Did anybody else have a good look at the Zolfe Orange car launched on the Advantage West Midlands stand at the Autosport show.
Jeeeeeezzuusss christ how can a company bring something so utterly shite to a show and expect to get away with it!
The body looked lovely I have to say, but the welding on the spaceframe would no way on this earth pass SVA.
MikeR has some photos which I think need posting on here as an example of "how not to do it" when it comes to welding!!!!!!
quote:
Originally posted by NS Dev
The body looked lovely I have to say, but the welding on the spaceframe would no way on this earth pass SVA.
Im also sick of this word tight deadline
I feel a lot of kit car companies are worrying to much about new product lines and not enough about the customers who have already given money for
present kits or parts etc
then there rushing it at the last minute to supply and the quality is down due to this
chris
A welder in a hurry can make just as good a job as one taking his/her time.
The welding process is pretty fixed in how long it takes, there is ABSOLUTELY NO excuse for the poo on display on that car, it does the whole
industry tremendous harm.
I am not exaggerating this at all. There have been some pics of poor welding on this site, but NONE as poor as what I saw on that show car.
There were 8-10mm gaps between the bottom of the roll hoop part of the spaceframe and the bottom rails which were filled with blobs of what looked
like stick welding with slag still in there (I'm guessing it was foamed up mig weld from poor gas supply)
Where really obvious welds were on view they had been dressed back but with a very coarse wheel which had then dug 0.5-1mm into the surrounding
tubing!!!
It was made worse by the fact that the car makes a design feature of the exposed framing inside the cockpit. The actual frame design looked very nice,
but the company need to employ a welder not a frigging monkey to do the welding!!
PS don't think it's even a kit, was talked as pre-production!!
From http://www.zolfe.com/news.htm
quote:
Visitors to Autosport International will catch the first glimpse of a new purpose designed, retro, futuristic street legal track car, which has a heavy emphasis on fun. Zolfe Orange will be unveiled on Stand 6230 in Hall 6 at 9.40am.
The high performance two seater sportscar is a pre production track car for the road with a lightweight tubular space frame chassis. Costing from around £25,000, Zolfe Orange will be as at home on the road as it is on the track. Various specifications will include a full range of interiors from full leather sports seats and a list of optional extras.
Powered by a Suzuki Hayabusa engine, the 1.3 litre will propel the lightweight car, weighing in at just 600 kilos, to 60mph in just 4.5 seconds and goes on to a top speed of 135mph. Other engine sizes will be available in the production car.
Zolfe Orange is the brainchild of Nic Strong and Gary Collins. "We were totally uninspired by the available choice of track day cars, so using our combined business background and resources, we have designed and produced a car that we would want to race on a track. The purpose built car has been designed to look good, be comfortable to drive with a fixed roof and integral roll cage, yet still provide lots of fun." Said Nic Strong.
The Zolfe Orange will be built in the Midlands and is expected to go into full production by the middle of 2006. "We have already had firm orders for our big boy's toy which will accommodate the wife and her baggage." Added Nic.
These will never make production, and if they do, they will go bust within a year.
.......just a prediction. hope I am proven wrong!
Ignoring the build quality for a while... it really isn't a very special design, is it? Looked at their website a minute ago, and from the front
it's just average, and from the back it just looks awful!
I don't hold out a lot of hope for them...
David
My other gripe is that it was on the AWM site, Advantage West Midlands.
Now I don't live in the west mids but I am not far away, and close enough to feel the bite of the rover closure, jag woes etc, and ball-cocks
like this on stands at shows is just a pee-take.
There are lots of companies doing really good work (like my mate at Ultima, and Lee Noble, even though I'll criticise Noble, still VERY adept!!)
and it just undermines their work when crap like this comes along.
I had a quick look at that welding, must admit the tubes around the transmission tunnel were shocking. Maybe they should get rid of their 9 inch
grinder.
The body finish was poor for such a large scale show launch, exposed screws and bad gaps all over. 
Is it just me, or is the whole concept a bit strange?
It's trying to be a screaming BEC trackday car, and a GT with all the comforts and goodies of a beemer.
Can't see it being good at either.
With 4 passengers and luggage it's going to be a bit of a strain on the bike engine isn't it?
It's too cheap (and possibly badly made) to sell to the people who might want a GT, and too expensive and not fast enough for a typical
BEC/trackday owner.
