Thread: The final indiscretion

Originally Posted by OffTrack

I've had a guy who welded on my recovery point mount tell me LR have no idea how to design vehicles because the gauge of the steel in the chassis was too light, and the ACE roll bar was too thick. Should I believe what he says because he welds?

The particular gent is a qualified welder for pressure vessels and has had some 30 years in the trade so I presume he knows something. If it just was "a welder" then yes, but as i said before he did this full time for L/R for a while and it was under their instructions to do it. So if L/R said there was a problem, and employed him to weld / strengthen particular areas then I presume there was a problem. But that is not saying this was the problem here.

Originally Posted by gruntfuttock

He was a welder working for a independent company and the L/R agent sent the Disco's to him and he welded something on the chassis or in the chassis, I cannot remember that but I clearly remember him telling me it was for the steering box. He did many. Actually for a time that was all he did.

From the recall and your description it sounds like one of the crush tubes for the steering box may not have been properly welded (if we are talking D1s or D2s).

I find it hard to believe that the number of defective vehicles was ever sufficient for "Actually for a time that was all he did."

I can only tell you what he told me, I was not privileged to access personal files as to what exactly he was doing and the reasons for it. That is all I know and I had no reason to doubt him. I did not ask how long he did this, your guess would be as good as mine, and as he died in a car accident I cannot ask him.

There was pre-delivery welding of the chassis in the area of the steering box for the first shipment of D2A to arrive because they were retrofitted with a strengthing of the panhard rod mount (a bar welded down the side of the bracket) that had become standard procedure on the assembly line prior to the shipment landing. The panhard rod mount had changed from the earlier D2s to cater for the revised rod length and geometry.

There were lots of XA and YA VIN D2's fitted with ACE that suffered chassis cracking at the steering box area of the chassis rail. The stupid design flaw that was corrected in the 1A series onward was stamping a square hole in the chassis to fit a plastic bung to take the self tapping screw for the plastic ' air dam' fixing that screws on under the front crossmember and out to the sides.

This is where the crack started due to the stresses imparted on the chassis section due to the reaction forces of the ACE system, which eventually worked its way around the chassis rail!. I repaired a few in the early days, a mission in itself as I made my own plates etc up, and LR even had a strengthening gusset 'kit' out at the time IIRC. I even had 1 customer whos D2 was actually rechassied during warranty.

The creaking bulletin was mostly for MY03 etc IIRC where there was an incomplete or non existent weld onto the inner chassis crush tube/ platework where the steering box bolts were ran through the rail. I have done one of these too , an easy task by comparison, drill, expose and plug weld and you're done.

JC

Glad I didn't specify the ACE option when I signed up for my new d2 order in 2002...

Cheers

Originally Posted by ozscott

Glad I didn't specify the ACE option when I signed up for my new d2 order in 2002...

Cheers

'02 were not affected, they used smaller circular holes as they discovered the problem.

jc

ace is great mate......try keeping up with D2 with ace in conventional 4wds.....in twisty stuff I mean