Front Wishbone Covering

[Al Milton]

Thanks for the offer Richyb66, but Rusty has a spare set which he has very graciously offered me (thanks again Rusty ).

 

These are both fantastic offers so thanks guys and thanks everyone for the help and suggestions.

Reinforces again the fantastic spirit of the club.

 

Cheers

Al

[Guest smartfazer]

I'm determined not to use any push-on edging or other semi-temporary stuff on my build so I decided to make some covers myself.

 

I made a wooden former, took a fibreglass mould off it and then moulded 4 fibreglass covers. They take a bit of trimming to get the cut-out to allow the wishbone to move but it's not too difficult.The covers fit over the wishbone before it's fitted and are then fixed in place against the side panels. I also had to change the wishbone bolts to high tensile buttom head ones so they cleared the inside of the moulding.

 

Should look ok once their painted. With hindsight I could have had them slightly wider but they work and one basic moulding fits all 4 places.

 

 

 

 

Richy,

 

Are those steering rack extensions in the second picture? If so, are they the shorter or longer ones?

 

I also saw ?Glyn? and Rustys covers in the flesh at a local show last year. a) they look really good and made me decide that this was the way I was going to go. I'm sure with a little thought and fabrication I can do it.

 

Would like to see yours completed and painted etc, though Richy for comparison. How will they look was the nose cone covers them?

 

 

Steve

[agent_zed]

Hi

you have probably thought of this already but you will have to cover the headlight mount as the edge is contactable and not radiused. I covered mine with some edge trim for SVA but i have seen someone weld a 5mm rod around the egde and blend it which was pretty good.

 

I hope the rack extenders (bit off topic but as they have been mentioned) are better than the ones i had. The steering arms aren't the best in the world and taper slightly towards the end coupled with not particularly acurate threads on the RH extenders the fit was rather sloppy. So much so i sent mine back to RH (back in the day when it was still Robin Hood). I can only assume that i was not completely nuts as they compensated me with 4x bonnet catches as i had some extenders made locally at my own cost. The ones i had made were much longer and could be screwed up further on the rack arms where the thread was better and made a tighter fit. Might be worth checking you are happy with yours. If they are different to how they used to be please ignore me

 

hth

[richyb66]

Yes, they're rack extensions and they're just under 65mm long - not sure if that's long or short though. They seem a reasonable fit either end, just don't look too pretty so I can see them possibly being dispensed with for something a bit better looking. I'm assuming the rack is Sierra in which case why doesn't the thread on the track rod ends match the thread on the end of the rack??? The rack is a fine thread while the track rods are coarse.

 

The headlamp mount has been addressed with this:

 

 

which is just some ally sheet that I beat over a wooden former to give it a rolled edge, just need a quick polish to finish them off.

 

The wishbone tube covers aren't that obvious with the nose cone fitted - I can't get a picture at the moment because it isn't all fitted together. I'll probably paint the covers black to match the wishbones, see how they look and if I don't like them I'll see how they look in body colour. Obviously the main thing is they need to pass IVA and in some respects it is like polishing a turd but if you don't try these things then you'll never know.

[agent_zed]

those headlight mounts look really good, nice bit of work.

 

RH used a few different racks mine i believe to be a modified metro rack from what ive read on here???, hence the joiner. As long as you are happy they are a good fit thats ok, they probably changed quality from one car to the next knowing RH anyhow, but was worth a quick check to be sure.

 

 

 

Good luck at IVA

[richyb66]

OK, now I'm finally starting to get things assembled for the last (hopefully) time, this is what my finished covers look like sprayed up and with my suspension bits all powdercoated.

 

 

[Grim]

very professional!

[megadodo]

If you still have the mould, would you be willing to make another set and if so,how much? They look superb!

[richyb66]

If you still have the mould, would you be willing to make another set and if so,how much? They look superb!

 

To be honest, probably not. It's quite time consuming laying the parts up as I've only got one mould which was hastily made and as it was a bit of an experiment that just happened to turn out OK. The bulk of the time though is trimming out the holes to allow the wishbone to swing without wiping out the moulding which involved a lot of trial fitting and trimming. Given that virtually every car is different (even one side to the other), the trimming probably takes the biggest time.

 

Ideally I'd like to make a new mould, with 4 impressions in it, that also has grooves in it to show where the mouldings need to be (roughly) trimmed for the wishbone holes. This would at least mean that 4 parts could be laid up at a time to speed the process up a bit. I'll see if I can find some spare time to see what's involved.