1960 TR3A Restoration - Retrofitting aeroscreens

I have always liked the look of the sidescreen cars with aeroscreens. I liked the idea that you could drive to the race track, slide off the windshield, have a day of racing with the aeroscreens and then refit the windshield for the drive home.

My post 60K TR3A had no provision for aeroscreens so I decided it would be a good time to sort this out while I had the tub stripped down and in primer.

Around this time Paul "Pinky" White and his very understanding wife Tors posted pictures of their trip to Wales, in the rain, using just the aeroscreens and I was hooked. The header picture for this post is Pinky in his full aeroscreen gear. Thanks for the picture Pink.

I bought a set of Brooklands repro aeroscreens from Moss but they come with pedestals that are attached to the scuttle with sheet metal screws. That did not appeal to me so I decided to replicate the factory attachments

My buddy John (he is helping me with the painting process also) has a TR2 so I took some measurements of the aeroscreen mounts on his TR2 and then figured out where I needed to put the holes in the scuttle. The repro screens are narrower than the originals so you can't use the exact same hole positions.

I welded cage nuts to some 2x2 inch plate for the inner mounts and the cage nuts for the outer mounts were welded to a brace that is already under the scuttle for the bonnet attachment. You can see those cage nuts in place in the image below.

The cage nuts and plates are all plug welded, not that pretty since I was doing it upside down under the scuttle but good enough for this purpose.

In the TR Register forum Peter Wigglesworth was advertising his aeroscreen mounts so I got a set from him and they worked very well. Later on Peter improved his mounts and created a mount that is very similar to the original so I got a set of those. These new mounts are designed for the factory holes so I had to modify them slightly by machining about an eighth of an inch off the inner surfaces. Now they fit the repro screens and my holes perfectly. In this picture I'm just using regular bolts but the final installation will use the factory chromed dome-headed bolts.

One final modification that I plan to make is to add a channel along the bottom of the repro screens to take a rubber seal to bridge the gap between the bottom of the screen and the scuttle as you see in Pinky's picture.

I don't know that I will be driving this car in the rain with just the aeroscreen but I will look forward to donning the gear and getting out on our local back roads when this project is finished.