I started the day with glorious visions of finishing the welding on the Floor Panel. All I managed to accomplish was spectacular failure.
Things that worked:
I had some luck with my homemade plug weld drill bit. It worked well at removing the layers of primer and seam sealer I had foolishly laid down.
Welding. Some of my welds actually held pretty well. I managed to get a good ground and the welds stuck until I stressed them too far. On second thought, maybe that means the welds sucked.
My home made air hammer … hammer bit stretched the metal a lot. But the shape I needed and the one the I got weren’t going to work.
Things that didn’t work:
Welds. As before, they popped when put under a lot of stress.
My understanding of metal working,
My spinal cord did not like the constant bending over.
After I had the panel welded in place I tried to apply my air hammer on the panel to get the metal to stick. I also tried using self tapping screws to get the panel to stay in place. This may have worked better if I had shaped the panel better.
All in all, it was a waste of wire and gas. I’ve since cut the panel down smaller. I cut all the plug welds off. I’ll try edge welding when I start return to make the fix. Changed the way the transmission tunnel weld was fixed. It’s now straighter less “bowl shaped”. I’m pretty sure I’ll need help holding the panel in place while I make the first few welds.
We got a big break in the weather. A cold front hit and we got a lovely lightning show along with the fireworks. And we got some cooler weather. The shop wasn’t crazy hot today and won’t be all weekend. So I’m going to take advantage of it and get some work done.
In this post my goal was to get the floor pan welded up. I first had to fix a small patch to the bottom corner. I made a template and got the steel cut. It welded up pretty well. I was pretty happy with the results.
Then I started on the floor panel. I first drilled some holes for the plug welds. This reinforced my need for a drill press. I really want a drill press.
Due to the odd shape of the floor. My panel does not fit very well. Off camera I tried several things to get the panel to line up and contour to the floor. I didn’t have much success. And getting the panel to stay put while I welded, well, I was trying to hold it and weld it. I struggled greatly.
So I decided to put a few self-tapping screws in the panel. These held the panel as expected. I put my hand-made plug weld bit to good use and started welding. I had some success all across the bottom. I didn’t have much luck with the welds near the transmission tunnel but I did finally get some welds to stick.
At this point I realized my welding helmet stopped darkening. This could have gone really badly for me. I did weld two plugs without darkening. I’m glad I noticed, because that kind of eye damage is the real deal.
At this point I’m going to used the self tapping screws to pull the two panels together. I’ll make the plug welds in the holes and then pull the self tapping screws and fill those with welds. At least I have a plan and I am relatively confident this will work.
I’ll then fill the gap on the bottom side with seal sealer. Paint everything with a couple more coats and then I’ll seal it all up with rattle can truck bed liner.
In this post I intended to patch the fender with a new panel. I only have a small section of the steel sheet I bought. Before the work I started today I needed a 10″x8″ piece. My patch area was about 7 inches with a 9 and a half panel with a half inch bend on one side.
From last week we found 4 sheets of steel sandwiched on the one side. Two of those are seemingly superfluous. In between each sheet was a nice rust stuffing. So its pretty obvious all that needs to be remediated.
I got the air chisel out and went to town. I split all the steel and cut away the rusted parts. I wire wheeled as much of the rust away and in the end covered everything with the rust mitigation paint I bought.
I will need to get a new sheet of steel to finish this piece. The patch I need to make is now going to need to be a inch after the bend perhaps more. I’ll cover every piece of steel with the rust paint. I think the way they screwed the panels together might work. I can also see how I could spot weld the panels together. This would also be good experience for welding the bed back into place. I will also be covering everything in seal sealer and several liberal applications of bedliner/rhino-liner or whatever it is called.
Thanks for watching, like and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.
The good news…I have the swimming pool setup and I’ve been in it twice this weekend.
The bad news…I still suck at welding. In my defense this part of the Range Rover Classic is a mish-mash of panels converging into a very small space. There are no less that three different pieces in this area that are plug welded and the gaps filled with seam sealer. In a future video when I build the rest of of the upper wheel well, I will point out the three layers of panels that go into building the wheel well. It’s so convoluted that screws were even used to hold the parts together. SCREWS!
Anyway. I build my replacement parts and attempted to get them married together. Ironically I have three pieces of metal to get this done. Well four if you count the patch of the side bulkhead.
