Front Wing Progress

The wings’ preparation have taken longer than I anticipated to acheive a finish that I’m content with (ie. perfect), but they have now had all the corrosion trated and every defect smoothed, filled or beaten out.

This took a lot of work on the front panels, where the previous owner had fitted mesh lamp guards. The screw holes had to be dented inward to provide a surrounding surface for the filler to stick to. There were a lot of minor dents in the front panels, probably from a combination of large stones and people stepping clumsly onto the bumper and wing tops. As I said, they’re all mint now, including the areas that will be covered by the chequer plate.

I also removed the headlights to properly strip inside the square recesses. Apart from thoroughness, the reason I did this was the same as for being so particular about the area around the lights – that I might choose to leave the plastic Defender surrounds off and keep the wings like MoD LRs in order to facilitate headlight bulb replacements (the plastic faces are held in by the side light and indicator, so theose lights have to be removed in order to replace the headlight bulbs).

I have cut holes in the new (gen) 90/110 wing outers to accept the flush TD5 indicator repeaters. This was done by making a card template to fit the repeater, then transferring the pattern onto masking tape on the panel (measurements were taken from a Defender to ensure correct location). The holes were made by drilling numerous holes around the perimeter, then filing the cerations out to the smooth sides seen. The fit took 2 or 3 small adjustments, but is now spot on.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to remove the original outers and fit these new panels to the wing boxes tomorrow.

I have laso stripped the underside of bonnet ready for the spare wheel mount kit and black gloss prior to fitting the Noise Killer blanket and refitting the original LR noise panel. It’s completely free of corrosion; much better than I expected, given that it has stood in the garden for 2 years!