Wheel arches on 1939 Lanchester La11

[sp250boy]

Guy,
I am in in the process of fitting the wheel arches to my La11, which are just screwed in place to the ash frame.

Whilst I can just screw them in place; is there a better way to secure them?

The near side arch has a thousand holes drilled as clearly the ash frame rotted over the years.

I am just thinking that it would be better to secure the arches with good mechanical fixing, rather than wood screws into an ash frame.


Thanks any advance

[ron.rsp]

If your ash is sound screwed as original should be just fine, if you have many old screw holes just fill them up.
I use cocktail sticks for this they have a very sharp point and you can break into two and fill the old hole use
a drop of wood glue on them and tap in place, let them dry then cut off to size. This will then give you a sound
surface to work with new screws. I do not think there would be any other way to do the job my old inner wings
also had some rivets into metal fixing points I replace them with simple machine screws.

Ron.

[JT7196]

Hi Steve, there should be a mechanical
fixing at the lower front end of the Inner Wheel Arch, this is in the form of a large Rivet that secures the Inner Arch to the Chassis.
Having drilled out the Rivet and repaired the inner Arch, I re-secured the the Arch using a Huck Bolt , fortunately I was
able to borrow the Huck Bolt Gun and some fixings from a friend who owned a Body shop.
Unless you are actually replacing the whole Wooden Arch section, I would recommend liberally coating the original with some wood hardener .
cheers Al

[sp250boy]

Hi Al,
any chance of a picture of the mechanical fixing/rivet that you mentioned.

I have decided to fix the rear wings with stainless Steel wood/metals dowel fixings. As you know its difficult removing screws from the ash frame, so should help going forward.

The car is two weeks away from painting

Best Regards

[JT7196]

Hi Steve, here are a couple pictures of parts that are similar to the ones that I used to secure the Inner Rear Wheel Arch in position, I found these on e-Bay, but of course you would still need to obtain the Riveting Gun , maybe you have access to a Body shop ??
You did ask for a photo of my car, but in reality, all that you will see is the Head of the Huck Bolt ,which looks exactly as original ( Well you know me, it just Had to look right !!)
Just make sure the the “Collar” is on the inside .

Hope this helps , cheers Al

[saratim]

To secure the inner rear wheel arch in the position I used the Pan Head Screws. I know you were looking for the more definite option but here’s the thing you can also use the pop rivets to avoid any issue of corrosion too. At one point the screw will expose the bare metal too.
So using a pop rivet is a better option as they form anti-corrosion protection to the wheel arches.

[JT7196]

Hi, there were Two reasons for using the above type of fixings, primarily for originality, secondly, because they were available in my mates Body shop !
But no real reason why you shouldn’t use any other type of fixing really, just make sure that you you decent quality fixings .

Cheers Al