Thread: Chinese defender doors

Originally Posted by DazzaTD5

*or the cheap chinese ones and you get to support the CCP and they can keep blocking Australian exports as they so choose.

I used to work in North Asia and this comment didn't seem entirely out of line to me, given that a number of nominally independent Chinese companies that have wide distribution in Australia have very deep links to the Chinese government (which means the CCP) and may actually be owned by them, and that's in addition to the fact that any large Chinese company will have government reps in senior positions - like Tik Tok does.

To state the obvious, countries like China don't have the separation of state and commerce that we take for granted and in recent years the Chinese government has used trade to "punish" a large number of countries including South Korea, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, the Phillipines, Mongolia, Canada and the UK.

Can I suggest people turn this back to a technical discussion, rather than an ideological one. Australia does very nicely thanks to China. At least those Chinese doors probably use steel made from Australian iron ore.

So a technical question - could you galvanise or zinc plate the doors locally if concerned with corrosion? (assuming they haven’t been hot dipped galvanised or are not fully zinc plated in the first place - do people know this for fact or is it an assumption?).

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

So a technical question - could you galvanise or zinc plate the doors locally if concerned with corrosion? (assuming they haven’t been hot dipped galvanised or are not fully zinc plated in the first place - do people know this for fact or is it an assumption?).

Not actually knowing yet, but you would assume bare new steel door frame if the primer is removed.
I'm pondering this doing my series 1 if I can get the windscreen frame and other parts re-galvanised.

The other option is using a heavy zinc primer as in a industrial primer which from memory is round 70% zinc (inorganic zinc primer)

I had planned to get some 60 year old caravan bits stripped and galvanised. When I spoke to a galvaniser about it I was advised not to go ahead because of the likelihood of severe distortion. The parts hadn't been fabbed with galv in mind and apparently the rapid heating was likely to be an issue.

I'd have thought something as fragile as a door skin might suffer similarly if it hadn't been built for it.

Originally Posted by BradC

I had planned to get some 60 year old caravan bits stripped and galvanised. When I spoke to a galvaniser about it I was advised not to go ahead because of the likelihood of severe distortion. The parts hadn't been fabbed with galv in mind and apparently the rapid heating was likely to be an issue.

I'd have thought something as fragile as a door skin might suffer similarly if it hadn't been built for it.

Which makes me think that for folded one piece door frames (from 2006 on) they are in fact just electroplated and not hot dipped. Would give a better finish but the zinc coating is not as thick.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

Which makes me think that for folded one piece door frames (from 2006 on) they are in fact just electroplated and not hot dipped. Would give a better finish but the zinc coating is not as thick.

the genuine land rover doors are just zinc plated.
the doors SP make are hot dipped gal frame with zinc plated skin

Originally Posted by DazzaTD5

the genuine land rover doors are just zinc plated.
the doors SP make are hot dipped gal frame with zinc plated skin

True for the 2 piece doors, but I believe you will find the later model one piece doors from SP are also just zinc plated. SP don’t state where the one piece doors come from (just state they are OEM and fully zinc plated).

Doesn’t modern automotive steel come from the manufacturer with a zinc layer?

Rust in modern cars (at least in Australia) is almost nonexistent.