Ciao, I have been pondering for quite a time whether or not I should create a profile here and today I finally decide to do so. Not quite sure this is the section to post in but I would like to do follow ups. I’m in the middle of restoring my very early model FC, now the chassis is getting a full repaint, and whilst it is away I decide to tackle one of bigger problems of this car, and it is the duckbill, which is sadly the only remnant (aside from the plastic screw grommets) of the aero package. As my luck would have it, the duckbill is rusted through and through. After searching the whole internet, and finding out that these are as precious as diamonds, and also that my model does not have the third high mount brake light thus also not featuring the cutout for it, decided on trying to restore it. And naturally, I don’t know where to begin, so my question is, whether there is anybody who did or at least tried to do the same, or if anybody has an idea how could I tackle this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated, Thanks Erik

 

How is the duckbill rusted? I have had a couple sport duckbills, have one currently on my FC and they’ve all been made out of foam. I’m not sure how the studs in the underside are inserted, I don’t believe there is much metal in it because they are flexible.

Pics would be helpful here because I am confused, which is not hard to achieve 😂

 

Sorry for being hard to follow, I am quite a chaotic person myself
Anyway, that is what I thought too, but apparently and according to my findings last weekend, there is a thin metal sheet (approximately 0.5mm, didn’t measure it though)
Here are some pictures I took while I was performing the surgery on my rusted duckbill.

These pictures are before I began to carve out the metal




Just if somebody wondered what the thickness but it is not universal there are parts of this “blanket” which are thinner

Here are details on how the sheet is fused with the foam

Detail no.2


Here is a close up on the edge

Close up on the middle section (above the cutout for third brake light) which is reinforced and goes farther into the foam part than at the sides

 

Oh wow, I’ve never seen that before. I’m not sure how you could go about repairing that, and I’d say finding another without the center light cutout will be difficult.

Possibly could make a mold of it and recreate it in fiberglass.

 

Yeah that is basically the conclusion I reached. I have been searching the internet for replacement. I found many listings on eBay, but when I reached out to the seller whether a custom order (no 3rd brake light cutout) would be possible, I either got no response or they said it wasn’t possible. Then I found a website that sells carbon fibre accessories for Rx-7s, reached out and they told me that they would fulfill my request but it would be made of FRP. So luckily, I won’t have to spend more of my time doing this entirely by myself.

Maybe rename this thread “OEM duckbill teardown” or something along these lines, so as not to confuse anyone, maybe someone someday might find my findings useful