The CF Bedford Rebuild Begins

Part 21: The rebuild starts - roof spoiler

The roof spoiler has had many versions, or attempts I suppose you could call them.

I like the old flying wing style (up and across) but without the gutters it doesn't quite look right. The bobtail (flicks up) is one I have never liked on cars or vans.

The Bedford roof is higher in the middle than it is at the ends, so what I ended up doing was lifting the rear of the roof to the same height as the middle. Not the entire rear half of the roof, just the sides. I did it this way so could flow the roof spoiler into the roof line and it be nearly invisible from the side but 'there' at the back.

I don't have to put in a high stop brake light but I want to in case they change the rules before I finish the van, and also to stop people running in the back of me. I also need a place to put the reversing camera, but as the back of the van is tapered it may not be as discreet as I would have liked. It could be but line of vision would be effected, either have long distance and height, or short distance and depth - right behind van, which is preferred.

I started making square pockets for the spoiler to sit into, then thought it's just a water trap so went with a 45 degree idea, which you see in this photo. Is a bad photo, sorry, but if you look at the end of the plate you can see how much I have lifted the roof.
The idea was there but I was having trouble getting the reserving camera to fit into this concept and for some reason I wanted the back of the spoiler to be in line with the back of the van. What was I thinking? It's a spoiler it's meant to stick out!

As I pushed the roof spoiler back the ends became harder to blend in. I have a 3-way bend, in a small area to work to, or do I.
To date I have made/cut out/trimmed/modified several versions of the corners. They look good done with cardboard but tacked in with steel don't look the same. My mind just isn't connecting lately. If I think about it too much (which I've been doing) I tend to stuff it up, I need to just do it without thinking. I know sounds weird but it's like when you paint a house, well prepping a house (sanding), is a long boring horrible job because you're thinking about it, turn off the thoughts and you just do it and the job gets done quickly and well - usually.

I started with a single mount in the middle, as the spoiler was too long not to have any center support. This was just one of those ideas that didn't have a lot of thought to go into it, well it did but was more concerned about the sides and trying to get the reversing cam do-able. I ended up with (below right) it totally different but this wasn't to be the end of it. This "thing" on the end is the reversing camera housing, but I still needed to adapt the high stoplight either into that mount or mount it in the actual roof spoiler.

The spoiler has to be removable so it can be painted under and cleaned or whatever.
The next mission was mounting the high stoplight (LED), because the camera is quite long and the light has some depth and I didn't want the roof spoiler to become a landing strip for light aircraft or birds I tried to keep it within the body dimensions - which I managed to.

I made up a square(ish) box to hold the light then measured, cut and trim the reserving cam mount until I had a couple of millimetres between the cam and light.
The cam is about 5 millimetres above the spoiler height but there is no way of avoiding that, so will make it into a feature. *add rolling eyes icon here hehe*

I originally had the high stop light mounted on the reversing cam mount and started making the spoiler to suit but with the center mount it was going to be to gappy (gappy - it's a word now :p). I cut the light housing off and mounted it in the spoiler, problem being the high stop light needed an extra 5mm than what the spoiler would give, so that feature I mentioned above became a reality.

I think my biggest problem doing this was I was thinking high tech when simple is often the better method.

Above you can see the center of the roof is dropped down, well actually the sides have been lifted up. To the left is a shot from the back. In some ways I wish I had a window in the back so wouldn't need the spoiler, the (bad) photo doesn't do it justice as it does blend in quite well, but looking at the back it is looking a bit bottom heavy so am thinking of lifting the tail lights above the body line, or at least on the body line.