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Many years ago, when I did the bodywork restoration on my Box Saloon, I had new wheel arches fitted. To my shame, I never got round to fitting the upholstery covers. I recall that as original (as my car was at the time) they were affixed by small pins tacking the covers onto ply strips that were rivitted(?) to the wheel arch. These, of course, are now missing.
How have people dealt with this? I'm wondering if I should refit the ply tacking strips (either by rivit or adhesive such as silicone) or just leave the out and glue the edges of the covers to the metal. I will be replacing the horse hair padding that was originally fitted with a thin layer of polyester wadding I have.
Your thoughts and experiences would be gratefully received..
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Our Ruby ones are glued on, I'm not sure if that is correct but it has worked perfectly well.
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Thanks, Peter, I felt that had to be the common sense answer but wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything..
Hugh
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Location: queensland
Rather than silicone or similar, use fast grabbing contact . Apply the cover with a little tension to stretch the stitching (if any?), also the fabric and flatten the wadding. regards
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Location: Darkest Bedfordshire
Watching with interest.
I'm afraid I don't know the answer Hugh - mine are glued on too but deffo not original.
Nice to follow original scheme wherever poss, but any fixing which perforates the wheel arch is surely just another route for water to get in...
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Location: Dunchurch, Warwickshire
I've just taken mine off so that I could get at the nuts holding the rear wings on. They were also glued on.
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Location: Towcester
Car type: Box & Special
07-01-2024, 10:19 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-01-2024, 10:21 AM by Colin Cooke.)
Really useful thread. It is something I will have to do some time soon (hopefully).
When our Box was stripped, the covers were glued on - no wadding was used.
Regards,
Colin
ps. There wasn't much of a wheelarch left - I think the glue was holding them together!
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Location: Brecon
Car type: 1932 4-seat Tourer, 1925 Pram Hood Chummy
As far as 1932-34 Tourers and saloons are concerned, the 4 or 5 original cars that I have had the opportunity to examine closely have all had the ply strips attached to the wheel arches using 3 or 4 bifurcated rivets on each strip (2 on the lower short piece). I doubt that a satisfactory glue would have been available in the early 1930s. If you have the original wheel arches you should be able to find the original 1/8th inch rivet holes.
I used bifurcated rivets on my AH Tourer - this method is cheap, clean, very easy and satisfying to do, and unlikely to fail!
The original "padding" was a thin layer of wadding - the sort of stuff that was made from cotton waste. If you want to replicate the look and feel of the original then I would suggest using the thinnest cotton felt upholsterer's wadding covered with the thinnest non-stretch linen-backed rexine.
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I wasn't going to drill holes in the wheel arches for the rivets to hold the plywood strips on to which the trim was tacked, I just used Evostic being careful not to cover the wing bolts.
