|
Post by valhalla on Dec 11, 2019 22:10:06 GMT 1
Day_14 in the workshop;
All the welding is done, as of 10minutes ago. That is, the unexpected welding to the bodywork. I still need to fabricate/repair a few items that I noted along the way - fuel tank cradle repair, and tank strap fillet-piece that is corroded. Generally they are all the things that are expensive to source, and not justifying full replacement at this stage.
There's a lot of flap-wheel work required tomorrow....followed by seam-sealing and painting, and generally protecting the body underneath, but other than that, it will be ready to go down onto the new running-gear once I have built that up.
I had to strip a whole load more electrical harnesses and equipment out of the car to repair the O/S wing area, and that is what took most of the time this afternoon. The front sill mounts repairs (a fillet-piece either side) were relatively straightforward this morning, and other than having to strip a bit of the interior out around the sills, there wasn't too much hassle......
and.......NO FIRES........
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 13, 2019 0:42:40 GMT 1
Day_15 in the workshop. A bad start, as I was reminded by Mrs. Valhalla of my duty to vote, and also I needed to go out and do a remote diagnosis with the tools. So by 2:30pm I was just about ready to start on all the seam-sealant and finishing of some of the internal voids with some Isopon P40.
Whilst all the solvent'y bits were drying later this afternoon, I thought I would be brave and tackle the rear mudflap support brackets behind the rear wheelarches. I could see fairly soon that a couple of small repairs would be needed to make a solid joint for the new brackets I have, so out with the needle-gun.....
and soon the repairs just got bigger and more complicated......
so I thought, "Why not just get all the preparation done on the rest of the body, so I can got through the whole vehicle tomorrow with one disposable paint-brush and my favourite enamel one-coat paint?"
Ha, I just made the mistake of poking the needle-gun through one of the rearmost body mounts, and a small area on the nearside lower face of the rear body crossmember. The repairs just keep going and going, but the body-mount repair is done as of tonight (a neat job, I have to exclaim with some surprise after some of my recent work) and the other pieces are sketched-out ready for slicing and fabricating.
It is reckoned by most experts out there that you cannot weld to rust, but they are wrong...... My reasoning is this: If you cannot weld to rust, how come Landrover built these wretched vehicles in the first place?
However, the seams are all sealed at the front after a brief tidy-up of their weld beads with a flap-disc, and all the tidying work is done inside on the floorpans, so the next job there is lashings of paint and Waxoyl, otherwise it's time to move on to the new chassis and some of the prelimary brake-line work.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 14, 2019 0:17:12 GMT 1
Day_16 in the workshop, and this is now becoming a comedy of errors, albeit a not very funny one;
Late start (again) due to sporradic coverage of shop duties whilst Mrs. Valhalla took 2 out of 3 of our animals to the vets for various check-ups. By the time I got changed, sorted-out a load of business admin that had cropped-up before I got into the shop this morning, etc. etc. it was lunchtime, and work didn't kick-off until 2:00pm....
Except that the work did not kick-off well whatsoever. The welder needs heat, so the first thing was to fire-up the workshop heater. Having got it running happily, I observed that there was not enough oil in it for the remainder of the day - 6hours or thereabouts. So I shoved a 20L container of used-oil into the reservoir, and like a switch, it went straight out after 2mins. I was not best pleased, as the weather is turning colder this weekend, really too cold for the welder, and for any subsequent painting I need to do.
It turns-out that I have just moved onto a new batch of oil from another source (commercial operator) and it appears that whatever is in the container, it isn't combustible, not the stuff that has sunk straight down to the bottom of the heater reservoir and pumped straight into the combustion-bowl. As I have not put this batch through a pre-burn settlement stage, I'm to blame, but I'm still utterly cheesed-off, as this heater will run on almost anything. So I now need to empty the reservoir out, a full 25L inside of it now, via a drain-cock that is barely 1" off the floor, and refill it all with a known-good oil supply (if I can find one in the 300L of reserve I have) and not any more of this c**p that I seemed to have been lumbered with. Then I have to clean the whole machine up, check it over, and test-fire it back up again.
