Thursday, 18 January 2018

Garotted

So, on with the repairs... first, take off the N/S front wing. It's attached in the same way as the O/S so it may also make an escape attempt in the near future.

After 2 hours, I was debating the wisdom of this plan - I think I used every item in my garage to try get the damn thing off; screwdrivers, chisels, Dremel and selection of bits etc. Eventually, the best tool was some wire made into a garotte to slice through the gunk between arch and support. This got me some of the way through and then a previously-useless saw with a very flexible blade did most of the rest:



On my last trip, I was getting brake judder when braking hard at speed. Forum discussions suggested the problem may be a lack of grease on the caliper slider pins so while I had the wheel off on this side, I stripped the caliper and re-greased the pins. They didn't seem too dry originally but felt a bit smoother afterwards, so maybe it will help - time will tell. I'll do the other side as well when I take that wheel off.

I'm going to re-attach the arches by making full width ally brackets with large wings and lots of gunk - hopefully, this will make a larger contact patch than just the support was before and will be physically stronger than the mesh I used.

I'm going to repair the damage to the wing with P40 filler (never done this before!) and then, I have a cunning plan to wrap both wings in some vinyl pattern to be determined. This saves trying to find the same shade of blue as the rest of the car and will give Zedster a more unique look, assuming I don't make a dogs dinner of the wrap :-)

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