Build 60. Rear Wings

The manual tells you to attach the wing and then the relevant guard after, I feel this is counter intuitive and so I decided to fit the guards first, however I did ensure the wing was a good fit first. Where you mounted the radius arms will affect which part of the rear wing you will need to cut, for me I mounted it on the lower boss, as is it an R spec car, and thus the lower hole on the wing. I marked what needed to be cut and then ran outside with goggle/mask etc and used a Dremel to cut it as shown.


Next up I got the fixing from one of the Z packs. I was supplied with one length of rubber to go around the edge of both guards and so I simply cut this in half first to allow lots of excess on each side guard. My technique for this was to roughly mark where the corners were going to be then I took the rubber to the worktop and cut zig zags at the corners to allow it to bend around the guard. Once I did this I simply masking taped the rubber to the guard to check it all fit nicely. I also took the plunge to cut it to size here, although you could do it after fixing it to the wing just the be on the safe side!

Once I had the fit, I then marked each hole with the back of a rivet (and also marked the rubber so I know which way it was mounted on the guard), and then removed the rubber seal once more. I used a 3mm hole punch to then cut out a small hole at each marking, the aim of this was to make the drilling easier, mainly so the rubber didn't spin up with the drill bit.

I then attached the guard and rubber as one piece to the wing with lots of masking tape, making sure that the tape was used only to secure the guard to the wing, so it wasn't wrapped behind onto the rubber so to speak. I then decided that I would drill and secure each hole one by one, working my way around the guard, starting with the straight edge, each time removing one piece of the masking tape. This is a better approach than drilling it all in one go as you can ensure the guard will be nice and flat, and tight, against the wing. I also chose not to use rivets as other people had mentioned they create a "dented" effect at each rivet as you cannot control the pressure, so instead I opted to buy some M3 black button screws and nylocs. I think these make it look much nicer.

The final piece of the puzzle was to attach the wing to the chassis. Again, Caterham supply one long piece of rubber for both wings, so first start by cutting this in half. Next offer it up against the wing, and mark each part where you will need to cut out some rubber to allow the fixings to pass through. I also needed to add a few triangle cut outs to allow it to bend nicely.

I then fixed the wing to the car using the upper two most bolts, but leave them nice and loose so the rubber can "drop in". Once the wing is hanging, I then loosely put in all the other bolts that were required. I even used a tiny bit of copper slip on the washers of the bolts entering the pre threaded sections, although this was a bit faffy and I'm not sure it will make a difference as I don't plan on tightening these bolts up too much.

Once all the bolts were loose, I placed the rubber in the gap and then went about tightening all the bolts up uniformly until the rubber seal was tight and the wing was in place. I decided not to go too tight for fear of cracking the fibre glass!

Timelapse