87 replies to this topic

[techieboy]

You sure these new bolts will fit your Phoenix kit Martin? Given they're for the Elise-Shop variant, there might be some differences.

[Spitfire Engineering]

First, as mentioned, there are a lot of kits out there and failures are few so it needs to be kept in perspective, easy to say of course when it isn't my car in the gravel! Lots of good stuff here. Certainly 10.9 bolts have been offered by us to track users for some years and many have swapped over to these for this particular application. Not yet seen a 10.9 failure with a Spitfire kit. With the introduction of the latest 7068 kit 10.9 bolts/10 nuts (elliptical offset) are supplied as standard. Interestingly we offer these as an upgrade to our own customers for £3! Maybe we will offer these for £6 to anyone from now on. All our fasteners are from Certified, traceable stock and sourced in the UK (Woods and Hughes). By coincidence I recently had a conversation with someone on this forum about a nut issue. More interestingly there are additional solutions and options which go much further to reduce this problem to a minimum. As mentioned by Bradley, one of the problems is the potential lateral movement of the link in the upright, if there is room for this lateral movement then there is also room, when the forces are high enough for the collet to rotate allowing the bolt to bend as the pre-tension is overcome. As a result of this issue the collet was re-designed with the latest spec to be a close fit inside the upright with only the minimum of clearance. This offers lateral support for the collet and due to the close tolerance of the bolt inside all of our collets, this also supports the bolt keeping the forces acting on it mostly in tension. [attachment=25572:image.jpg] The second option is to simply drill and ream the upright to a close fitting M12, we already have bearing and collet sets for this setup and the work to the upright including top quality plating is only about £39 a pair. Normally we do not supply our bearings or components for other kits but for this specific issue a limited number of units for M12 fitments has been made available. Please note uprating the outer fixing may have implications for the energy transferred to the subframe. It is for the owner to decide if this is acceptable though as long as a good double shear bracket and/or a brace is fitted to the subframe it is unlikely damage will occur here before the outer bolt fails in a collision. We do not recommend uprating the inner fixing, this may cause an issue with clamping to distortion the subframe components to the wishbone bushes, and as this bolt will be in double shear anyway, it's not needed. Thanks for all the mails and messages, still in HK, back sat Gaz

Edited by Spitfire Engineering, 15 July 2014 - 07:10 PM.

[MartinS]

It seems they don't fit. Had stupidly assumed that bolts were bolts.

Anyone want some elise shop bolts and nitrile covers. Cost £35 to you £25 inc post.

 

Martin S

 

[Spitfire Engineering]

It seems they don't fit. Had stupidly assumed that bolts were bolts. Anyone want some elise shop bolts and nitrile covers. Cost £35 to you £25 inc post.   Martin S  

So what bolts do you need?

[MartinS]

Just tried them properly (was in a bit of a rush yesterday) and they are the right lengths for what I need but, considering these are meant to be harder steel, I have just (very easily) managed to round off the alan key head and even the nut has got easily scarred with a spanner on the first bolt I fitted using the correct torque settings. They seem very soft to me and am unsure of putting these things on my car as far from being tougher they seem as soft as hell.  The old ones have that black hardened steel look and these just look all shiny and nasty.

Am I being daft (not unheard of!).

 

Martin S

 

Edited by MartinS, 17 July 2014 - 10:40 AM.

[Spitfire Engineering]

Just tried them properly (was in a bit of a rush yesterday) and they are the right lengths for what I need but, considering these are meant to be harder steel, I have just (very easily) managed to round off the alan key head and even the nut has got easily scarred with a spanner on the first bolt I fitted using the correct torque settings. They seem very soft to me and am unsure of putting these things on my car as far from being tougher they seem as soft as hell.  The old ones have that black hardened steel look and these just look all shiny and nasty. Am I being daft (not unheard of!).   Martin S  

Well if you used the correct hex socket then yes, if not then no Colour tells you nothing about strength or grade, just finish. Pics or bolt markings? Nut markings? Markings on the socket you used?

[oakmere]

I know olly at Phoenix is quite particular about what bolts he uses period. He nearly bashed me with his spanner for fitting 10.9 bolts that were sh*t and rounded when he tried to remove them having been fitted a few day earlier.

[Spitfire Engineering]

I know olly at Phoenix is quite particular about what bolts he uses period. He nearly bashed me with his spanner for fitting 10.9 bolts that were sh*t and rounded when he tried to remove them having been fitted a few day earlier.

Where did you get those from then?

[oakmere]

Martin S replacement bolts are from Elise shop. Just saying not all bolts of 10.9 grade seem to be of the same quality.

[FLD]

The chinese are making 'fake' bolts so be carefull.  It may say 10.9 but not be.  They are even faking small capicitors which are about 3p for the real thing.  The margins on these must be miniscule, I really dont know why they bother.

[Bootdog]

My ones from elise-shop are stamped 10.9 on the head, I haven't tried fitting them yet.

[MartinS]

Getting some bolts from Spitfire now. Having experienced bolt/design failure problems on another elise shop product (the folding toweing eye) have got a bit paranoid. Probably with no good reason, but this is one area where I need to be confident in whats fitted.

 

Martin S

 

[Spitfire Engineering]

The chinese are making 'fake' bolts so be carefull.  It may say 10.9 but not be.  They are even faking small capicitors which are about 3p for the real thing.  The margins on these must be miniscule, I really dont know why they bother.

Because they will make them by the 5 million, if they make .2p thats £10K

 

[FLD]

hmmm, make 10k and possibly kill some people.

[Spitfire Engineering]

hmmm, make 10k and possibly kill some people.

 

Well at a .2p margin I was referring to the capacitors of course.

 

As for bolts, that is why it is important to source fasteners from an authorised supplier with certificates and full traceability.

Personally as this only adds about £2 to a kit I cannot imagine why you would do anything else.

 

[Kieran McC]

Gaz @ Spitfire Engineering was more than helpful in sorting out the correct kit for my car

[MartinS]

After doing some tests, I believe the elise shop bolts are of a lower quality than Spitfire engineering ones (I have no connection with them at all).

 

For info, an 8.8 should be 45nm standard setting (They can snap at 70nm), a 10.9  should be  65nm but even at 90nm was still ok.

 

My elise shop bolt got damaged as the tool wasn't fully inserted when it did the damage so I knew that was my fault, but equally was surprised how easily it damaged it, so did similar tests on the new bolts and got no damage at all. When they originally got damaged it was around 55nm

I'm sure they must be ok as others are using them with no problems and assume they have been tested enough, but I wont be using them on my car as this is one area I want real confidence in.

 

Martin S

 

[Bargi]

The best way to fix this whole toe control link issue would be to fit current production Elise links. You can be sure Lotus fixed this issue some time ago. Wether they fit is another issue, but would probably go straight on later cars.

The current Elise may fit, but at the factory a few weeks ago I couldn't see much difference at all. Exige now has a different setup now but is now not any way compatible.

[siztenboots]

the new bottom wishbones looks much nicer

they now do motorsport specification wishbones "GTN chassis kit" , inner and outer is all double shear

 

 

[FLD]

I wonder if the critical dims are similar, ie could you retrofit the whole lot?