Part 2 of a 2 part video series for repair of the B Pillar. In this video I cut (poorly) and weld (even more poorly) the premanufactured B pillar end cap on to the Big White Bus.
All the measuring in the world could not have prevented me from screwing up the B pillar end cap. Not having the right tool, I should have used a bandsaw for the cut, led to me making a bad cut. Probably didn’t help that my measurement was off by 1/8 of an inch. Leading me to attempt to bridge that gap with welds. I had…mixed results.
I was careful, real careful, measured more than once. None of that kept me from cutting this wrong. What’s worse cutting too long and then cutting too much off trying to fix it OR cutting it too short on the first try???!!!?
Thankfully this entire section will be reinforced and protected with a rock slider at some point in the future. My worst fear is this rusting out again. Or maybe its not… at some point this entire vehicle may become scrap. Only the Fates know.
In this video I start the repairs on the B Pillar. As you have seen it rusted out. I was able to find a replacement part from YRM. It cost the equivalent to a really nice bottle of rum to ship it over from England. The shipping was as much as the part. Such is the world of British vehicles and getting parts from the motherland I guess.
This repair involved removing the passenger side rear door. The workshop manual was very helpful. I actually read the instructions. Three C clips and some liquid persuasion (Liquid Wrench).
I got the bottom of the post cut off. I should have scribed a straight line and cut along it. But I’m a moron. I got to use my new air chisel, that was kinda cool. That coupled with my new air compressor worked quite well.
I got the bottom of the B pillar off and made a template for the sill where I had to patch it. The really terrible lines I cut made the repair patch pretty hard to work with. A better way would have been to make a template, place the template on the sill and cut around it. Live and learn I guess.
But I finally got it made. I think it looks pretty good. I mean, I’m not a professional auto body guy. I put primer on everything. The entire sill should probably be sprayed with bedliner/stonechip/whatever. There will be rock sliders built and installed so I’m not worried about the structural quality of my welds. The entire weight of the sill will be distributed across the sill in the end.
Off camera I also cleaned off some of the rubberized underbody and wire wheeled a bunch of rust off. The welds of the floor repair the Evil German and I completed a while back were rusting. I got the rust removed and got primer on it. It’s now ready for some stonechip seal/bedliner stuff.
Also off camera I found that the floor repair we fixed has completely failed. The rust was really bad. I have another repair to sort out now. This one was a gut punch because I was hoping to wrap up all the rust except for the rear floor panel. Heavy sigh…..
As my son said, “Rut row Shaggy.”
If you were wondering why I jumped from Post #642 to #645, I posted two videos without accompanying blog posts. You can check them out here on these two links.
I’m getting real close to finishing the C pillar repairs. I had one final repair to finish. The patch over the rust at the bottom of the C pillar. If you know Range Rover Classics this is where the sunroof drain comes out and runs down the back of the wheel well. This is a popular place for rust to setup shop and eat your precious Range Rover Classic.
So instead of “fixing it” just like it was designed, which was poorly executed. Poorly because they didn’t protect any of the inside surfaces. Poorly because, seriously, holes in a wheel well where water, salt, sand, dirt, animal parts, and just about anything else you can imagine can hide? Super stupid. That sounds harsh, but you shouldn’t design an offroad vehicle that descended from the amazing history of Land Rovers in such a way that you can’t use it in the environments it was designed to live in.
I spent a lot of effort to shape the patch. I also devised a way to hold it in place so I could weld it there. A strategically placed bottle jack and a length of pipe. I called it the trapeze of stupidity in the video. I’ve done dumber things. This one actually worked really well.
After turning up the welder a tad, and increasing the wire speed to compensate the upside downed-ness of this welding. I saw a couple of videos where guys were welding some structural steel and they suggested uping the wire speed and voltage. That seemed to work. My problems were with the primer I painted on the fender and the patch. And at some point I think my ground was not very good. This lead to some very poor welds which I had to grind off…. several times. Eventually I got everything sorted out and the welds started holding.
Once I had the patch in place and covered in primer I took a look at the rest of the rear quarter panel. I cleaned up some surface rust and coated it with primer. I know this is only to slow the rust down but it felt good to do it.
I got all the patches on the quarter panel covered in seam sealer. Everything also got a final coat of primer. Over the primer, under the wheel well, I put on two coats of rattle can bedliner. It is my sincere hope that this will keep some rust at bay for at least a few years.
I have all the wrap up to do now including reassembling the quarter panel and reinstalling the mud flap assembly. That will be the next video. After that, I will be working on the passenger side B pillar.
