without removing the clam?
I had my car carefully checked by Steve Gugleimi Motorsports beforehand… they felt that if there had any been an impact big enough to damage the crash structure, it would also bend inwards the chassis box section surrounding the leading edge of the upper wishbone and also look at the one surrounding the steering rack.
Anywaym the crash box section is designed to be deformable and replaceable without damaging the chassis in the event of a not so bad impact. At the end of the day, as long as the chassis is straight and original, I would think you buyer has nothing at all to worry about.
The Exige clams were made differently to elise ones. I think Exige clams were wet laid as apposed to the elise ones that were made to a higher quality, so in my experiance there are differences between varying Exige clams.
I don’t get this - clearly they are from different moulds otherwise we’d all have Elise clam shells on our S1s and… we dont. We have flares and width! (sounds like a 70s disco!) So what’s the question? Sorry if I’m being stupid but it seems your buyer is a pessimist who is looking for reasons NOT to buy rather than reasons why he shound!
I thought all Exige clam where handmade, hence the fact, there is some “tolerance” between the clamshells in contradiction to Elise clams which are machine-made
Mine looks identical to yours BTW
If you’re abroadbuyer comes from Holland let him get in contact with me (you can send me a pm for phone number) i can convince him
And rest assure i won’t sell my Exige to him, fact!
Just checked mine and both sides are different.
As far as I know clam has never been damaged.
Having regard to the manufacturing method Im not surprised about the difference.
Strikes me your buyer is being extremely picky.
Dont forget our cars are extremely cheap for the Euro lot due to exchange rate so you can afford to be a bit bullish when it comes to negotiation!!!
Good luck.
All the abroad buyers are not scumbags ! As I mignt have mentionned in another subject / forum, those are not new cars. If not expecting to do a little DIY, choose a S2 !
the clams are not always the same, same as your over sills. If you take your oversills off and hold them next to each other you will be amazed at how far out they are. You will only see it when there off the car next to each other though.
Matt… my clam looks like yours… and as it’s currently off the car I can see that it has original build-number scribblings on the inside that match the VIN of the car and no signs of repair (from on top or behind) so it’s OEM