So, very cold and annoyed at this stage, I persevered with the welder and it's erratic gas supply, and made the last three repairs to the bodywork this afternoon/evening. They are not as pretty as I would have liked, but they will do for now. It all means I can get the painting/protection-coats done tomorrow, then just leave the body at ceiling-level to dry for a few days whilst I get the new chassis into the workshop and make a start on building it up.
There's no way now that the 23rd December can be achieved, not with all the "luck" I'm having with the facilities, so the resto will have to continue over the Christmas & Hogmanay period, interspersed with fixing all the other broken things around the place, so that I can get this Winter's objectives done; moving all the old classics into their new home (via the workshop, which is currently blocked by this Disco.......).
Ho hum.....
|
|
|
Post by Noberator on Dec 14, 2019 2:16:31 GMT 1
So from start to finish Valhalla are you reckoning on say a couple of hundred hours to complete this project.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 15, 2019 1:23:07 GMT 1
So from start to finish Valhalla are you reckoning on say a couple of hundred hours to complete this project. I think that this one will be around the 150-180hour mark. Most days I don't get a decent run of more than 6hours at a time, which eats into the calendar a bit, and it would be unfair to include facility breakdown time (like today) in the total.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 15, 2019 1:32:11 GMT 1
Day_17 in the workshop;
Having decided that it's too cold to do any serious paintwork or body protection (until Thursday this next week), my only choice was to fix the workshop heater. I stripped the whole lot down, cleaned it all out, then propped the oil reservoir tank up onto a B&D Workmate, so that I had unimpeded access to the drain tap, etc.
I drained over 2 gallons of water out before I got to any serious hydrocarbon....and a litre of that was sludge. So we are talking about a seriously compromised oil containment facility from whence this supply has come.....
Having got it all sorted-out by 6:00pm this evening, I got a reliable fire on the heater, which stayed running happily until 9:15 this evening. In which time I painted all the nether regions of the bodywork where the paintwork was compromised, or where I had been welding this last several days. The body is now at ceiling height in the warmest air in the workshop, so hopefully the Hammerite that I have used will set and cure a bit.
I'm not going to use my 1-coat enamel on this job, as it will introduce too much delay in being able to handle the treated components afterwards, so the whole lot is going to be Hammerite. I don't like it that way, but tempus fugit.
|
|
|
Post by Noberator on Dec 15, 2019 23:29:52 GMT 1
So from start to finish Valhalla are you reckoning on say a couple of hundred hours to complete this project. I think that this one will be around the 150-180hour mark. Most days I don't get a decent run of more than 6hours at a time, which eats into the calendar a bit, and it would be unfair to include facility breakdown time (like today) in the total. Ok keep up the good work. Old film isn't it "Paint your wagon". I can remember the song being number one in 1970 a few weeks before I left school (Easter) to go out in to the big wide world.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 16, 2019 0:52:16 GMT 1
Day_18 in the workshop,
A long day, with new chassis now slung under the body whilst all the paint dries on the repairs.
I did get some paint on the insides of the footwells, but the risk-analysis was not good. Black Smoothrite, narrow doorgaps, beige interior, what could possibly go wrong?
Sadly the day was over far too soon, and although the heater is still A1, the amount of renovation on everything to go back on is just overwhelming.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 16, 2019 20:55:27 GMT 1
Day_19 in the workshop;
I would like to post some pictures, but I cannot see my hand in front of my face in the workshop at the moment. Having heated all the Waxoyl containers that I could fit on a B&D Workmate in front of the heater, from 9:00am till 6:30pm (not enough Waxoyl, as it turns-out), I have discharged the lot onto the bodywork and in/around the inner wheelarches. I cannot get the new Underbody spray cans to flow, so that will need to be a job fro another day, and another heater session. As I type this, I still have "breathing apparatus No.1" on my face, as the air is too thick in here to breathe without the mask. Not without getting Waxoyl icicles building-up in my nose......
