Lotus Eleven: Chassis mods II

The donor chassis from Tamiya's Seven having been shortened the required 5 mm, next was to build up the chassis forward of the radiator to support the hood from the Eleven and mimic the radiator ducting needed. The Seven has a short little nose cone which will be discarded.



Styrene sheet in 0.030" thickness along with some angle iron served to rough it out. The picture shows added structure along the sides of the cockpit to mimic the full floor pan that extends, in the 1:1 Eleven, up to the door sills.



Test fits show it all lining up nicely. Other bits that have been fabricated, but not shown in the photos, include a new firewall and floor pan components from the front fender well rearwards.



The air intake is pretty small and I can imagine that, like early E-Types, it is likely to overheat in traffic or on hot days. Being British, it isn't designed for either of these conditions.



The hood will hinge on a piece of brass rod, 1/32" diameter, inserted into two short lengths of 1/16" tube. The issue will be that once the lengths of tube are glued to the hood, it's all permanent and there won't be any opportunity to remove it to fiddle.



So progress is being made and it will soon be time to start thinking about painting the chassis. Stay tuned!