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Post by valhalla on Dec 4, 2019 0:41:34 GMT 1
Well, nothing done in the workshop today. I wasn't expecting much, and that is what I achieved! I have spent most of the day running the shop and doing the admin sufficient to keep an uncaring government and HMRC from my door..... So I'm not counting today as one of my advent calendar days in the workshop!
One more consignment of parts turned-up at lunchtime (although I have yet to fit a single new part) which was the new rear air suspension "bags" and their clips to hold them to the chassis spring-mounts. These are a consumable item, around a 5-year lifetime or so, and it makes no sense not to change them whilst the overhaul is going-ahead; they are cheap compared to a burned-out compressor unit because the bags have gone porous or burst.
I have to work-out a way of recovering the suspension height sensors, or more specifically the arm and their lower balljoints to the rear trailing arms. These always split their lower joints with corrosion exploding the plastic eye at the bottom of the arm, and the arms are a complete assembly with the (expensive) sensors, so not an option for me... I'm hoping to find some replacement joints around the workshop that I can interpose onto the bottoms of the rods - I'm sure that something will jump out off the shelves.
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Post by valhalla on Dec 4, 2019 23:52:10 GMT 1
A reasonable run in the workshop today. Overall, the programme is running about 1.5days behind where I wanted to be, so I'm going to have to make some time up at night.
The chassis is now slung as of last thing this evening, and the front axle is out of the way;
I'm struggling with every fixing - where it is inside an assembly, it's like brand new, but all the heads are like minature iron pyramids, so perfectly good fixings are having to be cut-off each time.
The chassis slinging-points are usually the four outriggers for the sill body-mounts, but in the case of the rear ones, there wasn't anything left, and the ends had to be cut off anyway, so I'm resorting to using the rear damper upper fixings brackets, which appear to be the only solid bits of metal left behind the front bumper.
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Post by valhalla on Dec 6, 2019 0:56:07 GMT 1
Day_8 in the workshop, and it's starting to become Groundhog Day. One rusted fixing after another, just a serial episode of undersized sockets being hammered onto what is left of the fixing heads, and hoping the impact gun does not grind-off what is left of the head each time...
I had to play the "safety card" and just get the front end down on the floor; the front sling points were really a bit lacy for my own good, and once the axles were out of the way, there was little reason to keep the front of the chassis in the air.
I have just the fuel tank undertray and the rear towing drop-plate, etc. to remove tomorrow morning, then the old chassis is out. I will probably cut it up in-situ, to save having to fire the digger up. Top be frank, there isn't a lot to cut away; this is the worst Landrover chassis I have ever worked-on, and that includes some of the terrible Series_III chassis that I used to come across in the 1980's!!! This really is totally and utterly inept as a structural framework, and only the body strength was keeping this all straight. It explains the crack in the windscreen, which I elected to deal-with once the vehicle is road-legal again (it isn't an MoT failure, yet) as there would be no good throwing good money after bad.
This is what was left of the chassis after I switched the air-needle-gun off this afternoon;
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Post by sorted on Dec 6, 2019 8:02:02 GMT 1
Frankly I don’t know how you do it, I would have given up on getting anything off that chassis ages ago. Especially with the deadline you have set yourself.
I salute you sir!
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Post by valhalla on Dec 6, 2019 13:02:12 GMT 1
Frankly I don’t know how you do it, I would have given up on getting anything off that chassis ages ago. Especially with the deadline you have set yourself.I salute you sir! Ah yes, the deadline...... Truthfully-speaking, that is starting to weight on my mind a bit......
The order consignments are slowing down a little (as we get closer to Christmas, and as I expected) but there are a couple now that really do need to be here and on the floor for me to make any real progress next week. I have had to back-order some parts, with an additional lead-time of around a week, so I'm hoping to see them by Tuesday next week.
The wheels and tyres have gone away to be re-shod on a proper machine - I need these to be right, as I am going to be towing close to the maximum GTW of this vehicle. That means the axles are stuck where they are, and there is only so much refurb that they need. Until they are mobile, there's no point going mad with the new chassis, as it will not be mobile without the wheels either.
There is a lot of boring cleaning-up, painting, welding (could be interesting on one part of the passenger footwell......) and plastering with wax on those parts not accessible once the body is down. Fun for all the family!
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Post by valhalla on Dec 7, 2019 0:15:27 GMT 1
Day_9 in the workshop, and today has been a day of mixed emotions; anger alternating with sorrow......
The final rusted fixings were removed, one way or another, for the fuel tank cradle and all the towing drop-plate gear, plus a few other little brackets. Some eigit has managed to weld a patch near the ROS chassis leg onto the RH drop-plate support leg back to the chassis, so that had to be cut-away carefully.
