Under construction

Bumper part   4

There is a lot of work needed to make the front spoiler. I’ve still not completed the plug for the mould. The mould will not be straightforward and will probably need to be made in two or more parts. Also I’m having a bit of a crisis concerning the aesthetics of my design and from a practical point of view, the ground clearance at the front is quite small. While I am trying to resolve these issues, I have decided to fit the small “rally style” spoiler I got from Rimmer Bros a few years ago (part no RB7175).

Unfortunately, it just didn’t seem to fit, appearing to be too narrow. Since I wasn’t lucky enough to have the special wide- bodied TR7, I couldn’t understand why this should be.

Anyway, I cut the spoiler down the middle and supported the two halves in position on jacks. I found the gap needed to be about 80 mm for the sides to fit reasonably well on the wheel arches.

I used gaffer tape to fill the hole and clamped a piece of ply across the top to hold the halves apart.

I took the spoiler down to the workshop applied more layers of tape to stiffen it up also trying my best to keep the tape as taught as possible. On this side, I added tape the other way round (sticky to sticky) so the shiny side rather than the sticky side would take the fibre glass which I was about to apply.

I applied two thick coats of white gel coat and two layers of chopped strand mat.

When I’ve trimmed off the excess fibreglass, I will need to fit a couple of brackets to the front of the spoiler to attach it to the framing I have already fitted to the front of the car.

I made a couple of brackets to support the ends of the spoiler and screwed it to the underside of the outer and inner wings with M5 nuts and bolts. I put a rivnut in the bracket to secure the end of the spoiler.

The spoiler is termorarily fixed in position. Now I need to build up some filler where the sides of the spoiler fit against the bodywork to plug the gaps between the two parts. That’s next…