Did I say it was hard to weld under there? NO? Well it’s damn hard to weld under there. You have basically two positions. Mashed up against the wheel hub and laying on the ground with welding slag (molten metal) falling on you. Both, super awesome as you can well imagine.
I said I was swimming earlier in this post. While sitting on the patio drying off Mrs. Okierover noted the weird red scratches on my right arm. I told her they were from being mashed up against the hub.
Manufacturing the repair pieces was a bit of folly too. I had to make the “L” three times. First time was an experiment to see if I could make a bended L. The second was because I measured the piece without the floor panel in the right place. The third time was a charm or I decided that was going to be the last time I made it and I made it work.
Don’t get me wrong, careful thought was expended. A LOT of thought. And in the end I was still wrong but not by much.
With a lot of clamping and grinding and grunting I have the pieces welded together. The welds are ugly. A lot of seam sealer will be used to discourage water from coming in these seams. Probably about as much as was used by the factor but the difference is my metal is covered with primer. Theirs was not. To protect this section I will rely on primer, at least three coats. Rust encapsulator will also be liberally applied. And over that, rhino/bed liner. Inside the cab will also be a layer of Fat Mat.
Will all this work and product prevent rust? Probably not. Who are we kidding? The Range Rover Classic was built to rust. The goal was that it rusted out on the second or third owner. I had the added bad luck that my Range Rover was a victim of a front end wreck before I owned it. Sports and Classics did the best they could to weld a donor front end on to the rear half. And I’m doing my best to keep rust at bay the best I can.
There were 19 segments filmed over two days. I left a lot of the welding out of the video. Mostly because it was difficult enough for me to get into place to weld, there really wasn’t any room for a camera.
It was hot in the shoppe too. Temps at or above 100F (37.8 C for those of you living in countries that have never had a man on the moon). The camera overheats when I’m filming in these temps. So the camera sat on the air conditioner when I wasn’t filming. I wonder if anyone makes a camera that can do warmer temps? My next camera will be evaluated for temps.
This weekend was Memorial Day. Freedom is not free. So many have given everything they had to keep you free. Remember those and their great sacrifice.
Here we go again. This is Part 6, and I’m not even going to bore you with how many more parts this will take to get the passenger side wheel well completed. Let’s just say, its going to be quite a few more.
In this one I cut out the bad bits of the bulkhead/sidewall/whatever and replace it with a patch that if I do say so myself is probably better than the last one. Only time and wet carpets will tell, and probably rust. Whatever, it’s done.
I now have a solid bulkhead to weld additional part on. Parts like the patch I’m going to install for the floorboard. Still not sure how I’m going to shape the floorboard, but that for next Saturday to worry about.
Check out the video. I think it went pretty well.
Like and subscribe if you like the content. I always appreciate it. And comment! I love comments. I got a comment this week that I needed magnets.
In this installment I begin the disassembly of the front fender to expose more rust. And I was NOT disappointed. I found just about what I expected. A rusted through footwell. On a positive note…I think I found where the water was getting in to soak my carpets. I have no idea how to correct it, but at least I found it.
In order to get to all the rust the front fender had to come off. I encountered a bunch of rusted screws and bolts. I had to cut several of them off. I even used an air chisel to remove some spring type U nuts (yeah I had to look that name up, I had no idea what they were called). I can tell you they were a bitch to remove. But after you deconstruct them a bit they came right off. I’ll likely replace the U nuts with stainless steel bolts and nuts.
The fender didn’t put up much resistance after I got the U nuts off. I then had to remove a plastic fender piece. You can probably guess that the plastic clips weren’t going to survive being taken off.
Underneath I found a lot of surface rust. I put the angle grinder with a wire wheel to work. I cleaned up some of the rust and found a bunch of really bad metal.
In the seem between the wheel well and the footwell I found what I think is the source of my wet carpets. This spot is going to be hard to fix. I don’t know what needs to be cut away and what needs to be welded on.
Inside where this failed bulkhead is is covered with Fat Mat. That will need to be removed. Heat gun and patience I hope will assist me in getting it removed. There is a nice cluster of wires and relays right there too. So joy of joys I’ll get to relocated all that too!!! Woot!
I also took the lug nuts and cleaned all the rust off them. I have the first coat of paint on them. They’ll get a second before I put them back on.
That’s about it for this week. I got to watch some severe weather out in western Oklahoma on Sunday. It all petered out before it got to the Okierover Base Camp.
