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Having gone through the pain of the tubular wing stays breaking on my Sportster and now finally receiving the new solid replacements from Marlin, I find on a trial fitting today that they have been built wrongly. The clearance at the front is far too big ( between the bracket and the tyre ). Its 6 cm. Plus the clearance at the rear end is practically touching the wheel. It will have to go back with accompanying pics to show the problem.
Has anyone else had to buy replacement wing stays and did they fit ?
Although not answering your question, I came across these photos of the hybrid Cabrio/Sportster, and wondered if the wing fixing might be of interest. It will almost certainly be a Ford front suspension.
Thanks Mike, I think they look more complicated than the one supplied from Marlin. So will stick with the supplied type from Marlin. But I will have to send them back for modification. I would post a pic, but haven't figured out how to attach one to a message yet.
Hi Dennis,
the easiest way to display photo's on the forum is to get a Flickr or Photobucket account. (I think they are free up to a certain limit of photo's).
In the meantime, email them to me and I will post them for you.
If your mounting points are fixed or welded to your uprights, then maybe you will have to 'form' the wing stays yourself to suit your wheels?
Thanks Peter, I have just looked at and created a Flicker acccount so hopefully the pics will be viewable from this link.
The mounting points are not what I would call fixed, they are moveable up and down the round strut. In fact with everyones advice earlier in the year, I had made the flat plate with its four holes for the two U clamps, fixing that solved my U clamp breaking problem.
The new stays are not a problem where they clamp to the strut, its a problem as can be seen in the pics with the clearance to the wheel.
In Flickr....
Click the 'Share' button...
then click the the 'Grab the HTML/BBCode'
then click the 'BBCode' radio button...and select the size you want.
then copy and paste the code in the box into your Madabout message box.
This creates a picture that people can click and go to your Flickr site. You can edit the code to remove the text if you want to after you've pasted it in the Madabout message box.
You can test it works by trying 'Preview Post' in Madabout
Thank you Peter, it obviously works. Why do these IT guru's make it so difficult, why can it not be as simple as copy and paste or attach a file like an email. Worse than building a car.
But at least you can now see my problem. Its a case of calling Terry this morning and sending them back for modification.
But my original question was has anyone else experienced this ?
Yes, identical to yours Jason, but don,t know if you tried swopping them but it does not work. I tried it.
Now back with DHL to deliver to Marlin after the phone call of course.
I was asked by Terry to send my undamaged tubular wing stay to them so that they could manufacture my new solid stays. This I did.
I get a call from Mark today to say that upon receipt of my phone call today they compared my old one with a new one and found that the small flat plate ( with the fixing holes in ) that holds the stay to the strut is actually about 18mm further along the circular solid stay bar than their standard one. Hence why my new one does not fit.
No idea why mine would be different to everybody elses but thats Marks explanation.
However, he is going to modify it so it should fit when I get it back.
One thing I did not check was if the the exisiting holes in the mud guards will actually line up to fit in the new stays. Might be more work to do. Mmmm.
I wonder if yours were modified when your car was built?
A picture of your front suspension would be interesting to compare, as I can't imagine how the centre of your upright could be 18mm adrift. Possibly your top wishbones are on upside down.
Modified wing stays arrived back today and this time they fit fine. Unfortunately as I suspected, the holes do not line up with the holes on the fibreglass mud guards and the guards do not sit sit correctly, but hey ho the stays are fine. Maybe have to buy some new mud guards as well.
But on an upbeat note...............at least the wing stays will not break now.
Thanks Jason.
I posted without thinking really. A few years ago I bought a crashed small single seat aircraft to repair and get flying again which involved extensive fibreglass repair to the cowling. Took me many weeks of gradually building it up then sanding and filling yet again To eventually get a perfect cowling. Also had to rebuild the wings. But it all went well and I flew it eighteen months later.
So a couple of small holes should not pose much of a problem.
So thanks for putting me in the right direction.
