Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Fly deflection device (also known as a windscreen)

Well, that took some time - the making and release of my windscreen for collection. Mainly down to the company doing the plating I'm told.

The fitting of this is pretty straightforward, the screen comes in 3 main parts. The screen in its frame plus the two uprights which slot through the precut body slots.

They key installation tool is the magic piece of timber to hold the screen at the correct angle - from memory I think it's 34" from top back edge of screen in the middle to the front edge of the rear cockpit return (lined up with the middle of the transmission tunnel)


Best to have it cut ready to receive the screen.
Then for my first fitting I attached both legs to the screen and then slotted it into the cut holes, applied the wooden gap tool for correct take and then tightened the legs against the scuttle hoop with a couple of clamps.


Now, as usual with these things there's a bit of jiggling and adjusting to get everything lined up.

Firstly a bit of washing up liquid and water applied under the screen rubber flap between rubber and body allows the screen to sit lower - from memory I think the suggestion was to allow 5 or 6 mm which leaves space for escutcheons plus a little wiggle room- check with AK if you're a fellow builder following my blog though.

Next I found the drivers side leg to be under a bit of strain from the body down to various alignment parameters.

Looking under the dash the leg wasn't anywhere close to the scuttle hoop.



So more jiggling and checking mid point alignment of screen vs dash and tunnel plus opening out the slot by a few mm improved this to a point where I was happy with it.

Then it's clamp and drill holes as per AK instructions - the further apart the upper and lower holes on the legs the more stable the screen will be.

I used 10mm 8.8 bolts but 8mm would be fine too.


And fitted. Just the escutcheons left to do. Makes a real difference to the appearance, looking like a car now!