A bit sad looking but all repairable
If it was mine (I'll be crawling under my 130 in the morning after seeing these) I'd weld them back up with full penetration welds with backing bar where possible.
If a DIY repair don't use self shielded mig wire.. Too brittle
Find yourself a good boilermaker( sorry I'm in Esperance) and it's all fixable
thanks for the hints nealo. the clear breaks did not bother me initially. plated they should make a stronger chassis than the original. what does make me wonder are these mystery marks. you use the word brittle and that makes me wonder if the land rover mild steel could be (or have become) so brittle (over time) as to start shattering? i would like to hear the results of your crawling expedition. the earlier comments were partly comforting, but since these are not just scratches in the paint, it would be a relief to hear that in solihull they used to lay sand under these parts when dragging them around the factory floor or some such explanation.
for the crack repair the question is whether the other side should be plated in a similar manner to maintain structural symmetry? as far as backing plate goes, the sub structure inside the rail may or may not act as such. not sure if the rail and this inner reinforcement are originally welded together? good thing it is there, without it this particular chassis would have totally collapsed ages ago.
finally got around to play with a fault finder kit as graz proposed. this one consists of three spray cans; 1) cleaner, 2) penetrant and 3) developer. the idea is to clean the area to be inspected to bare metal (in this case, but works on various other materials as well). after spraying with the cleaner (transparent), you cover the area with the penetrant (red) that is supposed to seep into the possible fractures. after minimum 10 minutes you wipe the excess penetrant off and spray with the developer (white) that is supposed to indicate possible fractures as pink lines.
well, i'm not sure if i'm very much wiser after this exercise. the inspected area should most likely be smoother than what i managed with a wire brush. the penetrant shows basically each little scratch the brush has made. it shows really well the ragged interface between bare metal and paint. what it doesn't show is anything seeping out of the largest mystery mark.
since i haven't heard from anyone else having similar mystery marks, i suppose i'll consider them scratches, not a plague that haunts defenders.
pictures below are from the inside of the right hand side chassis rail at about the front outrigger.
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