Puma roof turret loose

[Brid]

G'day All
My 2007 110 has developed some play where the roof turret meets the top of the A pillar. It has cracked the sealant on both sides at this point, and I am able to get maybe 2 mm movement here by hand.

I imagine there might be bolts vibrated loose from a couple of Vic high country trips plus the Simpson. Can anyone tell me if it is bolted, and how to get access to tighten things up & lock-tite them, please?

Thanks
Brid

[isuzu110]

Have you had a roofrack on whilst offroad ?

[Brid]

Yes, and this would have contributed somewhat, however, with just a tent, poles, 2 chairs, 2 maxtrax & a shovel, it was pretty light really. The roof rack sits between the B pillar and rear end of vehicle...no weight over the A pillar where problem is evident.

[isuzu110]

The reason I ask is that I was at Fred Smith's workshop once and he had a 110 that had done what yours had. Fred said he had seen a few of them and always a roofrack. He had the headlining out to fix.

Mine has no noticeable play but does have a clunk up there somewhere when offroad. Not bad enough yet to investigate further.

[dobbo]

Don't whine to much about it, when it happens on the Disco's and Rangies you have to pull out the welder on the B pilers.

The rigidity of the roof-rack doesn't allow the roof to flex therefore the symptoms you see develop over time.

[gromit]

Brid,

I had the same problem in my 300TDi about 10 years ago. From memory there are two large Phillips screws that hold each front corner of the roof to the windscreen frame. Despite being fitted with shakeproof washers these had worked loose and the sealant had cracked.
Headlining had to come out to fix the problem and yes my Defender is fitted with a full-length roofrack which seems to be the root cause of the problem (probably by overloading). The manual for mine lists the max roof load as 75Kg including the weight of the roofrack, 'in an extreme emergency this load may be increased to 150Kg" (not sure exactly what constitutes an 'extreme emergency' in Land Rover terms).

I was an LROCV member at the time and I remember an article about the problem in the newsletter soon after I fixed mine so it seemed quite common. You obviously have the loose screw problem but not sure why it would happen with the roofrack mounted further back and fairly lightly loaded.

Anyway, it's a headling out job....for some reason I remember taking out the centre section of the headlining as well as the front section but not sure if this is actually necessary.

Best of luck,
Colin

[Brid]

G'day Colin

Thanks for that information...it is exactly what I am after. I have had quite a few nuts & bolts come loose in its 87,000km so far, but once they are secured with locktite they seem to stay in place. These things include rear door hinges, mirror arms, door locks, as well as finding a few stray bolts of unknown origin.

I have done a fair bit of rough road work & plenty of harsh corrugations, which I think has been the main factor generally speaking. When I made the roof rack, I didn't see much point in a full length one, as I had read that 75KG was the rating for the roof. That doesn't allow for much gear at all really. My rack was only 35KG. ARB ones are much heavier...I think I was told 55KG ish (not sure now). You would have to think that very few people would be able to keep roof weight down to 75KG, when they run full length roof racks.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to help me out on that one.

Regards
Brid

[justinc]

Just to also add to Colins reply, I have seen heaps of loose ones, as he says the top of the A pillar is a constant one. There are sources of hex head self tappers that are easier to tighten than the phillips screw used from the factory, and as mentioned loctite is your friend

JC

[BilboBoggles]

My 2003 TD5 did it after about 150'000 k's . It's never had a roof rack, nor been taken on serious corrugations. It went in to Fred Smith to be fixed. Apparently there are some spot welds that hold the brackets on, on most of them you can see the indendation in the corner. These spot welds eventually let go. Fred placed an extra bracket in the windscreen frame and replace the spot weld with a stainless dome head bolt. Looks nice and won't fall off again in a hurry. This also removed a rather annoying knock that had developed.