After stripping my S3 to the bare shell, repairing fiberglass and repainting, I realize a predicament made for myself. I should have taken into consideration the poor margins around the doors and a problem of the A pillars contacting the top of the door window frames. In other words the chrome jamb, surrounding the side windows, is not running parallel with the A pillar when the door margins are adjusted properly. The doors hung out of kilter with the openings before the body work… (and I wrongly figured the doors could be adjusted after painting) Can the windshield be canted slightly outward at the top to make fittment of the doors more appropriate? Or is this what I have to live with.
Greg
In my opinion…
I wouldn’t mess with the size of the screen ‘hole’ or you’ll have problems fitting the screen. You can ‘adjust’ the screen forwards or backwards a fraction but it’s a job involving the steel rods in the screen uprights and reglassing to where you want them. The window frames can be ‘adjusted’ in or out a fraction using washers under the bolts where they attach to the door.
Doing all this to my car - with the help and guidance from Brian Buckland’s book - the doors had beautiful lines all round… then I fitted the hood/top and it was so tight it’s pulled the screen back half inch so the doors catch on the ali rain gutters! BLOODY HOOD! NEVER ENDING!!
Good luck and a Happy and preposterous New Year
It seems to be what it is. Bucklands book and the work shop manual will have to do for now. Next time around I will do some cutting and straightening before the paint work. By the way… why the name sad lotus?
Greg
Hey Greg
I had the same problem with my S1 the last time I had it painted. The S1, of course, doesn’t have the fully surrounding frames as does yours but it does have a metal track on the forward edge that seats against the windshield frame. Getting it to snug up against the frame and still line up with the track of the window glass was something of a challenge. I considered trying to change the windshield angle with mounting shims but I didn’t want to mess with that. With lots of trial and error I found that there was enough “slop” in the window track mounting holes for fore and aft adjustment along with adjusting the window glass mounts to match the required angle, and I had enough of the factory shims for sideways movement to get the job done with a reasonably good fit. It took lots of fiddeling. I realize that the lack of the surrounding window frame may make it a lot easier.
Greg, why Sadlotus?
Years ago we had a Fantasy F1 competition at work, because I thought it would be nice to see Lotus back in F1, I called my entry Team Lotus… Unfortunatley my collegues thought Team SadLotus would be more appropriate after my very sad Elan… and my sad fixation with it. So Sadlotus it was. Since May 08 The Elan’s not so sad - more like, splendid - but cant change my name now you see, I still have that fixation.