The fuel tank cradle was deemed fit for reuse, so that has been de-rusted, welded, and painted, and that is a key item to getting the back-end of the chassis built-up. It goes in before anything else (on my sheets anyway) as it also will need the whole lot spraying with wax before the tank can go in. That can only happen after the rear axle is overhauled and reattached to the chassis, as the Watts linkage bolts are a pain to do with the tank in place.
The rear wheelarches are now finished with new, galavanized mudshields, so other than waiting for the rear mudflap securing brackets to dry, the whole rear end is ready to accept the new rubber body mounts and spacers, then the whole lot is poised to be dropped down onto the chassis, maybe in a week's time.....
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 18, 2019 0:37:03 GMT 1
Day_20 in the workshop - a short day that doesn't start until 2:00pm.
I have nicknamed this Disco2 as a "Tesco job".
It's every little thing.......
I got the fuel cradle bolted into place (fitted first time, which is good, as I didn't fancy "making it fit" after all my fabrications/repairs to the cradle) and that is now waxed as of this evening.
The main task was to overhaul the back axle; that is, to strip all the suspension items away from it, overhaul and clean/paint each bit, then put them back. The Watts linkages came away OK, with a nice greasy centre-bolt securing the assembly to the rear diff bracket. So that got overhauled nice and quickly, with new polybushes to the outboard (chassis) eyes - the old bushes pressed-out very easily - and it's all hung-up and ready to paint.
That's when the fun started. The rear dampers should be a 5-min job. One came off easily from the lower fixing, the other seized solid and snapped its bolt. So half-an hour later, I had that all free and even managed to save the captive thread in the axle bracket, so all was going well again.
Then I got to the rear radius arms, specifically removing the bushes. These are the originals, which means that one side came out with tremendous force (after spending yet more time re-machining my pressing mandril for the chassis-end bushes), the other side did not come out with any force at all. It had to be taken out the old fashioned way, cutting through the bush with a hole-saw, then hacksawing through the outer sleeve (what was left of it - corroded to the radius arm). So I still have the four bushes to the axle to do tomorrow, get the new SuperPro bushes in, get everything cleaned and painted, then start again on the front axle.....
At least the rear floor looks good now;
and the front floor and wheelarches should warrant a pass on the MoT;
I got the Underbody Waxoyl flowing last thing tonight, and that is now applied to the rear wheelarches and front sill mounts that I repaired a few days ago, so other than the cavity waxing, the body restoration is finished, and the new body mounts can go into position.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 18, 2019 0:46:17 GMT 1
One of the jobs I had to do yesterday was to "let-in" some captive nut fixings into the new chassis in two areas. These are rare-exceptions to the usual excellent preparation that Richards Chassis do for these Disco2 frames; no fixing holes are provided, and it you don't do this all the time, it's very easy to find yourself trying to fit a coolant hose assembly (steel pipework unit) to the front crossmember, only to have no way of bolting it on, which it must be be attached.......
The same applies to the rear fuel tank upper bracket front fixings -they don't do much, but when the tank is full and you do the classic "Jukes of Hazzard" exit from the local Bailey bridges, this bracket needs to keep a lot of mass under control, so the fixings need to be good. I use a taper-cutter to make a hole that is almost big enough to fit an M8 nut, then hammer it flush to the crossmember, then weld around it and grind it back flush, then give it a cold-galvanizing spray finish to protect the chassis where I have damaged the zinc;
|
|
|
Post by rhyds on Dec 18, 2019 8:06:43 GMT 1
Keep on going Val, its looking good!
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 19, 2019 1:52:20 GMT 1
Day_21 in the workshop;
It started well, with all the rear radius arm bushes coming out just like they should, and in fairness they normally do. So the radius arms were soon replete with their full set of SuperPro polybushes, and cleaned/rinsed ready for painting.
The axle cleaned-up well, and is a lot better than I first anticipated. Even under intense needle-gunning, no issues are there around any of the brackets or mounts, and the axle looks to be a good-un, so it was rinsed and painted alongside all of the other components. I haven't inspected it internally, nor drained it yet of oil, and I anticipate that it will be like treacle in there, as the drain plugs are clean and undamaged - usually a sign of typical LR maintenance! It's better to get the painting done before washing a load of heavy oil back down the outside, and there are no untoward plays/noises to make me think that a simple oil change will not suffice.
