Morris Minor Owners Club

Replacing rear wings on my traveller and was about to use fibreglass panels but have been advised to go for steel ones. Is there a noticeable difference once painted and on the car.?

I think it depends rather on what you want to achieve and what your budget is. If you paint and fit them properly, 9 out of 10 people will never even notice. They'll look much better than rusty steel ones for sure. I have fibreglass wings on one of my Minors and they fit and look fine. They have lasted for many years and were vastly less expensive than steel ones too. Happy days .
I know that people will say that fibreglass wings are easily damaged but steel wings don't last forever either do they......

Fiberglass wings may be easily damaged but they are easily repaired.

With GRP, the only thing to watch out for is the quality of the moulding, layup and gelcoat. I haven;t bought any for years, but when I did use some I bought the best quakluty that I could find and was very happy with them. I also bought a Traveller where the GRP wings were thin, flexible, crazed and cracked, and didn;t fit very well.

You can rewrite that advice to say: With steel, the only thing to watch out for.... Steel may not crack, but it will rust eventually and will bend if hit. Unless it's going to be a concours car, I'd be quite happy with GRP, particularly when considering Phil's point.

Thanks for the replies guys.
As I had already purchased fibreglass I was having a wee touch of the collywobbles.but feel a lot better now!

MacD wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:24 pm Thanks for the replies guys.
As I had already purchased fibreglass I was having a wee touch of the collywobbles.but feel a lot better now!

I wouldnt worry too much about the fibreglass wings, I have fibreglass on my convertible front and rear and nobody would notice the difference tbh. The only difference I guess is that they are not as strong as the steel wings if you have a bump.

Well with fibreglass you can always thicken them up with more fibreglass on the inside. Many years' ago I bought fibreglass wings and the fronts were really really thin so did just that. Before fitting them I was talking to someone who made fibreglass AC Cobra replicas and he advised using something like diver-suit foam to stop the crazing from road grit pinging the inside causing a star on the outside. Being skint, I used two old foam camping mats cut up. Looked awful on the inside but never got a craze.