Wind deflectors mk3

The new sun visors are 3mm acrylic, my old wind deflectors 5mm PETG - they're also looking a little tired - what PETG provides in ease of shaping it loses in being soft and prone to marking. Excuse to rationalise things and a slight re-design. 

Sticking with a basic rectangular shape 150mm wide. The acrylic ordered from Trent Plastics on eBay. A 610mm x 457mm x 3mm piece delivered pre-cut into 4 pieces 150mm x 457mm, ordered Thursday - arrived Saturday! I only need to mount hinges, the diagonal cut and a little shaping to finish them.

Smaller this time, and closer into the side of the car more like 30º rather than 45-50º angle. The bottom corner against the bodywork to hold them in the right place. Careful application of heat with an electric heat gun to form the shape.

May revise them so the top edge is horizontal rather than square to the screen angle, or the back edge more vertical? I have a couple of spare acrylic panels - for possible revisions.

Tried my hand at polishing the cut edges - Youtube said a lick with a blowtorch - it works, just need to hold your nerve. Enough flame to smooth the cut edge but not enough to melt it!

That'll do for a while - again, needs a rainy day to work out if I hit the sweet spot between looks and stopping the front tyres flinging road detritus into my face.

Clutch cable replacement

Lovely run out last weekend, 88 miles, and then within around 50m of home - mid gear change, in neutral and the clutch pedal drops to the floor.

15 minutes later, with the help of a neighbour the car is pushed back to the garage to check for damage.

Just before Ireland reverse and first started getting sticky, just after I had adjusted the tension on the cable, and a good 500 miles on the clock since. It wasn't the cable that snapped - more the mounting flange/end arrangement. Clutch itself feels fine/smooth and free - so I'm putting this down to long term fatigue and misalignment on the top bracket.

The outer cable has effectively pushed through the top-hat end cap and gone on to slide through what is left of it.

I couldn't get a large spanner in to tweak the bracket behind the plenum. This scrap bar with a bolt and washers was perfect though. Let me adjust fore aft and swivelled through 90º left right alignment.

The new cable in place aligned as much as I can.

While the car was on the stands I changed the engine oil and filter - moving now from annual changes to 10k mile changes, the oil coming out is black but very serviceable so this should be fine.

I'm hoping it was more age/fatigue than anything specifically after Ireland, need a few long test drives to check it out and monitor, I also need to order another spare cable!

Potential for another European trip later in the year so want to get this stable and be able to trust it again. Perhaps something a little different - something to sit over the top and engage with the end of the cable rather than all the force through that flange?....

Sun Visor fitted

Theres always one stubborn bolt! This one decided it wasn't budging until I cut a new slot in the head and used a large screwdriver. You wouldn't have thought an M4 bolt into a couple of mm of aluminium could take so much force.

I have 5x of them each side holding my windscreen in, so apart from the inconvenience of having to order some more, I guess the screen is going nowhere!

Installed visors via 4x new tapped holes and thread-locked shortened M4 bolts.

This is also an opportunity to replace the bottom windscreen rubber with a longer section (not as long as pictured), and re-paint the wing mirrors and screen uprights - they get beaten up with stone chips.

That looks ok to me. Half hood will need adjustment - but I'll wait until I know these are staying before doing that. The angle currently set by friction of the through bolts acting on the crush tubes - if they move or work loose I'll replace the closed dome nuts with nylocs.

The centre rear view mirror is also out - I never could see anything but the spare tyre through it anyway.

Just needs a test!

They're not intended to block wind - just stop the direct line of rain over the screen straight into my eyes.

Update - adjusted when I added a rear view mirror so they miss it

Sun visor preparation

First part of a little project to add some sun visor / rain deflectors to the top of the windscreen. Partly for sun - but also an experiment to see if I can use them to divert heavy rain out of my eyes!

This is preparation only - I needed a few brackets made up for the windscreen attachment. The visors themselves off the shelf from ebay at a price less than I could construct from component parts - seller C-T-S Spares.

Cut down some aluminium U channel into brackets and pipe for crush tubes. The lot being tidied up with a vigorous shake in a jam jar along with some scrap chain from another project.

I've seen this vibration method on various youtube/tv shows at an industrial scale. It worked really well, knocking off any corners or rough edges and producing a smooth matt finish, much easier and quicker than trying to file or sand small complex shapes.

Mocked up in the final location on the windscreen frame. In due course, and assuming the visors work, the half hood will need a modification to slip over them.

Next step is dismantling the windscreen to tap some mounting holes. The existing frame holes are of course in the wrong place - left over from an early roof design that never really worked.