Having craned the chassis out in one piece, I was left with a wheelbarrow full of "debris" to use a politer verancular;
Then it was time to inspect the main body unit, and determine just how much time I need to allocate to the repair of the front wheelarches. The answer was, "Lots". The corrosion is much worse than I had anticipated, as it has run back from the inner wing area, all the way into the bulkhead, and that's a problem; behind the corrosion is most of the "brains" for the car, so also loads of wiring as well. That now all has to be stripped-out in order to permit a proper welded repair, not least that the footwell has gone locally around the body mount at the bottom as well, so the carpet has got to be lifted.
It looks pretty bad (from the perspective of the FNS hub), but the big issue is access, as the body is wedged between the 2-post ramp posts, so no easy ingress/egress through the FNS door to get seat, dash, and carpet out of the way.
To compensate a bit, the rear of the car is basically fine (normally they are shot around the rear wheelarches) and only very localised welding is need near the front sill mounts to re-box the front of the sill apertures, otherwise the car looks fairly new!! The offside wheelarch is also a lot better, and if I don't poke my needle-gun around too hard, I may get away with a simple strip of steel to make good the corrosion on the circumference of the inner wheelarch, for about 1/2 its arc.
All this is going to make the schedule very, very tight, so I had better hope that I don't run out of MiG steel wire or shielding gas in the next week.....
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remmington
Apprentice
Owns Spark Eroder
Posts: 4,966
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Post by remmington on Dec 7, 2019 15:50:25 GMT 1
Dear Santa...
Please may I have?
8x4 sheet of 20gauge cold rolled mild steel. 15kg roll of 0.6 A18 wire W size bottle of 5% Argoshield Lite 2.5ltrs grey Dunlop seam sealer Endless cans of black waxoil and Tetra Schutz A few high quality 3M Flapdiscs (cheap ones are pooh and clog up). Yours - "the little boy in Scotland" - (who has been good all year!)
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Post by rhyds on Dec 7, 2019 23:06:15 GMT 1
Dear Santa...
Please may I have?
8x4 sheet of 20gauge cold rolled mild steel. 15kg roll of 0.6 A18 wire W size bottle of 5% Argoshield Lite 2.5ltrs grey Dunlop seam sealer Endless cans of black waxoil and Tetra Schutz A few high quality 3M Flapdiscs (cheap ones are pooh and clog up). Yours - "the little boy in Scotland" - (who has been good all year!) Either that or one of us is going to have to load the lot in to a van and head up there! (With a return load of Talisker...)
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Post by valhalla on Dec 7, 2019 23:41:52 GMT 1
Either that or one of us is going to have to load the lot in to a van and head up there! (With a return load of Talisker...) You're welcome to visit any time. My friend has already been warned that this Christmas might not exactly be spent on old Rovers, just old Landrovers.
All visitors welcome, but please declare if you can panel-beat or fabricate, or weld, before crossing the threshold.......
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Post by valhalla on Dec 8, 2019 0:08:33 GMT 1
Day_10 in the workshop was a short one; I couldn't get started until 2:30pm, as I needed to be elsewhere until then.
Given the situation above, I dedicated the time to clearing all the components and wiring from the nearside of the engine-bay, then clearing what I could from the nearside of the interior. This was not as easy as it might normally be; the doors only open a fraction at the front of the car, due to the posts of the 2-poster! I got the passenger seat out through the rear door......complete with (electric) seat-slides fully locked the wrong way to allow this easily.
The job in-hand looks worse now, but having got the area ready for metal cleaning and cutting, it starts to make sense. One thing is going to be an utter pain; the corrosion extends to the edge of the floorpan that bears the accoustic pads that are adhered to the metal, so they are bound to catch fire within a few seconds of welding. I have the possibility of using Mrs. Valhalla as "lookout" tomorrow, but Monday could be a problem. I'm going to try removing what I can with a hot-air gun, but this sort of repair always turns-out to be difficult, not least that I must not allow anything to flame inside the car - the wiring is still close, but the upper dash is not that far away either. With the vehicle immobilised on the ramps, fire is not an option at this stage.
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Post by sorted on Dec 8, 2019 10:36:38 GMT 1
That sounds a right pain, like some of the weird bits I’ve had to make where multi-layer panels join on the Stag. Advantage I had of course was a fully stripped shell on a rollover jig so I had premium access. And I stripped all the underseal and interior sound deadening fully out. Oh and I had no time pressure! That project has been on hold since my last post on here as it was made clear I had a number of jobs to complete in the house before we have people to stay at Christmas, including a refurb of the downstairs bathroom I have just finished. It will resume after New Year.
