Windscreen

Well I've finally bitten the bullet and bought the Windscreen Pack from Findhorn Cars. This was ordered on Wednesday and delivered by 10:30 on Friday morning all from stock. The quality of the windscreen is superb along with all of the component parts of the pack. The only problem is that the windscreen fitting kit seems to come with a strange array of nuts and screws that I can't at present figure out where they go. Also there are no screws or bolts for other items, such as the exterior mirrors.

I was also getting a little disappointed that the mounting for the exterior mirrors needed to screw holes when I found some adapters in the pack even though there was no mention anywhere of these and there were no fasteners for them either.

The body tub has been marked up for the wiper holes, the demister vents and the fasteners for the windscreen.

I decided to try to fit the windscreen by myself as I was too impatient to wait for help. I marked two vertical lines on the tub 275mm from the front lip. I then made up two 9mm spacers to attach to the top of the tub to allow for the rubber on the bottom (removed for assembly). I then attached two pieces of string to the rear view mirror bracket and ran one down the outside of the windscreen, underneath and then into the car. This was fastened to the gear lever.

It was tightened until the rear side bracket holes were aligned over the previous vertical line. The other string was fastened to the bonnet hinge making a slope length of 470mm as per the build manual.

The forward holes were marked on the body tub and the centres joined. This line should be parallel to the chassis. It all should work out although mine was a little off parallel.

I adjusted the strings until it all lined up. The tub was drilled and the screws attached. The third internal screw was inside the tub and came out into the bracket.

I sandwiched a stiff piece of paper between the bracket and the tub, fed the external screws through the paper, removed the bracket and marked on the paper where the third hole should be. This was marked on the body tub and drilled. A little adjustment with a round file was needed but it all tightened up nicely.

The final measurement from the top of the screen to the front of the scuttle was exactly 470mm so I am very pleased with the result.

The rubber seemed very reluctant to go back into the windscreen but with a little help from fairy liquid it slid in a treat. I then thoroughly cleaned the windscreen to removed all traces of soap.

 

Wipers

The windscreen pack includes a number of item required for the wiper system. Also included are the washer components however I already had these so they were not included in my pack. Included are wiper arms, wiper blades, rack tube between motor and first wheel box, rack tube between wheel boxes, a new wiper gear for the motor to change the sweep of the wipers, and a motor mount bracket.

I bought a 17mm hole cutting drill and drilled the tub as per the instructions in the build manual. I also purchased two new wheel boxes as the ones I had from the donor turned out to be too short. and the chrome trim was curved and not flat. I connected everything together as per the instructions, connected the motor to my battery charger and all seemed ok, except for the fact that it all seemed a little slow.

The wipers need to be able to operate at 45 cycles/minute and mine were barely achieving 30. After much adjustment and head scratching (for days) it all turned out to be that I had the battery charger set to 5 Amp trickle charge. When I upped the current everything was well. I connected to the battery and much to my relief it all worked. I connected up the washer tubing and had a complete working wiper system.

The wiper arms needed bending a little which was easier said than done but eventually they lined up and I had the correct sweep.