The Story of a Kit Car Build

Windscreen: Part II

After the first fitting of my windscreen I’d noticed that there was a lot of movement of the glass and I wanted to do something about it when final fitting. There’s a couple of small threaded holes in the top and bottom chrome frames, I’m assuming they’re for the rear view mirror to fit to on a round bar like MG’s do, but as I have to conform to the SVA rules I’ll probably have to come up with another style of mirror. So I decided to use the lower holes to make a bracket to help stop the excessive movement. After a lot of prototypes I finally got what I wanted (see pic) but a thought came to mind about bolting it tight to the scuttle. What if there was enough movement to cause problems with stress in the glass which could actually break it? I might be being over cautious, but is the fibreglass body stiff enough to handle it?

Windscreen steady plate
Windscreen steady plate

So now I had to come up with some way of holding the screen down without being too rigid. Here’s where the Internet comes in. I put the question to the COBRA owners’ club site knowing that they use a similar type of screen. I got an answer that seemed to make sense, that was to thread the bolt through the bracket I’d made and the scuttle of the body and then tighten up the nut with a spring under it to take up any tension and allow for any scuttle shake that may occur. So although the hole in the bracket is the correct size for the bolt, the hole in the scuttle is bigger to allow movement in any direction. Brilliant! At least the theory is. However, in practise it might not be. I can only wait and see.