Once it’s back on the road I hope to do a bit of a road trip and would like to come up your way for a few days (currently I live near Doncaster but I do get to Edinburgh sometimes with work so aim to combine). May need to rejet the carb first though to try and improve on 18mpg- which may conflict with the fast road cam I have just bought for it....oh well!
Sorry I won’t be in time to help with this project Valhalla, but if you’re up for the visit I’m happy to spend a day or 2 helping on something else- there’s little I can’t do mechanically / bodywork but not marvellous on more modern electrics- Mrs Sorted’s 56 plate Astra is the newest I usually work on!
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Post by valhalla on Dec 9, 2019 1:00:30 GMT 1
Day_11 in the workshop, a nominally quiet one on the Sabbath, but plenty of grinding action to drown-out the music....
Well, I spent the first part of the day actually doing a bit more cleaning-up and making some better access. The Disco2, like its predecessors, has a "false pedal box panel" that can be unbolted easily. It is right above the section that is most in need of repair, but more significantly, it traps a dry foam seal under itself, so for fire-safety, it had to come out. When I say it unbolts easily, I mean on every other Disco2 out there.
Anyway, having snapped-off three of the flange screw securing the panel, despite being very careful to work the screws out back-and-forth in stages, I got it all out, and the view through the glovebox aperture shows the extent of the corrosion to be repaired;
I realised that because I'm being economical with the heater oil at the moment (the workshop is bareable as it stands when I'm metalworking) and I can see my breath, the accoustic pads were as brittle as could be, so with a scraper and my air-scraper tools, I was able to chip almost all of it away, and plenty of clearance around all the holes.
The target for today was to deal with the lowest damage on the footwell, below and inside the body mount brackets. I achieved one part of that target by this evening;
Because the welder is not the happiest tool in the workshop at the moment, I suspect because a) the wire is rusted from all the condensation this weekend b) the gas bottle is very cold c) the wire-feed is erratic this last year or so, I had to dolly the peaks off the weld-beads with a flap-wheel last thing tonight, but overall it has stuck well, and ought to seam-seal easily when the time arrives. Oddly enough, considering that this job is identical to classic RangeRover repairs, the metal welds really well, so even though the design of this bodywork has not moved-on in 30years, the quality of the metal has!!!
The main thing so far - No Fires ......
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Post by valhalla on Dec 10, 2019 0:25:35 GMT 1
Day_12 in the workshop.
I'm ready to wheel the welder out of the workshop and set light to it. Except I cannot afford to.....
I spent much too long on domestic duties this morning - a long story of trying to run a shop in the background with long-term sickness on one of the staff - and I had a fair bit of automotive admin to deal-with after that. Then the time just seemed to fly whilst I spent hour after hour doing further cutting-out, cleaning-back, and then fabrication of repair sections.
I eventually got most of the welding of the main footwell repair section completed by 8:30pm, and this is the quick bit, the actual welding. Except that the quality of the welds has plummeted overnight, despite all my cleaning-up of the steel, and the results look like snot. I'm trying to figure out why, right now, so I haven't finished that section off, but hopefully it will come right tomorrow, as I need to get the top bead really, really neat to fit just beneath the dummy-footwell panel that bolts just next to the repair.
With all the other cleaning I have done, I'm hoping to get onto the wheelarch by tomorrow evening. Things are definitely slipping right now.....not helped by a welder that seems to be possessed by daemons.
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Post by sorted on Dec 10, 2019 15:06:52 GMT 1
I know that pain well. In my case the cruddy wire I had left in since last use caused the liner to clog up and nothing I did would give a smooth wire feed.
New liner and fresh reel of wire had it good as new, so I keep these as spares now!
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Post by valhalla on Dec 10, 2019 23:15:42 GMT 1
Day_13 in the workshop, and some luck for once.
Remmington got me thinking about the gas-supply on the welder, and in an attempt to prove/disprove whether the machine was happier when the whole lot was warm (rather than freezing cold) I parked the machine in front of the workshop heater, and turned the wick up on the fuel. After an hour, the gas bottle was no longer cold to touch, but more importantly, the welder was given another lease of life - a massive improvement since yesterday.
As of this evening, all the footwell and wheelarch repairs to the FNS of the car are completed;
There's a bit of tidying required to some of the seams, enevitably so with the sort of welding I have had to do, but basically I can move on to the other areas that need repair tomorrow morning, once again cranking the workshop heater up to warm it all. Once everything is finished, I'll do the seam-sealing in one go (hence one brush) and get on with the axles, etc. whilst the paint is all drying for a day or two.
The revised view through the glovebox is now;
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