Thread: 130 chassis hairline fractures

If its the parallel vertical lines in the paint that you are referring to then I doubt if they are cracks. They appear to be just gouges in the paint. Cracks in metal never occur in straight lines as shown. Suggest you get hold of an aerosol packaged dye penitrant crack detection gear to confirm any cracks before you go to the effort and expense of another chassis. Red dye kit pretty useless, Fluro dye gear system recommended.
If you know an aircraft maintenance engineer they would have access to crack finding gear they may be able to help you with.

I agree with Graz. In addition, they are not where the stress would be concentrated.

John

Is that a doubler plate thats been welded on, or is it standard 130?
I haven't noticed that weld along the bottom edge on my '99 but haven't specifically looked either.

Agree with previous posts that they don't look like cracks. Too parallel and too many. Usually with cracks once one starts to form it concentrates the stress at its ends and runs from there.

If its a non-factory doubler or repair I'd almost guess at the material having been dragged across the floor or workbench.

Steve

Definitely not cracks. Only paint scratches, so you can rest easy If cracks do develop they will stand out as rusty lines. the edges of the crack rub from the chassis flex and then rust oxide forms overnight and seeps out.
Cheers Scott

As said not cracks

After everyone has said all that, I noticed a fair few Perenties at auction have chassis cracks. They definitely don't look like that though, and are not in that region either.

That type of " cracking" in some very brittle paints is a good indicator that the underlying structure had been flexing. I have seen cracking in trayback cab chassis at the rear of the cabin where the vehicle had been carrying a boomspray. Nasty stress concentrator that was repaired by fishplates, stop drilling and crack welding. Not an easy job.

thanks for your insight mates,

while i'm trying to find some crack detection spray (or the odd aircraft engineer), i took a wire brush over some of the bigger marks (that's what i'll call them from now on to differentiate from clear cracks). the smaller marks blend into the brush marks but the more pronounced ones are certainly not in the paint only, the base metal is gouged. see first picture.

i agree these marks don't resemble anything like the real cracks that my chassis has, but the patterns and the places where they appear (on both of these chassis) still trouble me. in the back they are beneath the (dual cab) front tray mount, which must get stressed a good deal. i'd imagine the front outrigger area has it's fair share as well.

these are factory original parts, no repairs have been made previously. like on some good honest cracks that i found this morning on the cross members, there does not seem to be rust seeping up from the marks. see pictures two to four.

if anyone has a 130 where it's easy to take a look at the inner chassis rail walls between the front cab mount and the front outrigger and in the back between the shock mount and the small bracket where the dual cab floor mount cross member attaches, it would interesting so hear if these marks are commonly found. remind you, without cleaning there most likely is nothing to see, these marks are covered even by a fine layer of dust. as mentioned before they appear only on the inner walls of the rails.

my welder mate used to build buses and in condamning my chassis she may look at things from a heavier duty angle. nor does she have any financial interest, she first proposed to weld it for free. i did explain to her that the ultimate goal for this vehicle is to do long distance off-road touring. we can all agree that having a broken chassis in the simmo is not high on the wish list. anyhow the beauty of these things is that they can be and are regularly fixed. the patchwork that some of them (especially rust repair in the uk) are subject to is beyond belief. being a novice i'm trying to figure out what needs fixing and what doesn't.

cheers,

pasi