Carbon Fibre Wing

Since the Sport 350 was launched with a unique carbon fibre wing, Lotus only had limted supply. With approx 54 Sport 350 made and only a few spare wing parts for sale, it didn't take long for the wing to become desirable. After 10 years since it's launch, quite a few Esprit owners have looked into sourcing aftermarket wings to put on their Esprits. The main problem is the width of the Esprit compared with the maximum length wing you can buy from most aftermarket suppliers. This was 1380mm which is at least 200mm shorter than the Sport wing. The Sport 350 wing did come in a norrower size but we thought that owners would want to buy the wider one.

For the purpose of our one-off wing, due to it's low volume, obtaining CNC machined uprights would have proved uneconomical to produce. So we had the first uprights laser cut from 12mm thick aluminium. Detailed CAD drawings were produced to closely resemble the OEM uprights. Changes were made to rake it further back by 10mm, so it's closer to the rear transom. As this wing was being mounted to a V8 GT with longer rear transom, it was important to position the wing as far back as possible, without compromising the Sport 350 look.

Once we had drawn them on CAD and our local laser cutting company had cut them out, we had a very long task of hand finishing the square rough laser cut profile, to a smooth, rounded profile. As we spent so long finishing each one, we decided to go one step further and bring them upto a polished finish. We are pleased with the results.

If we make any more then we will only have these CNC machined and anodised. If owners want their uprights polishing then they can get this done by their local company.

The wing was manufactured for us by another company. We designed the endplates by CAD and this company made to our dimensions. When we first mounted them, we were unhappy with the way it's looked. We soon agreed that they were too big and sitting too high on the ends of the wing. We decided to cut them down and reprofile them. We will use these reduced dimensions for any future wing designs. We have considered alloy endplates similar to the Sport 350 wing and will produce some to order.

On the day of fitting, we decided to recess the nuts inside the upright to make a better job. Future wings will most likely be drilled and tapped, which will do way with a nut and hole on inside altogether.

Our wing weighs approx 4.4KG (without uprights) compared with the SE GRP wing, which weighs 9KG. The endplates in our opinion, weighed a little more than they should have. When we weighed the wing, it did have much larger endplates (50% bigger) and these weighed 1.1KG alone! Aluminium ones, may actually weigh less. We will find out this information and post it as soon as we have it.

This wing fitted to Alan Croft's V8, is wider than the standard Sport 350 wing. In fact, it's 1750mm wide! Compared to the Sport 350 wing which measures 1580mm, it's 170mm wider. Any future wings, will be made to owner's requirements. We recommend a width of between 1600mm-1700mm.

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