Spats/Skirts flying off!

I just heard that my buddy lost a skirt on his 120 OTS. Fortunately, he was on a smaller side road, rather than the Freeway/Motorway, and was able to retrieve it. It is skuffed, but didn’t get run over.

I’m just wondering if this is common? I’m about to take my new-to-me 120 FHC with spats out for it’s first long journey this week; a 5 day trek with spirited driving in the mountains, and motorways. Is there anything I can do to avoid the skirts flying off?

Investigate why it happened, was the latch spring broken, does it not clamp tightly, did he fail to fully turn it, is the latching receiver at the top of the fender bent or missing, are the fork tabs at the bottom damaged or worn or missing, are the bottom pegs bent?

I would say it is unusual, but not unknown. But when it happens we never hear the post-mortem cause, and just hear plans for adding catch wires.
Possibly restorers spend more effort getting them to fit the fenders with a smooth line, and less time on aligning the locking mechanism.
I’ve never been worried about losing mine. They clamp tight, but admittedly do not fit with a perfectly smooth concours quality line.
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…Mine has Washers welded over the Lower Fork Tabs…and I have to ’ spring ’ one side a little disengage it from the Pegs. If the Latch were to fail…I suspect the Spat would flop down and grind on the asphalt. But the Latch is robust and requires more than vibration to rotate…so they seem quite secure to me.

Fred:

One thing I have noticed after owning a steel-wheeled spat car for many years is that both the pins on the rear wing and the recess on the arms on the spat that sit on them can get worn. A quick, cheap solution to assure that your spat is tightly secured and is not moving around (if all of the above mentioned is as it should be) is to slip a piece of plastic tubing over the pin that is of slightly larger diameter to offset the wear. On my car I now have to firmly press the spat down onto the pin which, once locked, doesn’t allow any movement.

I did lose a spat back in the sixties and while not damaging the spat beyond scratching the paint, it made a bit of a mess of the chrome on the budget lock unfortunately. At that time I made some additions and small changes to rectify the issue. Some years ago this was posted on the Forum and should be in the archives. If you cannot locate it PM me and I’ll forward the information to you. By the way, I have not lost a spat since.

Chris.

Yes, I have definitely read this on a previous forum. In that previous discussion it seemed to be something that could happen with (wider) radial tyres going round corners but not (thinner) cross plys. Also someone posted some drawings of a locking mechanism (home made, not a Jaguar part) that he had invented.

When I bought my XK120 in 1970 it came with a note from the original owner, written in 1961, detailing the problems he had with the car. One of the items was “Spats keep falling off”. Indeed, one of the toilet seat covers was deeply scratched and the other one was totally broken off. So this was a problem even when these cars were new. During spirited driving the rear axle can shift sideways and rub on the spats, so you might consider simply removing them. That’s what I do when driving competitively.

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