The Lotus Grand Tourers

Now I finally have my rear hubs off the car and away for repair, I feel confident enough to post this trip!

As a follow-up to our trip to the Spanish GP last year, my daughter and I are doing Austria this year in the Elite.

The plan is to leave home early on Tuesday 26 June, board the Eurotunnel around 9am and then drive to Luxembourg to stay with relatives overnight. I am told that Luxembourg is overflowing with cheap petrol and booze so we'll stock up appropriately.

On Wednesday 26 we'll travel to an hotel in the Innsbruck area, dine and rest, then move on the following day to reach the Red Bull Ring by mid-afternoon (in time for me to set up the bl***y tent probably in the rain!)

Then it's two practice days followed by the race day.

On Monday 2 July, I drop my daughter off early at Graz airport so she can join her mates on holiday in Spain (she does like to pack it in!) then I return by a similar route, staying in Lux on the Tuesday night and hopefully arriving home together with the car on Wednesday night.

Is anybody here planning to go? Let me know and we can meet up for part of the trip.

I have never been to Austria and only very briefly to southern Germany, but I'm hoping for dramatic roads and scenery. I promise to (a) clean the camera lens on my iPhone and (b) take and post some pictures.

I'll post any updates on progress

ATB Richard

Sounds like a fantastic trip Richard! Great that your Elite is getting around so much .

Pete

Well, we did the trip to Austria (my daughter and I) to watch the Grand Prix. It was a great trip in terms of our enjoyment and the race, but disappointing as far as the car was concerned. With other commitments, I only had about 24 hours to spare after having the longer wheel studs fitted at Lotusbits and setting off on the trip. When I first drove the car after collecting it, it shook at anything much over 60mph, so I took it down to A44 tyres in Worcester to have the wheels balanced. They told me that the problem was less one of wheel balance than of wheel location - the Speedlines are meant to locate on the centre hub, but with the spacers fitted they no longer did. As the wheel nuts aren't tapered into the wheel, all they were doing was clamping the wheel to the hub and obviously slightly off-centre as even after balancing the car shook. I was rather upset as I had a 2500 mile trip ahead of me, but we set off nonetheless. We travelled avoiding fast roads but the car didn't feel good. I need a wheel alignment done and deeper spigots fitted to the hubs so the wheels locate properly, so I'm going to try the first myself and book it back in to LB to have deeper spigots fitted. Altogether, the spacers will have ended up being rather an expensive, frustrating and time consuming exercise - only justified by having new rear wheel bearings fitted (but the old ones had only lasted 12000 miles!). Also the front studs were far more difficult to replace than I'd been led to believe.

However, the car does look better with the spacers, particularly at the rear.

I did also take photos using my iPhone but such are the compromises with the fixed lens that I either get the scenery in and the car looks too small, or get the car in and don't see much background. Also, I don't like not having a proper viewfinder - in bright summer weather I can't see the screen well enough to compose a decent picture - so that's my excuse for not posting any this year - they just aren't good enough.

Partly due to the slow running I achieved excellent fuel economy - 34.5 mpg overall and a best tankful of 37mpg!

So there we are - a memorable trip with my daughter but most disappointing as far as the driving was concerned.

ATB Richard (sorry if I sound a bit grumpy!)