Thursday 31 December 2009

Windscreen fitting



Once the body work had become fully fitted it was time to fit the windscreen into place,

First job was to cut down the wing mirror mounts so they fit inside the cast screen pillars as described in the manual, now these seem to be a very tight fit into the recess on the pillars, now at first i thought they didn't want to fit properly, but once i tightened up the mounting screws on these they seemed to fit lovely.

with that done, it was time to be let lose making holes into the scuttle to bolt up the pillars, now to assist in this task i made a pole up at the 1007mm dimension to give me the right angle on the windscreen. now in the manual they give you some dimensions for the positioning of the pillars, all i can say at this point is to ignore those and crack out a bit of ingenuity and some eyeball measurements, as the pillars will naturally want to fit in their own position on the radius of the scuttle, and from side to side the pillars seem to sit at slightly different angles. also at this point the pole i had made at work was far to long, and the windscreen and the pillars were all sitting to far forward and no where the radius on the side of the scuttle, so i shortened it by about 25mm in the end, and this seemed to make every thing sit a whole lot better.

once i was fairly happy that every thing was sitting roughly where i wanted it to be i set about drilling off the bottom holes only on the pillars on each side, this still meant that there was still some room for adjustment, and then when i was fully happy with the position then top holes were drilled off and every secured in place, now when fitting the grub screws to pillar to hold the windscreen in place i ensured that these were just nipped up, i have heard a few horror stories about over tightened grub screws and cracking windscreens.