Mounting front mudguards Rtc special

[AustinWood]

Basically anything that vibrates will break as I found with RK headlight brackets.
A jury-rigged repair at the Scottish Austin Seven weekend in Aberfeldy.
Used a discarded child's wellington boot found in the skip.

   

   

[Duncan Grimmond]

Necessity deign the mother of invention as ever! I'll look through my pics to see if I can find any of my jury-rigged roadside repairs. Anyone want to start a new thread on the theme?
Perhaps cable ties as a replacement for the essential stout wire in the toolkit?

[Stuart Giles]

I discovered that most tubing fails unless it is solid drawn no welded seam material as used for hydraulic/pneumatic applications.it generally has a thicker wall and if the end is split to take a welded-in strip  the ends last a bit longer.
Vibration cannot be " welded out" as the moment of the vibrating mudguard with the motion of the axle is inevitable. I've been using 15 mm tubing 1.5 thick wall with some success  but failure is almost inevitable in my experience, most often on the attached 4mm strip.

After having a mudguard bracket failure or two in my early years of ownership of my special, I made these mudguard stays from 5/8" x 16 SWG CDS tube. The  plate that bolts to the backplate is brazed to the tube. at the top I have used 5/32 thickness steel Guage Plate which is Nickel Bronze welded to the tube instead of the mild steel strip which had previously failed, as per Duncan's experience. These brackets have been in place since the mid 1980s and haven't failed yet.

[Duncan Grimmond]

That's interesting. I did consider brazing as I prefer it to welding, it seems to do less damage to the structure of the metal. When I get round to fitting the guards to the stays I've made in CDS tube ill braze the formed supports to them.