New Hood - Trim Technology, Bedworth, Coventry

[shumphr1]

My Elan is today at Trim Technology and Peter Randle is working on it. I met him yesterday morning at 7am and over a coffee he talked of his experiences of the Elan. They love the Elan at Trim Technology but when Lotus made the Elan, they made the car fit the hood rather than vice versa which quite often makes the hoods very difficult to fit. They said that the quickest they have fitted a new hood is 4 hours and the longest, a week! I heard stories of some quite brutal bending that used to take place at Lotus to get a good fit! Peter trained the Koreans in hood fitting when they set up the Kia Elan factory as the website suggests, they do, I think, all of Land Rover's hood fitting. Peter spent a lot of time at Lotus itself and quite some time in Korea. The unit they have is impressive and Peter is the top man, a gent and incredibly experienced. I heard today that my windscreen is lower than usual so the hood fitting is going to take longer as the driver and passenger windows are being lowered! Peter is doing this himself, I feel very honoured to have him working on my Elan hood.

If anyone is considering getting a new hood, this is the one and only place to go in my opinion and if you want Peter's hands on experience then you will have to be quick, he's retiring in July, so hurry, hurry......

[F1 LOTUS]

No wonder Kuching has a few problems when fittng his precision hardtops then

[theelanman]

I agree....
had mine done there in october and theyre very helpful and do an excellent job too!!!
cheers
g

[ailwyn]

No wonder Kuching has a few problems when fittng his precision hardtops then

When I was there I was told that Trim Tech made up a frame which was the template used when building the Elans, which should mean that the hartops would be one size fits all.

I think the fitting problems are more to do with the tolerances than anything else (same with fitting new hoods).

Ailwyn