The sump - fortunately - was not significantly harmed (it lost a couple of cooling fins, but no leaks), but the resulting shock obviously moved the engine and gearbox, which had unfortunate consequences for the gear linkage. The gearstick pivots in an arm which runs between the gearbox and the chassis, for the purpose of providing a suitable pivot point - unfortunately, it doesn't have much ability to move and absorb impact, so it snapped instead. I'm going to try and find a way to add some rubber bushing to protect it in future.
Broken one on the left. Note (suspicious) old weld at the top.
Fortunately the local dealer was able to get one in for the next day for only £13, so not a massive problem. I left the car at work overnight and returned, with tools and parts, on Saturday to fix it.
It's interesting to note that the old arm had already been welded by the previous owner, so I wonder if it had snapped in a similar impact before, which might have weakened it?
Anyway, car fixed, I drove home in it with no problems... until the bracket holding a front cycle wing on snapped. Peter had previously mentioned that he'd seen failures with these brackets, but unfortunately he'd just given me some advice on welding it up to make it stronger, which I hadn't got round to doing. The cycle wing survived, but the car is now off the road until I get the brackets reinforced. Fortunately Peter said he could fit the welding in for me before he's off on holiday, so this should be sorted pretty soon.
This happened.
Causing this.
I took advantage of having the car not-really-drivable (no cycle wings at the front means a face full of gravel) to get on with the windscreen today. After an awful lot of faffing about bending and trimming the frame, and trying to bend the supporting brackets (which didn't want to bend on account of being incredibly strong), I managed to get the windscreen fitted in a reasonably neat way. It's not perfect - I over-trimmed the bottom part of the frame, leaving a few mm gap to the vertical part, and the supporting brackets aren't bent exactly as I would have liked, but from a distance it looks good.
The rubber still needs trimming.
Lots of Ackerman. Front numberplate is much too big... it could easily break and fall off. So easily.
The height of the screen seems about right, when sat in the driver's seat. My only concern is that the white scuttle is going to reflect quite badly - I may need to paint it black or something - but I will need to drive it a bit first to see if this will really be a significant issue. Anyway, this should allow me to drive without needing a helmet, which will be a nice improvement.
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