I'm afraid I'm with the don't think they'll survive camp.
ahh, I'm sure I saw this car when I was on a track day at Bruntingthorpe last September. IIRC, they had real problems with the car and ended up
putting it back on the trailer and taking it home. The car must only have been on the track for a few laps. It did look quite good but nothing really
different to stylus / fury or GTM libra type cars. Looks like they ironed out the Gremlins if it's now on sale.
[Edited on 16/1/06 by givemethebighammer]
With most cars you can smell 5hit a mile off.
I know from experience that a car seemingle perfectly prepped can have failures on the track, so one with glaring faults rarely works.
If they can't even weld the tube frame up then what hope have they got.
I know I sound all high and mighty on this but I am the last person to make claims about my own work unless I know it is good. I know if I had done
welding like I saw on that car in my old job prototype fabricating at an agricultural engineering company, I would have been dismissed on the spot.
I take too much pride in my work, and if I do, then a company trying to sell a car certainly needs to!!!
Fugliest thing I've set eyes on for some time, and even my 14 year old pointed out the build quality, before I could say a word. 
Any pictures lads?
Cheers
Chris
quote:
Originally posted by chrisg
Any pictures lads?
Cheers
Chris
I've U2u'd MikeR asking him to post the pics he took of the welds on the frame, hopefully should be up tonight!!!
pictures courtesy of mk blade:
http://www.fullframephoto.co.uk/gallaries/autosport2006/images/IMG_4896.jpg
http://www.fullframephoto.co.uk/gallaries/autosport2006/images/IMG_4891.jpg
http://www.fullframephoto.co.uk/gallaries/autosport2006/images/IMG_4890.jpg
Ned.
Pretty car though!!!
Looks like a Marcos body.
That's it, I don't actually mind the shape really, which is why I went to look at it, then I peered inside and saw the chassis, which as I say, you would not want to sit in!
Why do people do this? Just look at our two resident projects, Meerkat and Labala. Both nice examples of home builder styled cars. The meerkat looks
exciting and like a kit car, in a good way, it says "build me, I'm fun". The La Bala looks like the first sketch for a proper Italian
sportscar, looking similar, but not too similar, to the Gallardo. It looks classy.
Regarding the car at the show the shape would look much better without those wheel arch extensions.
As it stands the shape isn't too far away from the original Lotus Elite, and they'd have done better to copy it a bit more closely! It
wouldn't take too much trouble to either-
lose the wheel arch extensions and make the car narrower
or
widen the body by inserting a filer piece down the middle of the buck and absord the arches into the main bodywork.
Right, thanks to MikeR I now have some pics, so feast your eyes on this lovely
fabrication................................................................
Zolfe 1
Zolfe 2
........................and that's at the premier motorsport show of the year on the "advantage west midlands" stand as a new
motorsport opporsunity/employer!!!!!
Maybe they should start by enlisting the help of a welder, rather than a pigeon.
oh dear, been following this but waiting for pics,
That would not have been allowed too race in my scrutineering days and I'm 99.9% sure Mr SVA man would knock it back too.
You take your best stuff too a show don't you ?
in the top picture is that a cable tie holding the carbon fibre to the frame?
yep, cable ties holding the carbon floorpans in!!!
best welding on show, wouldn't like to see what the customer might get!!!
Shocking......truly shocking...
I too have been following and waiting for the photo's
Be better held together with elastoplast Methinks.
Crikey, I wouldn't trust that "chicken shit" welding.
In fact it looks as though that particular chicken had been on the vindaloo the night before.
Even the roughest welding can be smartened up with a bit of grinding, looks like they couldn't be bothered to do that.
Very poor on a "show" car.
Cheers
Chris
It does look pretty awful, but the others look reasonable. I don't in any way want to defend that but could it be they ran out of gas on that last weld and didn't have time to get a new bottle? Just giving the benefit of doubt ? But it does look pretty crappy.
no, most of the other welds look just as shite to me, just dressed with the grinder afterwards!!!
When you looked closely they were all absolute crap!
Porosity was evident in nearly all of them, as was grinding away of a lot of the tube near to the welds where dressing had been done.
I am just disgusted because there are people being paid to put that car there.
I am looking to work/set up a business in the automotive engineering area (hopefully) and know I would be bankrupt in days if I EVER attempted to show
somebody work like that!!!
DISGUSTING