MASCOT December 1991

MORE ABOUT THE 'NEW' ROADSTER

Dave True

I've been doing something about the bodywork on my shining example of the cowboys art, alias,my 4AD Roadster RKC 394.

Some of the ash framing at the back had been replaced though there are still the odd original bits left - all this framing repair work had been done before 1 acquired the car. New wheel arches had been made up out of thinly cut strips of ash, bent round formers and glued and clamped together to give a laminated structure three-quarters of an inch thick. If one builds a wheel arch in this way, one needs to be very careful that, on releasing the former pins and clamps, that the curve of the arch doesn't open up, i.e. the bottom points of the arch move away from each other. That's exactly what had happened on my car - I reckon the bottom ends had moved apart at least 1". Cowboy had of course fitted the arches to the rest of the framework just the same, with the result that it was very difficult for me to fit the rear wings - the outline of the wings didn't bear much relationship to the outline of the wheel arch. The wings were originally fixed with screws to the wheel arch for the most part with, I think, a couple of thin bolts at the front end. No way were screws going to pull my rear wings into position and I finished up with 5/16" bolts at about 6" centers fixed right through the wheel arch. I did put in some screws at the bottom front edge of the wing, but these didn't fully pull the wing up to the bodywork completely at this point, and no doubt a little of the dreaded filler will be necessary.

It took me a day and a half to fit both rear wings and the difficulties didn't make fitting the wing piping between wing and body too easy, but all was eventually fitted to my reasonable satisfaction.

One would have thought that the metal rear wing would have been designed such that the inner edge pushed into and butted up continuously to the semi-circular metal facing to the back of the wheel arch, but no. Whilst the metal wing will go no further in at the back end, towards the front the inner edge of the wing tapers away from the back of the wheel arch, leaving part of the laminated ash exposed. The problem with the wings not fitting the wheel arches meant that the inner edges of the wings were pulled into almost straight lines between my bolt fixings, leaving small gaps between the wings and the laminated ash. I shall have to work underseal into these gaps to seal them. I think the previous owner foresaw these problems and couldn't face them.

Another odd thing about these rear wings is that, although they appear to be original wings, they are not the same as those on my other 4AD Roadster. In section (i.e. at right angles to the car body) they are of quite different profile - the curvature is quite sharp, giving a flat faced appearance, whereas the other cars wings have a much more rounded profile. The shaping of the extreme rear end is rather different as well. I wondered if the wings for RKC had been re-wheeled to remove dents.

The ash framework had been fitted together at the bottom rear corners with a number of long 1/4" bolts, 3 on each side, which had been left projecting a ridiculous amount. I used these to secure the extreme rear end of the wings, together with an aluminium plate so that all was securely bolted up, and then cut off the bolts to a neat length. A certain number of screws were necessary in addition to the bolts to fix the wing to the wheel arch to maintain an even joint and to secure the wing piping.

Where the downward sweep of the rear body eases off somewhat suddenly, the wing tends to drop away from the body. I put in extra screws at this point but I wasn't entirely successful in improving this slight inelegance. I'll just have to live with it I guess. One has to bear in mind that one knows myriads of faults with ones own car that other people will never notice unless you point then out: For example, I know that the framing and cladding to the rear nearside quarter projects slightly more than it should over the centre of the wheel arch but this only shows when the light catches it at a particular angle.

Yes, RKC is rather a strange car. You may remember a few months back I was on about that extra cross member and the only person to come back on that was Leo Raby in Birmingham with additional information. Presumably nobody else has got this additional strengthening to the chassis.