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New front wing stays, old ones broke again

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  • New front wing stays, old ones broke again

    The front wing stays rusted and broke again, did a temporary fix a few months ago, but finally it’s time to make some new ones which will hopefully be more resilient to the elements.

    Started with two 1 meter 10mm diameter solid rods




    A piece of bar to turn into the bracket that will hold the rod on to the front uprights with a U clamp (51mm u clamp)



    Bracket cut shown with U clamp.



    Test fitted to the uprights



    Used a clamp to hold the round bar to the bracket to get a it roughly lined up.



    Used a caliper to evenly space the round bar away from the alloy wheels



    Held in by hand for a better view of the bracket and round bar



    Tack welded the round bar to the bracket



    My temporary workshop setup – don’t recommend using a workmate for welding due to the risk of burning wood and fire. Use a metal welding table, which I don’t have in my garage. Grabbed the round bar quite far away from the weld so it was fine. Also used a TIG so no splatter.



    I’m still a total amature at welding but these are OK



    The main thing is that is holds together well. The angle grinder hides the bad.



    One of the most time consuming parts of the build was creating a jig so that all four final bends ended up very similar.



    It may only look like two bends, but there are hours of measuing, eyeing up and carefully deciding where the bends need to go.



    The rod lines up with the holes on the carbon wings.



    Now here’s one of those things that happens all too often on a project – the rods ended up 10mm too high on the first go. This is jig MK2 with the height adjusted. It did mean having to straighten out the rod and rebend it to the right position.



    Here’s a test fit of the front of the rod bent into place



    The jig is holding the back up.



    Left to right the mount positions are little way off on the back, so some creative bending and P clip positioning evens out the rod placement.



    The back bent into shape, again two bends took many hours to get to the right position.



    Here are the P clips that will mount the wings to the rod



    First test fit of the driver side, got some really nice new A4 grade cup washers, bolts and nuts from Westfield Fastners to finish it off.



    Test fit on the passenger side. The wing was too close to the tyre so this one needed a bit more fine tuning to get it right.



    A view from underneath with the wheel off.



    There is enough gap between the tyre and the carbon, looks quite close from this angle. If there are problems it is easy to tweak the bends to create more clearance.



    Before and after, the before is version 3 of the mounts which also failed eventually.



    Ahh shiny parts!
    Last edited by Patrick; 08-05-20, 07:43 AM.
    BMW E30 Sportster 2005 - M20B28 - Build Log and Updates http://www.msportster.co.uk/
    http://www.modelog.co.uk/
    http://www.mustang67.co.uk/

  • #2
    Re: New front wing stays, old ones broke again

    Really useful, I need to make some. 👌🏼

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    • #3
      Re: New front wing stays, old ones broke again

      The templates help a lot getting the final bend to sit about right. I used a calliper to measure the distance from the bottom of the tread over the whole tyre for the final adjustment. I also tried to keep the bends that pass the side walls of the tyres at angles that extend up from the centre of the wheel which visually looked more appealing.
      BMW E30 Sportster 2005 - M20B28 - Build Log and Updates http://www.msportster.co.uk/
      http://www.modelog.co.uk/
      http://www.mustang67.co.uk/

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: New front wing stays, old ones broke again

        you have spent hours in those new wing-stays: compliments for your crafsmenship, but there is a reason why on EVERY kitcar with front cylce-wings the wing-stays are flat above the wheel. your wings are mounted far too high. not only for esthetic-reasons, the wings schould stay much closer to the tyre: reducing uplift-force. to get the wings as close as possible, caterham is often bonding them to the stays, to avoid nut&bolt fixing: no bolt=looks tidier, no nut= wings could be mounted even closer to the wheel. on an "oldschool" locost with 1300x/flow enigne or an oldschool marlin with a 4-yclinder triumph/marina engine, where horsepower and max. speed are low, it doesnt matter at all how the wings are mounted (besides esthetic reasons), as you will never create acceleration nor speed where such issues like uplift-force come into consideration.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: New front wing stays, old ones broke again

          Thanks, something for me to research for the next set!
          BMW E30 Sportster 2005 - M20B28 - Build Log and Updates http://www.msportster.co.uk/
          http://www.modelog.co.uk/
          http://www.mustang67.co.uk/

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: New front wing stays, old ones broke again

            fitted some plates on the wings, milled out the back and fitted rubber pads. spreads the loading across the stay plate, clamping rather than just the securing bolts.IMG_20190804_155000.jpg
            Attached Files
            Last edited by stevepritch; 03-06-20, 06:21 PM.

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            • #7
              Re: New front wing stays, old ones broke again

              Looks really nice too That will spread the mouting load quite a bit.

              The wings I'm using are substantially lighter than the originals, after the first wing stay failure I bought these. You can't get them from the supplier I used any more though. I'd like to get new ones at some point but it's difficult getting reliable measurements online + many are not over clear on fibreglass, wet lay or prepreg or a mix.

              BMW E30 Sportster 2005 - M20B28 - Build Log and Updates http://www.msportster.co.uk/
              http://www.modelog.co.uk/
              http://www.mustang67.co.uk/

              Comment

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