Phil's 82 Range Rover Classic

Loving the updates

As the fire wall has the usual rust, I wanted to repair it before removing the body side to make sure the repair panel fits correctly.
Attachment 186872
Rust removed
Attachment 186873
Replacement panel
Attachment 186874 Attachment 186875
As this is approximately the lowest part of the floor, I thought I’d put a drain in this panel with a “duck bill” on the bottom that allows water out but not air in.
This is the panel upside down with the “duck bill” fitted.
Attachment 186876
And from a side view installed.
Attachment 186877
A bit pedantic maybe, but it wasn’t that difficult to do.

Phil

Welded the patch plate to the outside of the bottom of the “A” pillar this week.
Attachment 186969

Regards
Phil

The 12 year old grandson arrived today and asked what he can help with on the RRC.
So it now looks like this (as many of you will have also done)
Attachment 187088
The rear of the two body mounting bolt was particularly difficult to undo as can be seen by the thread.
Attachment 187089
So when they butted the replacement bottom section of the “A” pillar to the remaining top section you can’t weld the inside butt weld without removing the body side.
So they didn’t weld the section hidden by the fire wall :mad:
Not that it made a difference when you look at the butt weld that they did do [bawl]
Attachment 187090
Oh, and while you’re not welding stuff, you may as well not join the inside of the pillar to the sill either :bat:
Attachment 187091
So now you know what I’ll be doing next.

Phil

If it's any consolation, the same "best practices" procedure you have discovered on your 2-door, ran all the way through production and still existed in 1993 on the LSE [thumbsupbig]

I think it's listed in RAVE as "Friday Car"

[bigwhistle]

This is the butt weld where they “joined” the replacement bottom section of “A” pillar to the original.
Attachment 187167
First, I welded and dressed off the sections that had not been welded ar all.
Attachment 187168
With a flap disc I ground off the previous “weld”.
Attachment 187169
What a surprise, no weld penetration whatsoever.
A quick run with the MIG and then the flap disc and it looks a little better.
Attachment 187170 Attachment 187171

Now this connection is structural [smilebigeye]

The previous repairer didn’t bother welding the inside of the “A” pillar to the sill at all.
There is some rust, but part of it at least could have been welded.
Attachment 187172 Sorry, for some reason it loads upside down.
I cut out the rust and made a patch plate.
Attachment 187173 Attachment 187174
Patch plate in place and a few tacks.
Attachment 187175 Attachment 187176
A bit more work with the MIG, flap disc and die grinder, and it’s done [smilebigeye]
Attachment 187177

Phil

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phil 850

The doors on my RRC do not close properly as when they are about 100 mm from closed you have to push them against some resistance.
On further investigation I noticed that the top hinge has plenty of clearance when closed!
Attachment 186179
However the bottom hinge has bound up on itself and also has huge packing between the hinge and the door.
Attachment 186180
It turns out that the bottom hinge has the check strap and when passengers open the door and allow it to swing open the full amount of the check strap, the weight/inertia of the door tries to pull the hinge off the A pillar.
Consequently, the inner of the three bolts has pulled the sleeve of the bolt mount “through” the pillar and distorted it to the point where the pillar has cracked around the bolt sleeve.
Attachment 186181
Now, as I have some rust repair work to do on the bodyside and the A pillar, I can persuade it back into position and all will be well in the world. Except that it could develop again in the future as it will still only be as Rover designed it.
I am contemplating cutting a piece out of the face of the pillar and then welding a strip to the top of the bolt sleeve and attaching the other edge to the inner face of the pillar so that the sleeve can no longer be “pulled” out of position by the check strap.

Has anyone else done anything to prevent the above phenomenon as it can’t be just my RRC that this has happened to.

Phil

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Well, as you will have read in more recent posts on my “A” pillar repairs, I did not do anything special for the hinge mounting to strengthen them.
my reason being is that the design is probably adequate providing that when the hinges are shimmed to align the doors, there is a step that is not described in the manual that should be addressed.
To align the doors shims can be applied between the hinge and the “A” pillar and between the hinge and the door.
The latter is the one that causes the issue (in my opinion).
Attachment 187228
In the above diagram, there are two sets of shims shown related to the hinge to door mounting.
If a shim is applied between the hinge and the door, the effective length of the door check strap will have been reduced by the thickness of the shim. Consequently, when the door is opened, this check strap will limit the door opening travel by itself and all of the load of the door will be taken the the “A” pillar by this hinge alone.
The solution is to add a shim to the other hinge of the same thickness inside the door between the door and the check strap bracket. These are shown in the above diagram as part numbers 392865 and 392866.
This will reduce the effective length of this check strap to the same as the other one and then both hinges will equally share the load of the door when opened fully, subsequently distributing the load equally into the “A” pillar.
This process is not described in the workshop manual that I have (but it may be in more recent ones), but by distributing the load from the door equally should limit the likelihood of damage to the “A” pillar.
The other method is to open the doors more gently, but this requires educating all of the users of the vehicle with varying degrees of success [bighmmm]
Admittedly, high road camber and windy days exacerbate this problem.

So, when I eventually get to installing my doors, this is the method I intend to use.

I finally got around to installing the patch to the passenger side front floor.
before
Attachment 187788
After
Attachment 187789

While I have the passenger body side off I’m going to pressure wash the chassis and paint it.
When I remove the drivers body side to fix the rust in it I’ll then paint that side of the chassis.

Regards
Phil

Phil, I may have missed it, but what type of sheet metal are you using for the repairs and what gauge?