September 29th
Phoned Woolies and ordered some more velcro. As usual I probably rather over ordered so that I was sure that there would be enough. They phoned me back about three times saying that was I sure I really wanted this lot, and I repeatedly assured them that I really did.
When I got home the vinyl had arrived from Westfield. It certainly matches, and is about twice the price of essentially the same product in the Woolies catalogue. What's more the gaiters had arrived from Demon Tweeks. They are horrible and are going straight back.
After that I went into a bit of a decline.
I decided that I would fit the front wings. A long time ago I mentioned
to Chris Masters that the brackets didn't seem to line up properly with the hubs. (It was right back at the beginning
of time when I was trying to work out what was going on with the hubs, before I realised I had the Westfield fabricated
ones rather than the ex-Cortina ones.) Anyway, he assured me that everything would be fine. Well, I should have
pressed him harder, I guess.
The cycle wing support brackets have two positions, an inner and outer one, where they will clamp around the hub. In addition to this clamp there is a small bush which looks like a bolt is supposed to go through it into the hub itself, where a hole has been provided for the purpose.
Anyway, nothing works.
This photo shows the support in the inner (nearest the centre of the car) position. You can see the other mounting holes and the additional bush at the bottom. (These pictures are thumbnails, you can click on them for a rather larger view.)
The bolt through the bush at the bottom is also through the hole in the hub. It nearly fits properly, but is not lined up correctly.
The problem with this position is that the support fouls the wheel and makes
it stop about 1cm away from the hub, in other words useless. In this photo you can clearly see the wheel stud round
the back of the wheel.
To be fair, I could probably bend the support away from the wheel, at the risk of damaging the powder coating. However, I would probably run into the next problem.
So, I tried the outer position. Like this the first obvious problem is that
the lower bush is nowhere near the hub.
What's more the bush does not line up with the hole in the hub anyway, which you can clearly see in the large version of the photo on the left. (That is, click on it!)
However, there's a rather worse problem in
that the support still fouls the tyre, although to be fair the wheel can be pushed right onto the studs now. What's
more it also fouls the brake hose on full lock. I can't imagine that a brake hose that gets routinely bashed by
the wing support is going to pass any tests.
I suspect the bracket could be bent to miss the wheel in this case, but the hose is more of a problem. It would be possible to swap the hose and bleed nipple around, but that would mean the brakes were unbleedable due to the nipple being below the entry hose.
So, I'm left in rather a quandary. I have even wondered if these parts (the hub and wing support) are actually compatible. To that end I looked for the batch numbers that Westfield stamp into all their parts. (The hub is 10567 and the support 10499.)
I shall have to phone Chris Masters tomorrow. He'll probably have some magical solution to all these problems involving putting everything together back to front. (Or, as he would see it, the right way round.)
However, I'm stumped for now.
September 30th
Phoned up and spoke to Chris, again. He reckons that the outer position is correct. What's more I will need a spacer for the supports arm on the wing supports, and possibly a spacer on front wheels. Although as I got them from Westfield surely the offset should be correct? What's more, he says the support will need bending away from the wheel and then back parallel to the tyre contact surface. He did say that the support should only just clear the type wall. I was going to point out that the wall would deflect as soon as the type was in contact with the ground but then realised that that would only apply at the bottom of the wheel, where the ground is! Doooohhhh.
Chris reckons the brake hose will be all right when it's covered with the nylon wrapping that is necessary for the SVA test. Me, I'm not sure. You can see in the photo immediately above that there is a fair deflection of the hose caused by the wing support. As soon as I bend it away from the wheel this will get worse.
I'm not happy, but I'll try these things tonight. It is clear that even with a spacer in it the hub will need to be filed a bit in order for a bolt to go through the support bush and locate successfully in the hub.
Having got home I'm still unhappy, although perhaps starting to convince myself. Westfield are supposed to be sending me the spacers for the support leg of the wing support. I tried bending the support and it was actually quite feasible to end up with it in a sensible position. The only problem really is this brake pipe. It has to be said that on the side of the car that does not have the wing support, the pipe is very close to the wheel at full lock. At least the wing support is not rotating.
When the spacers arrive I will have another look.
The
velcro arrived from Woolies so I set to finishing off the centre console carpet and fixed the rear finisher strip
in place.
After
that I stuck down, with the aid of the all purpose velcro, the driver's side of the centre console carpet.
in case you've got to this frame directly and can't get out, go here.