In this installment I continue patching the rust on the passenger rear wheel well. The patches went pretty well, all things considered. I am learning that i should probably use the zinc weld through primer. The basic primer I am attempting to use prevents me from having solid welds.
I wire wheeled off A LOT of paint to get these welds to stick. Not great considering I need paint of some kind on this metal. I have one more patch to weld on this fender. I will use the zinc primer.
I also replace one of the sunroof drains using some tubing I bought from one of the big box stores. I’m going to come right out and say I don’t recommend this stuff. It had too many pinches in the tubing. I thought I could use a heat guy and get the tubing flexible enough to reshape the tube.
This failed miserably. What did work was using some zip ties to eliminate the pinch. How this worked was the zip ties press equally all the way around the tube. This seemed to work amazingly well. Super happy with that clever trick. So if you can’t find high quality tubing, you can use the cheap stuff and you may need to employ this trick.
Getting this tubing into the C pillar was challenging. If you are patient you will succeed. It took longer than I thought it would to get this tubing in the right place.
Think something like this.
As I mention in the video, I needed to cut a hole in the lower part of the C pillar. I decided to direct the tubing down the INSIDE of the fender well. This removes another hole in the wheel well. I will, as I mentioned in an earlier video, drill a hole behind the mud flap and using a pass through pipe thingy I will be able to send that water out while attempting to have a less rust prone way to get the water out of my Classic.
I also learned welding upside down is HARD. I had absolutely no luck getting the final patch to stick. I said in the video I would would watch some videos. Unfortunately I did not find a single video on Youtube where someone was demonstrating welding sheet metal from below or upside down.
I watched a couple of videos of guys welding structural steel joints upside down or from below. The one trick I will try this coming weekend is to increase my wire speed and maybe increase my voltage. Basically being more aggressive. Maybe if I’m lucky it won’t just blow holes in my steel.
That’s all for this week. Like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Comment as well if you see something I’m doing wrong or could do better. I’m no expert, I’m just winging this like most hobbyists do.
This was the first weekend in a while that we were healthy. My son brought home Flu A from a basketball tournament at the school and then Mrs. Okierover brought home Covid. I tried to avoid both of them while still making them food and making sure they were taking their medicines. I also tried sleeping in the living room all weekend to minimize contact. It was all for naught. I got Covid on MLK Jr. Day. I missed a week of work too.
In this episode I tackle some of the rust holes in the passenger side wheel well. Turned out it was too cold to paint so I couldn’t get any primer on them.
I put a patch over the bad spot in the front side of the wheel well. This spot is where three panels come together. It was “protected” from the factory with hope and a lot of seam sealer. My original goal was to just fill the split but the steel was too thin and the MIG welds just blew through.
I got the patch welded in place without too much trouble. I think I did a decent job with this patch. I mean, I don’t have that much experience welding so every time weld I’m trying to get better. If I’m getting better, it would be considered “slowly getting better”.
While cutting out a bad seam I inadvertently sliced the wheel well in two places. These needed filling. They went as I would have expected.
Finally, I fixed the cut I made in the rear support beam. If you remember I cut through this while attempting to remove the rear floor pan. This was dumb. Thankfully it wasn’t damaged too much. I welded the entire cut closed. I think this went well too.
I had some trouble with being able to see through my hood towards the end. I adjusted the settings on my helmet and realize I need to replace my batteries. I need a few more hours under the helmet. I wish I could have tried out several helmets to see how they work. I limited myself to American Made welding helmets so there weren’t a lot of affordable options.
That’s all for this week. If you enjoy the videos Like and Subscribe.
The plan this weekend was to do some welding. Unfortunately the welding supply store was closed. So I was unable to source the shielding gas I needed. That…was frustrating. I instead knocked out a project my wife has asked for “she claims” for 18 months. I’ll admit it was a while…but maybe only a year. In any event, the pantry portion of the former laundry room now has fancy shelves.
So today I did some more investigating of the rust, primarily on the A and B pillars at the sill. The B pillar is mostly rusted out. It is as bad as it looks and I’ll need to source the ready made B pillar lower portion. I’ve seen them online…but don’t remember if they are available in the US of A. I’ve found at least three businesses in the UK. Part is only about $33.00(US) the shipping to the US is the same amount. More research is needed, or I weld up my own version.
YRM B Pillar for Range Rover Classics and Disco 1
The A pillar has a hole next to it in the sill. I think it would be an easy patch to fix.
So this week I’ll get some more shielding gas and I’ll be ready to do some repairing next weekend.
Once again thanks for stopping by and for watching the videos.
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