This cheap repair saves having to spend £450 on a replacement.
The DB7 Windshield cowl is a highly visible part of the car. They are often seen loose at the ends, sitting up with the seal sitting away from the screen. Not only does this look bad, it allows water to drain into the scuttle underneath. The water should drain from there, but if the small hole becomes blocked you have real problems.
The recessed part of the cowl used for the 3 plastic fixings to the bodywork is prone to cracking, especially if the Windscreen is replaced, or the cowl had been removed for any other reason. The thin plastic part of the cowl cracks off where the plastic clips fix the cowl to the body. These cowls have been vacuum formed from a flat sheet, and with a deep recess like this the material is stretched thinner. The square hole is then punched and this operation could be work harding the material. I have seen several DB7’s where the cowl has started to lift and you pop the cap off to find the fixing hole full of black sealant to bodge a repair. This inevitably fails after a few months, and the cowl pops up at the edges.
Failure means that the cowl is left with a large hole.
than the proper fixing.
On closer inspection even the proper central fixing shown in the photograph above was cracked and ready to fail, so it too was removed for repair
A brand new cowl is going to cost you nearly £300, and it needs the rubber seal bonding to it that costs another £60. Fixing this seal needs primer and prep that cost £50 The grills need to be carefully removed from the old cowl and bonded back onto the new one. You can buy a complete new set of grills, but that is going to cost another £100. Preparing and bonding the seal and the grills is not any easy task. With a cost of over £450 it is little wonder that many DB7 owners end up leaving the ends floating.
You can read very detailed instructions on how to remove and replace your cowl with a brand new one on the AMOC forum
https://forum.amoc.org/post/winscreen-cowl-replacement-12252322?&trail=25
Removal of the cowl to carry out this repair is well within the capabilities of any normal DIY person, but you must follow the detailed instructions in the write up above to do this without damaging the cowl.
My only addition to these instructions is that it may be better to drill a hole in the fixing covers to get them out. It is easy to damage the cowl otherwise. New fixings (697505) are available from AML at £10 for five.
Once the cowl is out it can be inspected for repair.
A 3D part was drawn up using the free online 3D design service ‘Vectary.com’. This is a good browser based program that I have used for a few years, and it is suitable for creating simple 3D parts like this. It outputs a standard industry standard STL file that can be used by anyone with a 3D printer to produce the part. It uses less than 10p worth of printing filaments and takes about 10 minutes to print. The part has been carefully designed so that the cap fits flush with the surface of the cowl. That is why I am on version 4 !
The STL file is available to download.
3D stl file
If you download this file , most computers will allow you to view and rotate the part. The file is free to use, under a public license, you can print the part and supply it at cost, but it is not to be sold for a profit.
This part is easy to print on a standard filament 3D printer. Many people have these printers, they are remarkably cheap. If you have never used one before, find someone who has. The three I printed were made in blue PLA filament. (PLA is a standard material for 3D printing). It should normally be printed in black, I used blue filament because a black part is too difficult to photograph. The parts cannot be seen, so the colour or finish are not important. I also intend to paint this repaired cowling as it has some scratches. The repair part has been designed with a large flat area and a few small holes to help bonding, and the PLA material adheres very well to the plastic material of the cowl.
The height of the broken bit will probably need to be reduced with a scalpel so that the repair part fits flush to the surface.
The parts were glued together using Gorilla superglue . As with any glueing process you must roughen both surfaces and apply constant pressure while the bond sets. It is important that the two outside parts are glued with the square hole aligned to the centre of the car NOT along the line of the cowl.
The repaired cowl can now be replaced using the rest of the instructions from the Forum. You will have to remove and replace the double sided tape at the front of the cowl. This is available from AML, but any good trim shop should stock this type of tape. The costs of the repair should be less than £25, plus a few hours of your time.
