Sunday, December 02, 2007

Project "Undead" - Chassis preparation

Well well... have not finished the "fighter" project, I met someone who try to do a ground up building his land rover... he acquire a decent land rover and then breaking it into pieces... I meant pieces literally... you can see the pistons, crankshaft and tappet outside the engine block and not a single nuts hold the body part together. He stripped the paint to bare aluminum but he stop due to the time constrain he has currently. So we got the deal for the whole lot for about US$ 200.

I was planning to use it as body part, but knowing that it is quite complete vehicle, why not to build it into something really nice... a classic series III land rover. Anyway I managed to bring all the pieces into a garage and start rebuilding it... Since I want it to be a nice land rover series, I will slowly rebuilding it using all original parts as my money permit.

OK first thing first... what to do with chassis...? there are few rust here and there, but not many, the chassis is still good overall, so I decided to patch some holes and later galvanize it for long term enjoyment.

So I ordered a welder to work on the chassis and added a "wing" on the left side so it can be use as double tank or place for additional battery later on.
















This is the bare chassis after few patches before galvanizing, can you see the additional wings? Although this additional wing defeat the purpose of all original thingy... I will galvanized the chassis anyway so it will not 100% original... but it probably better.


DSC_4808

The additional wing is the second support plate on the left hand side.


additional wing

Just before it going to the galvanizing factory, I need to take off the old bushing from this chassis... this is the ideal way to remove the old bushing... some will just hit it with big hammer ( you'll have the risk to crack your poor old chassis), or using torch to heat up the bushing (although this if not done properly will make the hole a bit loose)


bushing1

After patching, remove the bushing, it is now ready for galvanizing, more on this later..

3 comments:

Michelle said...

Removing chassis bushes was the WORST job I did in the entire Landy restoration on my Series III. It took weeks of hacking, melting, hitting etc. But I found that if I put thinners in between the rubber of the bush and the metal pipe it goes in (the inner one and the outer one of the bush), the rubber slides away from the bush and it's easier to remove!

Good luck - looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Michelle said...

By the way, you can see photos of everything here: http://picasaweb.google.com/michelle.bainbridge

VM said...

Ha ha ha "Thinner...!", I should have thought of that... Thank you Michelle a good tips