Current progress so far
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Where I will be building my diablo
Where most of the important bits come from
The stuff it all bolts to
What makes it go
What makes it pretty
The cars nervous system
Where you sit
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Who really cares?
Stuff that will not fit anywhere else
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Wings



 This is the replacement front wing taped in place to check alignment with the front bumper, boot lid and the door. Its a fairly scary process taking an angle grinder to something you spent more than a few thousand pounds on. I have removed slightly too much material between the windscreen and the front wing, but its pretty easy to rectify.

Now the door is hung correctly, I can glass the new wing in along the windscreen edge, wait for it to dry and then pull the bottom of the wing in to meet where the old one has been cut away.


Here you can see the new wing and its relationship to the rest of the door. Its going to look pretty good when its bonded in.

This panel is apparantly a direct copy of the one supplied by Parallel to real Diablo owners, although I dont expect they had to chop bits out of their car to fit it!


This is the passenger side wing after being bonded in place. The front bumper is taped and clamped to provide a template for the new front wings. If you mounted the wings blind, you would never get the bumper to look right, so its a good idea to make sure you have this part to hand before begining this step.

The passenger side wing is not as nice a fit as the drivers side door, it will need a little body filler and some sanding to even up the gap when the door is shut.


This picture shows the front wing door recess on the drivers side 90% percent complete. There is still a little filling to do and I need to make a hole for the gas ram ball joint at some point. The door is not fitted at this point because its a hell of a lot easier to work on without it being fitted.

The new door hinge for this side should be arriving soon, I will refit the door and take another photo to show how nice this door looks when fitted.


This is the wing on the passenger side. Its not as nice a fit as the other side, but its easy to put right. This image shows the wing before any work, although it is bonded in place. The wing is actually a little thinner than the drivers side, and doesnt line up against the door in the same way. So the first thing I have done is layed an even coat of P40 along the edge in roughly the same profile as the door. Once this is dry, I will sand it back to provide roughly the correct door gap, and then finish it off with ordinairy body filler.


This is the wing after I have built up the initial profile with fibre-glass. Two layers of glass were used to rough out the shape. Then a layer of body filler to make sure it was nearly there.

It does not look like much has actually been added, but a good 5mm of material has been layed down. The wing profile on this side is a little bit smaller than the drivers side. Its not much but it requires careful and slow progress to get it looking right.

The same process will be repeated on the drivers side although a simple skim of filler is all that will be required there.


Here you can see what it looks like part way through the process. The filler and glass fibre has been blended into the wing and the edge brought out to meet the door. Once the filler has been added far enough that it almost touches the door, the edge will be sanded back evenly to provide the required gap between the wing edge and door.

It takes roughly four hours to get it to this stage, and I will probably spend at least double this getting it perfect on each side.


Heres the wing after some more sanding and a splosh of paint. Its a useful thing to give something you are working on a coat of paint, because it lets you see how well you are doing. In my case, I noticed the wing at the bottom kicks out rather than in as on the drivers side. Its no big thing to correct but when paint is applied, things like this become obvious.

You can also see I need to do a little work on defining the flat part of the wing, although the gap all round the door to the wing now looks pretty good. Still more time required to get it looking great though.

I think the art to doing any sort of body work is not to try and do it all in one go. Several thin coats of filler rather than a thick layer are always better. Roughing out the shape is easiest using something designed for the purpose such as fibreglass bridging paste, or 'bodging compound' as its known in the motor trade...
This is the completed wing to door interface, painted in filler primer. It took a lot of work to get it to this state, and the results are well work the effort. I have an even 4mm gap from the top of the wing to the sill, and the door line flows correctly along the top of the wing.

At this stage, the hinge is fixed in its final position, and the door to hinge interface is in its final position. No more adjustment should now be required. I have also glassed the inner wing to the chassis to complete this section of the build, although it still needs to be foam filled.

The door clearance against the top of the wing is pretty close now, and you need to grind away almost half the thickness on the door's leading edge in order for it to clear correctly. You need to account for the thickness of the paint when it is applied so that you do not have any rubbing sections when you come to put it all back together again.