Cleaning Up and Rebuilding the windscreen.

13th april 2006
The windscreen for the buggy is a aluminium frame with a glass panel held in with a rail and right angle brackets. Although simple in design it is a complicated item not to be underestimated.

My screen surround had seen better days and I wanted to take it apart so that I could get the holes in the frame welded up and the hole frame polished and chromed. The rubbers had also seen better days and would need replacing.

The frame is held together by two screws that are underneath the rail that sits on the body. To get at them the body gasket rubber has to be removed and pulled out of its channel. Undoing these screws will allow the rail to be taken off and removed. This then allows access to the glass which should still have a rubber seal around it. The other side of the brackets can be undone by undoing the screws on the outside of the wind screen hoop. The windscreen glass can then removed from its frame by slightly pulling on the hoop to release the screen.

It is very important to take the screen and place it somewhere where it will not be disturbed. Getting replacement glass is very difficult and very expensive.

I collected up the rubber and bagged it so that I could take it to the rubber specialist at a later date.

The screen surround had seen better days and was riddled with different holes for mounting everything from a rear view mirror to a tax disc. I new that it was possible to weld Aluminium and I also new it wasn't for the light hearted so decided to ask some of my friends to see if they new anyone that had welded aluminium in the past. Luckily a good friend Martyn turned up a friend that could weld the aluminium. I took the frame over to him and left the frame with him for a week. In the mean time I decided that my time was better used locating replacement rubbers for the windscreen.

I Located a company called Baines in Tunbridge Wells who were a rubber extrusion manufacturing company. The trip to Baines was pretty successful, although the process of matching the rubber was an interesting one. The company used books of different profiles of rubber each with a number that located its stock. I spent the whole morning here and eventually managed to locate a match for the rubbers.

I got home and had been left a message saying that the frame had been welded and it was ready for collection the next day. The new rubbers fitted the glass but the overall size of the rubber glass combination seemed to be thicker. I presumed this was because the rubber had been compressed for along time in the frame and hoped it would not present a problem.

I picked up the screen surround the next day and took them into my polishers . He agreed to polish it up but was hesitant about chroming it. The process to chrome aluminium requires that the item needs to be cleaned , Zinc-8 coated and the chrome plated. Apparently there are not many companies who have large Zinc8 electroplating baths. I had to settle with my polisher cleaning up the frame. The cleaning process took several days, I picked up the frame and was very happy with the results the frame looked new.

The following afternoon I decided to try to install the glass back in the the frame. I had two sash cramps and hoped that this would squeeze in the glass. Plenty of washing up liquid frustration and black coated hands later it was apparent that this was not the process that go the glass in in the first place. My screen was in bits and I had no idea how to put it back together, my best efforts had be thwarted.

I decided that the windscreen had had to have been assembled and this meant that the only reason that I could not put it together was because I did not know the correct process. I started phoning around and eventually came across a custom car company that specialised in MG open top cars, these had a similar windscreen and It was clear by what the owner said that he could put it back together for £50.00 that he knew something that i didn't.

I left the parts with him and waited for his call.

A week later he called to say that the windscreen was complete. I went down to Eastbourne and collected it from him. I was curious how he had achieved to get it back together as my best efforts had failed. He explained that the secret was in how you assembled it. He went on to explain that he had placed the rubbers in position as I had done. He explained the reason that I had failed was that I needed a method of cranking the frame together. He said he had used four car luggage straps that have a cranking arm to tighten them. He slowly introduced pressure on all of these after using washing up solution as a lubricant over the period of the week he had tightened the straps slowly easing the glass and rubber into the frame. I was amazed that the solution was so simple, but happy my windscreen was back together looking fabulous.