S2 Spider Alloys

[elise111s]

I need some advice, i need to replace my front alloy wheel ASAP. I have looked about and went to have a look at a replacement today. The problem was that it was more "smoked than mine" and therefore darker than the rest of my alloys. Do lotus do different shades of the alloy (i.e bright chrome/slightly smoked/smoked/black) or is it dependant on the batch they do when spraying the alloy in the factory? I was told by someone that i would find it very hard to find a match for the other 3!! And therefore would have to respray the whole lot to get a matching set! Is this true??

My car is a S2 111S, Any help on the matter would be greatly appreciated! :-)

Martyn

[S works]

Just call up a wheel refurb place and see what they'll charge you to colour match to the existing 3.

[Esprit]

How about just colour matching the one new one.... beats colour matching the existing three eh?

[sarkmeister]

I was told by one of the dealers that Lotus had no real control of what colour the alloys were when they recieved them. Therefore, for each car they just picked 4 that were a similar colour. Nice.

[sp60]

I have wondered about this. The ones on my car are really dark, I've never seen any as dark, but all the others I've seen have been what i would call 'normal' alloy wheel colour. I believe they did do a normal and 'black chrome' style, shade, but didn't realise there were various in betweeny colours. Is there a manufacturer stamp on the inside, maybe it's worth trying to get in touch with them to see if they still make them?

[TonyHetherington]

This has been a bit of a bug bear with me. My spider alloys in black chrome, when arriving with the car were not perfectly colour matched.

Fortunately it's side to side rather than front and back so doesn't look odd, but if you put the wheels next to one another you can really see the difference. And I know it's different (and I'm a picky bugger )

As someone above said; it's a bit of a luck of the draw.

Recently a tyre company dinked one of my wheels and Lotus (Bell & Colvill) found me somebody who was able to match the alloy they were refurbing to the same side wheel at the front of the car. They did this and to be honest the match was PERFECT - but it did cost £100 which isn't cheap for 1 wheel.

So, £100 to get the wheel colour matched. Remember if you did go that route though, there would be no need to get a black chrome wheel you can find yourself just a standard silver wheel for example - they would spray the whole thing anyway.