New Wing and Front End Tinkering

Having been running with mismatched front wings since the crash, when I had to replace the offside wing, I decided it was time to put the new matching wing on the nearside.   And it gave me the opportunity to fix a number of small issues I had with the front end.

1.  One of the wing mountings was loose and only stayed tight with the wing actually mounted and taking the strain.

2.  The wings were mounted using ordinary bolts and nuts and I had already lost a couple through vibration.  The bolts needed to be replaced with Nyloc nuts.

3.  I needed to label the indicator wires so it wasn't trial and error whenever I removed and replaced the nose cone.

4.  The wing mountings were beginning to rust so needed painting.

5.   The wishbones also needed touching up.

6.  The nose cone was only held by one bolt at the bottom as it was almost impossible to insert the second bolt due to the proximity of the radiator.

So the first thing to do was remove the nose cone and the wings.
  
This gave me access to the radiator and hoses, and it seemed to me as though the lower radiator hose did not have any water in whereas it should be full.   So I actually disconnected the hose at the top of the radiator and filled the cooling system from there (rather than through the expansion bottle) while squeezing the hose to try and expel any air.   She took about 3 litres of more water, so it will be interesting to see the effect.

Next was to label the connections for the indicators.  

Now I know which wire goes where.

The next task was the loose wing mounting bar.  It appeared that the holes in the shaft were larger than the holes in the mount so no matter how tight the bolts were it still remained loose.   Simple solution was to drill larger holes in the wing mounting bar and fit some oversized bolts.  The result is a rock-solid mount.

Now to the painting.   First a good clean and wire brush on the stays, then a coat of primer, followed by a top coat.
  

 And the same for the wishbones.   And while there I noticed that I had missed the bottom wishbone joint when I had put plastic nut covers on everything, so added them.

Next job to tackle was the bottom mounting of the nose cone.  You can see from this left/right photo that the left one is clear and easily accessible, but the right one is partially blocked by the bottom hose mounting on the radiator, making it difficult to put a nut and bolt in when mounting the nose cone.

The simple fix was to fit a couple of stainless steel 'extenders' to make the holes more accessible.









Now the primary task of replacing the nearside wing.  As previously covered, the new ones were about 2" shorter than the original ones so a separate mounting plate had to be used, and an extra long mud flap.   So I made an exact copy of the offside wing, mudflap and mounting bracket.   Then put both wings on the car using nyloc nuts throughout.   Finally put the wheels back on.
 
So following a final check of all the nuts, particularly the wheel nuts, the nose cone was replaced and we are good to go.

She looks lovely and clean and smart, with at long last a matching pair of front cycle wings.