This one crept up on me out of the blue. Last Saturday I picked up a small impact star on the front nearside wing. I thought I'd got this covered with my mudflaps/protectors, but clearly not. This caused me to look under the wing and the impact was aft of the factory fitted protector. I also found a crack in the protector aligned across the width, and part of the protector had slightly come away from the wing. You may recall that Frank had a problem (similar but worse) with Lellow.
Here's the crack:
So I pondered 'a solution'.
I wanted to extend the protector, and secure the crack. It happened that I'd been doing some work outside with Wickes high tack flashing strip.
This stuff looks like lead flashing, but is actually a tarred aluminium 'foil' with an element of plastic about it. I knew it had one hell of a grab, as I've been using it outside on a bit of building fettling. So the only problem was to get the wing clean so that it would stick. The next photo shows what you can achieve with a white spirit soaked rag and a bit of elbow grease. This is bare aluminium, and the impact scars are self-evident.
It isn't wide enough, so two strips are necessary......
But then I'm thinking that the heat from the exhaust might soften the adhesive and it might just come off. So I dug out my Reflect-a-Cool reflective foil, and applied that over the top. I was so enthused by this, that I've extended the foil over the Catalysts, but there's still scope for extending this a bit further forward. I'd been considering a 'cat' heat shield for a while, but hadn't realised that it would be quite so easy to clean off the underwing area.
You can see the extent of the shield so far on this photo:
More on this will follow........
