MNR Vortx Kit car build site - Fitting the Rear wings

Fitting the Rear wings

I was able to lay my hands on a heater so I could actually work in the garage without freezing to death.

I wasn't looking forward to this, the wings are a fairly noticable part and I didn't want to cock it up, fortunately I didn't!

The first dilema was how to mount the wings, Marc suggest nuts and bolts or rivets, I'd already mounted the inner panels which meant I couldn't get to the back of the panel to tighten a nut so I had to look at other options. I settled on Jack-Nuts, I ordered them from Primary Fasteners, their advise and speedy service was second to none. They gave me a manual spacer incase my rivnut tool wouldn't engage into the jacknut far enough.

I started off lining the wings up and setting the gap at the front and rear of the arch to as close to identical as possible. Once I was happy with the fitting I taped it up with masking tape so I could drill it easily. I drilled through the inside edge of the arch and into the body so I knew the holes would line up. Once I had my pilot holes I then enlarged the body panel holes to 10mm to fit the nuts.

The Jacknuts just engaged onto my Laser Rivnut tool so I was able to use that. The nuts are very soft, needing a small amount of pressure to get them to collapse and lock into the fibreglass. I did find that some times the mandrel would pull out of the jacknut before it was fully collapsed, when this happened I used the spacer and an M5 bolt, the spacer allows the bolt to pull the jacknut into the fibreglass fully.

The pilot holes in the wings were enlarged to 6mm to allow me a bit of leeway aligning the wings, the wings were fixed using 3 bolts (front, rear and middle) With only 3 bolts fitted I slid the trim into place, notching it to go around the 3 bolts and then using a drill I marked where the other notches needed to be and then slid it all into place. Lots of bolts later and I have 2 fitted wings and the car back on the ground.

I tried to fit the front cycle wings but did not understand how the bars went together as the top bar seems massively too tall. Advice from Locostbuilders is to use a spacer to get the wings looking right and then cut the upright attached bar to size. So that's next on the list to do.

I refitted the nose, bonnet and scuttle and made sure I was happy with the shut lines, I'm still using the iffy bonnet and scuttle so any errors in that area are recoverable. Once the bits were in place I marked and drilled pilot holes through the lower lip of the scuttle and into the top of the body to fix it into place. The body holes were then drilled out to 7.5mm and tapped to M8, probably a bit of an overkill but it will be secure. I then cut down bolts and secured the scuttle in place. Now that this is done I can position the indicators so that I'm happy with them.

With the nose and scuttle fixed in place there was no reason not to fit the bonnet catches, I've only done one for now as I need to look for a mounting template, I need to be sure the catches are far enough apart to keep the catch under tension.

Now the bonnet is on I have looked more into the scoop to see where it should be. The positioning of the air filter means that I can't get it dead centre on the bonnet and if I place it just off centre I know people are going to say "You didn't fit that properly" So I've decided to fit it between almost central and far to the right.

I am really happy with the work I got done today, a lot got accomplished.