A ROYAL RESTORATION - PART 4 - by John Phillips

A Royal Mail van in the driveway meant that there was a parcel for me, and sure enough the mudguard had arrived, so here was both the new front section and the missing rear section. An 18  inch length (or approx 450mm in new money) was cut for the rear section and two sections of steel sheet for the valances, the edges of the new valances where joggled and the roll edge on the mudguard section was flattened,  the two being mated up by tack welding and then brazing along the seam. (See picture 4/1 click to enlarge)  As the removable section of the rear mudguard is attached to the rear carrier and overlaps the fixed section and the join there had to be fairly accurate, a temporary fitting was needed to check that this would actually happen, this involved sorting out what brackets I had for the two sections.

Two longish straight strips where obviously the rearmost bracket that fastened to the rear of the rack, and on it’s way down to the mudguard held the rear number plate then extended below the mudguard to form a rear stand clip, those where both present and correct and in red primer, the second bracket for this section was part of the rack. The small pipe clip type was the lower frame one for the fixed section of mudguard, and I at first thought that the other frame clip was the “bowler hat” type bracket but a check in the spares catalogue (which had also just arrived) showed a slightly different shape of clip of which there was no sign.
 
Everything was loosely bolted or wedged in place, the rack complete with mudguard section fitted great, and so with spares catalogue in hand a second bracket for the fixed section was fashioned out of very thin aluminum with snips, pliers and a marking pen. This in turn was transferred to a piece of sheet steel, cut drilled and then fashioned into shape, (picture 4/2 click to enlarge) and fitted to the mudguard.  The rear mudguard section was in need of some repairs where the rust had won the war and the cracks wanted drilling and brazing up, so everything was disassembled, and repaired, sprayed  on the inside with that wonderful product “Chipguard” and apart from a couple of bits that need a touch of filler they are ready for priming.

Click here for a useful list of firms, people, products and odds and ends that I have used during this restoration that might just help solve the odd problem you come across (pdf).

To Part 5 of “A Royal Restoration”