defender chassis welding

G'day Alanw

My 130 cracked in the same place. I have seen a couple of others also. I have also welded up the front tray mounts twice. Last time I put in an extra support up the front taking advantage of the factory mounted supports nearest the cab. (they have rubber cushioning rivetted to them). An engineering mob in Kunnanurra welded my chassis for me about three years ago. One side looks like the apprentice did it the plate is fully welded, crappy job, the other looks much better with radius's on the corners and welds run off beyond the plate on a gentle arc. Both sides have held up to date.

Cheers

Just an update on the repair - and what is now an obvious cause of the problem.

The chassis rail that cracked first and worst had only half the steel thickness than the other side - it was that thin that welding was difficult.

Have used 3mm plate and have fishplates top and bottom and inside and out of each rail - and quite confident that it is now much sounder than when it left the factory.

As for andy's query about tray length - the tray is 6ft long - so not overly long. I have the spare tyre under the tray on top of the fuel tank and substantial tool boxes under the tray and behind the wheels - so this is an additional load behind the axle

The heavy loads which go on the vehicle are always at front of the tray - a 1 t. pallet is abt 4ft square - so the length of the tray is probably not an issue. But it would be hard to get that 'dense' a load in the front of a standard tub.

The tandem trailer we tow is around 3t. gross - so well within load capacity and the towbar is in the forward position so shouldn't be any issues there.

And finally, a big thankyou to the people who have provided advice, comments and suggestions - it made the repair much easier. And I suspect we have all learned a bit as well.

Alan

Hi Alan,

Thats interesting. What was the construction of the rear chassis.
I hacked an old ranga for its front spring mounts and was impresssed to see internal laminations within the chassis. From memory it had a 4 radius laminates inside each corner as well as a strip running along the top and bottom rail inside the outer skin chassis. Seemed a very strong manner to build a chassis. I guess the front spring mounts / engine mounts would be engineered differently but would be keen to know what you found.
I would also be keen to see any photos you may have of the repair, PM if you would prefer not show the world...

Regards,
Steve

Hello Steve,

As per request a few photos. The plates are top and bottom of chassis and inside and out of each rail. The top plate goes to infront of the rear cabin support bracket. On the outside of the chassis they go forwards to the lower link mounting bracket. This required a new bracket to be fabricated to support the rear cabin support rail - the factory bracket did not survive removal.

As for chassis construction - no laminated chassis here - just 2 bits of U shaped folded steel welded together on the top and bottom. And as mentioned previously a lot less steel on the LHS than the RHS.

Hopefully I won't have to do this again.

Alan

Hi Alan,

nice repair job! :)
I was wondering how this sort of repair affects rego and insurance... would an engineers certificate now be required?

cheers,
bryce

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broonski

Hi Alan,

nice repair job! :)
I was wondering how this sort of repair affects rego and insurance... would an engineers certificate now be required?

cheers,
bryce

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I've been told technically yes, it has to be re-engineered, this is why quite a few professional repairers refuse to repair a chassis in case of a come back, either from the RTA or insurance in case of an accident, but what do you do ? AFAIK almost every 130 suffers from the complaint in the same spot.
It's poor engineering on Land Rovers part, but they've never come up with a 'fix', they just blame overloading, which is crap, but that's another story.....