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Rear Wing Restoration
Having got bored with the body wheel arch rust replacement exercise I turned
to repairing the rear wings.
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| Photos above on the left as taken from the car
2 years ago and on the right and below repaired ready for cleaning
up. |
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| Starting point for repairs was to
cut out areas of obvious rust back to 'sound' metal. On coupe's the wing
always rust where the fixed roof and the rear wing meet just behind the
rear of the doors. At this point the rear wing actually fits 'under' the
roof panel. The photo below on the left shows the extent of the repair
patch. It extends under the roof and mates with the vertical rear cockpit
side panel replaced earlier. There is a wing bolt fixing point in this
area. The point at which the rear wing edge disappears under the roof can
be seen. This repair piece was firstly made in card and then in metal and
bolted to the car. The rear wing was then hung back on the car and the
repair piece trimmed and clamped to the wing using the panel clamps you
can see in the picture. Another area where rust is common is the front of
the wing. In the remaining two pictures you can see how much was removed
and the wing repair piece used. Fitting this part of the wing is not easy
and must be done with the doors in position. |
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| Another point to watch is that the rear wing
has to capture both the inner front and rear splash guards. The rear guard
has to capture the lower edge of the rear wing using a single bolt through
both. In the middle lower picture you can see its location. I had no way
of locating its original position and went for trial and error until it
looked right. Similarly there is an inner front splash guard that is
captured by the shape and lip of the rear wing. This relies on the
vertical inner cockpit wall and the wing curve meeting in the right place.
In my case it did not and I had to make a number of modifications to the
lower wing repair piece to make it work. Note that you will be very lucky
if the repair pieces you buy and use actually fit correctly. If you look
at the middle lower picture you will see that I had to cut and extend the
lower rear wing repair piece because it was too short. I also had to slit
and narrow the rear door post because it was too wide and the curve did
not match the wing and door. Final fitting of the rear wing required
further modification in order to fit with the rear lower edge of the door.
This mismatch was probably caused by the vertical rear inner replacement panel
being set about 12mm outboard than in should have been . This very early
mistake can however be compensated for and I had to fabricate a new lower
leg to the rear wing and space the upper wing fitting bolt in order to set
the wing out by approximately 12mm. |
| An area the took a lot of repair was the extreme end of the
rear wing. This area was severley rusted and needed a lot of patching to
get the right shape. Repair was started by replacing the complete lip
along the bottom edge. This stiffened the whole panel up nicely. Many wing
panels also suffer splits above the wheel arches where a weakened panel
flexes. When repairing these areas its important to replace the metal
either side of the split. This is because it is work hardened and brittle.
If not replaced the wing could split there again. In my case in order to
get the lower edge of the wing to meet the inner splash guard correctly I
had to notch the lower lip and allow it to curve in more. Be prepared to
put the wing on and off at least 20 times during the repair process and
above all be patient. |
| The photographs above give an indication of the next phase
of getting the body panels to line up smoothly with uniform gaps around
the doors |
Brake & Clutch Master Cylinder
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Before & After Restoration |
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| As a change from attacking rusty body parts, I
tried to dismantle the master cylinder. The picture above was as far as I
got. Only the clutch piston could be removed. The brake side was frozen
solid. One trick to move a stubborn piston is to fit a grease nipple and
keep pumping until it gets things moving. Beware that this is a hazardous
operation and that the piston could be ejected like a bullet from a gun.
Alternatively the casting of the body could fracture if damaged. I don't
recommend this approach. The open clutch bore showed me that it was pitted
by rust and would need to be bored out. Conventional brake fluid absorbs
water and old car systems rust the insides of piston bores. Silicon brake
fluid does not. I will never compromise safety and left this restoration
to the professionals and sent my unit to a professional machine shop
called GT Engineering who got the brake piston out, bored out both sides
and fitted stainless steel liners, cleaned everything up and fitted new
rubber cups, boots and gaskets. |
Front Wing Restoration
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| The basic restoration of the front wing follows
that of the rear with a couple of fairly major exceptions. The first
relates to the vertical 'bulkhead' (top right picture) that is fitted to
the rear edge by the door. This is the main panel fixes the back of the
wing relative to the door and stiffens up the wing. In my case its
original shape did not match the inner body contours of the new inner
metal work that I had previously replace and resulted in the rear wing
edge sticking out further than the door front edge. To correct this I cut
two slits in the center of the stiffener from the bottom to about 4 inches
from the top. Trial and error by fitting the wing, bolting the vertical
stiffener to body and pushing the wing inward until the surface matched
the door gave me how much the stiffener needed to move in. Because I was
also replace the lower wing section, with the old metal cut off I was able
to see the bottom of the vertical stiffener with the wing fixed to the
body (lower left picture). I tacked the overlapping edges of the stiffener
together, removed the wing and finished welding it. Also it is
common for the bottom section to rust away so the lower 6 inches of the
vertical stiffener also needs replacing. The Lower section of the wing was
also replaced using a repair section (lower middle picture) and again it
did not fit and was about a centimeter short on the front edge that
will require more work to finish it off once I get wings and door
fixed. |
| The front of the wing contains the headlamp. The initial
repair of this was covered previously with the exception of the the lower
edge that I will cover now. The lower edge of the wing bolts to the front
valance so this was fitted first of all. The wing actual sits over and
about 2cms in front of the top edge. On my wing this had completely rusted
away and had to be fabricated. The shape is complex in that it curves and
must match the lower edge of the wing and the stepped back curve edge of
the valance. It sound worse than it really is. To start with I always make
my metal parts in card and modify it until it fits always ensuring that
the card can be 'flat packed'. Thisflat pack shape was then
transferred to metal, cut out and the 'petals' bent up at the front
and down at the back. (lower right picture) . This is then welded to the
wing and refitted to the car where the fit up to the valence is checked.
Once out the wing it taken off and the petals welded to each other. In my
case I also had to add metal where the petal gaps were too big. |
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Areas to complete on the front wing include the
lower front wing where it meets the body. This was an area I had to
replace and still needs shaping to fit the complex curves in this
area
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All the photos up to June 2005 can be found here.
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