Speedster

Spent some time today chipping away at fitting the windscreen. The height of the screen frame needed to be cut down as it was still too high, so I carefully measured everything out and trimmed some more off of it. I also re-profiled the sides to fit the supports.

With the screen surround at the right height I could now have a go at fitting everything together and seeing how it fitted on to the car. So with the rubbers trimmed down and fitted in to the frame, along with the screen I attempted to fit it.

The correct way to fit the screen is to bolt the uprights to the frame and then drop the entire completed assembly into the mounting holes on the cowl. My attempt was sightly different as the posts were already mounted to the car as I have yet to establish the correct location for the post to frame mounting holes.

As with all Speedster windshield frame installations, everything needs to be fitted / trimmed / whittled to suit the car as they are all different. This is especially true on my car. So the plan was to check the fit and then make any final adjustments before marking out the mounting holes.

The installation was okay, I noted that the frame still needed some adjustments here and there, and the profile, whilst 110% better then before, could still do with lowering in the centre. It needs to come down about an inch, which could probably be done with the tensioner. I managed to press it down by hand and get it to sit reasonably good. However, by far the worst part was that there was rather a large gap below the screen at the centre.

The gap, it seems, is due to the angle of the support posts, they appear to be raked too far backwards, which is something that has been on my mind since installing them. I loosened the posts off and allowed the screen to tilt forwards a little and the gap at the bottom closed up almost completely.

So what to do?

I compared the posts with the set that came with the car. These are definitely a little more 'upright', although considerably longer in length. The cowl itself is not the issue as it is flat, as it should be. It is possible of course that it is partially due to the glass, I'm not sure what dimensions a speedster screen should be, but a longer glass would also reduce the issue. The profile of the screen surround also affects the screen angle a little too, as rotating the posts changes their inclination and the surround directly influences the orientation of the posts.

There's not too many options available to me. There's no adjustment as such, everything kind of bolts down until it is tight against the cowl. There's a little adjustment on the centre support rod, which is (I am led to believe) a common way to pull the centre of the screen surround down, but no real way to tilt the screen forwards.

I think I need to re-profile the bottom of the upright supports to bring the top of the screen forwards and twist the surround a little to align it better. This seems to be the only option available to me. Fortunately I have a spare set of screen support posts, albeit they are slightly different. I'm not even really sure they are 'Porsche' parts, there's every likelihood that they are from something like an MG.

I guess before I do that I need to spend some time looking at photos of other cars and see if I can't figure it out.