Disc Modifications

OK, I've gone out, bought 4 new discs and none of them will fit on the car. Now that's unfortunate.

So I guess it's time to make some templates and get drilling.

Templates for drilling the caliper brackets and discs

The vertical link template for the caliper bracket is made in Aluminium sheet, the central template is for re-drilling the Citroen discs to fit the Lotus/Triumph hub. An old disc, an angle grinder and ten minutes later you have a template guaranteed to fit !

The final template is the 3.75" PCD of the wheel studs. This is made from another old disc but in this case from my Elise, which happens to have the same PCD but with larger metric studs. It will do for starters for the rear Mini discs.

Front discs : OEM 232mm and re-drilled Citroen discs

To drill the Citroen discs the template is held in place using the existing location holes and you can see the countersunk screws in the first image. It's a five minute job and 100% success.

The centre bore is slightly too small on the Citroen discs and I suppose you should really spin it in a lathe to remove the excess metal. I didn't, it's such a small amount that with the template in place as a guide the excess came off with a half-round file. (low tech strikes again....)

Rear Mini disc on trial fitting

Now with all things Lotus a spot of good luck comes in very handy now and again, and I was very lucky with the rear discs.

I’d picked the Mini rear disc based mainly on the overall diameter, the disc height (top hat) and the fact the disc bore was very, very similar to the Europa rear hubs. So even if I did have to re-drill the wheel stud holes the bore alignment would help minimise balance issues.

Once the discs arrived I did a quick trial fit and found, much to my surprise, that the PCD on the Mini disc actually fitted neatly on the smaller, 3.75” PCD of the Europa.

It turned out the Mini has much larger stud holes and the extra large holes compensated for the smaller Europa PCD. The hub and bore lined up as expected, so hey, I’m good to go !!!

Click on the button for Caliper Bracket Fabrication