Rear wings part two. A bit healthier on pictures!

So to fit the rear wings. The entire area of the car about to be hidden by the outer wings was painted in zinc resin Bonda Primer, along with the inside of the rear wings.

Mmmm would you look at that! Some paint getting on the car at last! The bottom of the C Post, and inner rear wing look almost perfect from this angle, despite all the hacking about. That's without paint or even lead yet.

All painted inside and ready to go. The edges have been weld-throughed, but overpainted just a tad with the Bonda Primer, oops! It won't matter though.

And the inside of the outer wing. There are a lot of holes drilled in that, which amounts to a lot of grinding after the welds are done.

Once this was dry, another coat of Bonda Primer followed, but not all the way up to the edges which of course were painted with the weld through stuff. Positioning, fitting the door and wings to check the door gap, adjustment, tweaking, altering the lower B post replacements, more adjustment and the offside rear wing was ready to be welded. I had removed most of the flages from the outer and inner rear wing tops, they were not going to be used as I was not going to spot weld them together and it was just a rust trap. I left small amounts though, which would be melted into the weld anyway, just to thick up the area being welded and to reduce the chance of blowing holes, as well as increasing strength. Clamped in place with holes drilled for plug welding, I welded first to the wheel arch, then to the rear of the sill, then to the rear light area, and then to the B post after necessary trimming, adjustment and alterations (Steelcraft lower B Posts, which as you may have guessed only bear a slight resemblance to the real thing) to the B post as well. Then to the outer sill, running a seam down to leave a slight gap. This will be filled with lead, then filed out to make a neat even gap. Finally the long seam weld along the top was done, a fit at a time to keep the heat distortion down. Despite my best efforts, the outer wings are a little uneven at the top, this was unavoidable really due to the stop-start heat of seaming a little at a time. No matter, the rear window trim piece covers most of it, and some careful tapping will sort the rest.

Rear wing welded in all round, apart from the top. I am leaving the Heritage paint on until later, flash rust is very annoying and it makes her look awful!

Tacked in place along the top at 1/2 inch intervals, ready for seaming a bit at a time. Join the dots!

The offside wing was done much the same, fortunately I remembered before welding it on to drill a hole for oil/wax injection into the outer sill right at the back near the wheel arch. The nearside (Heritage) outer sill had the hole already, the offside (guess what) did not. At least they are even on both sides, this hole is important as it covers the sill to wheel arch join with many flanges and therefore double thicknesses which need protecting from the inside.

She looked rather splendid with rear wings once more in place. I still had no rear panel, so I made a start on the front wings and in the evenings I did the lead loading on top of the rear wings. The idea was to make lead peaks, exact replicas of the original composite peaks. But could I remain sensible throughout the process? I admit being tempted to make sharper points to the peaks, so I would own the world’s only Razorback P47-esque BGT. Another idea was to make fins like a Peerless GT, because sadly I can’t afford a real one (YET!)….. Control yourself boy!
No the peaked wings are one of a kind so they will stay that way, how they were originally. I took plenty of photos of the sound metal before I added the lead, I know people will tell me that she’s rusted out there and been fillered otherwise. And yes people will tell me it’s “wrong”. Nope, not this car!

Clean shiny metal, a good coat of solder paint and time to wake up the Primus blowlamp. With the wing tinned up, half a pound of lead was deposited along the wing top and weld.

The wing has been "tinned" with a thin layer of lead as can be seen, the solder paint is lead dust suspended in flux so a coat of that on the steel, when heated, will give a thin layer of lead. The excess solder paint and impurities can be scrubbed off, then it is ready for what I am doing here, melting some chunks of lead on the wing before I can start shaping.

This is a lot of lead though, so full throttle and with a delicious roar from the Primus I worked from the rear to the front gently melting the mess and smoothing it into shape. The difficulty is getting the heap of lead hot enough for most of it to be mouldable without the outside turning liquid and running down the wing. It is a very narrow temperature band, especially when varying the heat is done solely by moving the flame in relation to the work, the same flame has to be heating up a wide are at differing rates to allow progress along the panel. At the same time the lead itself needs to be shaped and more melted in or some removed and placed elsewhere. Easier done than explained!

Once both sides had lead ‘approximations’ the filing could begin with the course body file, catching the shavings for re-melting as it is expensive stuff. Coarse emery paper is the next step, then I left it there for final sorting when I get near the painting stage.

What do you think, it’s identical to how it used to be but a lot stronger and it should last a lot longer too. I likes it anyway!

Sorry about the contrast, it's the only photo I have of a finished rear wing. While there is a clear boundary between the lead and steel, you can't feel it!

Just a nice shot of one f the B Posts. She's beginning to look like a car now!