The box sections on the bodywork have all been waxed last thing tonight, but I may go back and do that bit of the job again, as the wax was still a bit cold to flow properly through my injection gun nozzle, so a bit fine and one-directional, rather than a good 360degree wash around the nozzle.
The tow-bar equipment has given me a few headaches - I elected to use a NOS spare set for Disco2 that is not quite the same as the OEM parts, so I'm looking for fixings right now to make this all work, however it cuts a few corners. First it was clean and dry, so could just be painted with everything else on the back axle. Secondly, it has the cutouts for the towing electric sockets built-in, so that's one less thing I have to fabricate; the original plates are long-gone.....
There are lots of brackets and other small items knocking around the workshop in various painted states right now, but a bigger issue is really starting to loom....
....the wheels and tyres (which went away nearly 2weeks ago) are still sitting on the deck untouched. One of the first things that i need to do when reassembling the chassis is get the axles back under it, and bolted-in properly to support all the other bits that need to happen. With Christmas coming up, I may need to resort to alternative measures, such as ripping a full set of wheels and tyres off my other D2 that is parked just below the workshop. This thought does not fill me with pleasure, as a) it's on grass, and b) the tyres don't hold pressure for more than a day.
Hopefully I should have some decent photos tomorrow of a major assemblies ready for reinstallation. The front axle is the first thing to be tackled, then we'll take it from there!
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 20, 2019 0:24:44 GMT 1
Day_22 in the workshop, and I hardly touched the front axle!
I needed to keep an eye on the workshop heater to begin with, so I elected to fit the rear brake hose brackets that had been painted yesterday. Needless to say, one didn't fit, and then I remembered that I have had this same issue before: The rear nearside spring mount on these chassis does not have the correct holes drilled, so that had to be modified, and my worksheet updated for next time;
The heater was OK, so whilst I warmed some things up, I decided to go ahead and fit the towing drop-plate, etc. etc. This probably seems trivial, but actually is the whole raison-d'etre of this car, and has to be done right. Not least that I had to mix and match the components that I had to-hand, and make sure that everything was going to clear the fuel tank, which can only go in after the towing gear;
The significance of fitting the towing plates is that if the chassis falls or rocks backwards, it will stop any significant damage to the low-hanging bits that have been fitted by then.
|
|
|
Post by valhalla on Dec 20, 2019 0:40:35 GMT 1
The main thing after this stage was to get all the back axle components put together, which had been previously painted and re-bushed throughout;
The big issue here is that I'm still missing the wheels and tyres, so effectively have no way of moving what becomes a very heavy assembly, hence I elected to keep the old brake discs onthe end of the axle, and not do any brake work at this stage.
The pre-assembly all went pretty well, and because it was assembled on the 4-post ramp plates (which are straight and level), I was able to final-torque the whole lot before wheeling it under the new chassis at the front of the workshop.
As of this evening, all the axle bushing-points to the chassis are fitted, the dampers are in-place to control the bottom rebound of the assembly (so as to prevent damage to the new bushes) when the chassis is lifted away from the floor again, and various brackets and droplinks are all in-place;
The biggest problem has now become.....the centre of mass has shifted back beyond the rear strapping points! So until I have got the front axle bolted-up (yet to be overhauled) then I cannot lift the chassis, or indeed the body, on the 2-post ramps......This is all because I'm having to work out-of-sequence due to having no wheels or tyres, meaning that I'm trying to bring later jobs forward.
So, I started on the front axle later this evening, but that is proving to be anything other than trivial, as the bushes are worse on the front radius arms than the rear arms - utterly disintegrated outer sleeves made of cheese.....
To cheer myself up (I had to leave the press-work until tomorrow morning, because it was "apparent" that I was making too much noise, verbally as well as mechanically) I used the hot wax I had made on the stove to respray the insides of the sills and rear crossmember - much more successfully than yesterday!!
|
|