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Chassis maintenance / upgrade


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Hi,

I’m still getting my head round the ways to approach making safe/robust my recent (last month) purchase of a 1984 110 Hcap.

The only modification to it over time seems to be the Disco 200tdi engine.

In relation to the chassis (original) I was hoping you might be able to help with /offer opinions on a 4 points.

1. The front 3/4 of so of the chassis seem reasonably sound but the rear suspension area is truly poor (obvious MOT fail). Anyone know why the rear end should deteriorate so much more than the rest /is this relatively normal?

2. Assuming I don’t go for a new 3mm galv chassis (Q plate concerns) and 2mm bulkhead, I was thinking of just rubbing everything back (little by little) with a brass wire brush, then applying hammerite with a brush, then generously coating with dinitrol? Is this a good approach (very low skill level here indeed and no tools / equip for fancy stuff!) or would folk recommend something better (that a novice can do in his garage)

3. For the rear end of the chassis someone suggested a new galv 1/4 chassis. I can’t weld and I hear it’s something like 8 hours welding.. so paying a local LR specialist won’t be cheap (but still may be sensible).Three questions here :

a) is cutting out and welding in a new rear 1/4 chassis relatively ‘normal’ practice;

b) realistically, versus a whole chassis replacement, how safe is a chassis which has had this kinda work done to it ; and

c) will a hybridised chassis (old bit attached to new bit) like this be a possible issue from a Q plate point scoring system ?.. I’d really rather avoid losing the 5 points, but if I have to lose them then I’d rather have a whole new (Richards/Marslands?) galv 3mm chassis!

4. In relation to Q plate risk, is there anything from the UK authorities that would help define what a ‘like for like’ chassis replacement might be that would allow a new 3mm galv chassis to be used (or is it simply obvious that a new 3mm can never be ‘like for like’ if the original chassis was 2mm and not galvanised)

many thanks in advance for help / opinions

Cheers

Keith

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I don't think the details on 'like-for-like' go as far as the thickness of the metal used so that shouldn't give you a Q. Likewise with the rear 1/4 chassis, its only replacing/repairing a part so It wouldn't loose the points/ID. It's also fairly normal practice. 

I've not been around long enough to really know, but supposedly Hammerite isn;t what it used to be. Certainly the old dear's wheelbarrow didn't last as long between recoats as it used to.

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Any of the new replacement chassis that are available will be fine in terms of ID. One could argue that only the Marsland are ‘truly’ original as they’re made in the same way as the original ones but I’m not aware of anyone ever having had an ID-related problem with a Richards or the like.

You'll find a variety of opinions on which are best. My choice would be Marsland, having had experience of both major manufacturers.

A rear 1/4 chassis will be cheaper than a full chassis swap, but I suspect not by as much as you’d like. Personally if you can afford it I’d go the full job. That way it’s done and you can forget about it. 

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You can’t buy direct from Marsland any more. You have two choices:

1. Buy through local 4x4 specialist - this will take 6-8 weeks minimum.

2. Buy via reseller (Bearmach or Britpart) - in which case you can probably get one in a few weeks or less, however it will cost you another £500 or so for the privilege. 

 

When I picked my last one up last spring I was told that there was now a 30-week lead time for direct orders. Britpart/Bearmach take all the production priority and they are a lot slower to make now that GKN got rid of the robotic production line. 

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Although you can clean up and treat the outside of the chassis, they tend to rot out from the inside, so you need to get any mud etc out of the chassis and then spray inside it with an extension tube.

l sprayed the inside of my chassis with spray grease, there’s plenty of holes you can stick the spray extension through.

However if you say the rear of your chassis is “truly poor” and it’s beyond a rear crossmember replacement, then l would  replace the whole chassis.

lt will increase the value of the Land Rover by at least the cost of doing it, so you can’t really lose.

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2 hours ago, Retroanaconda said:

You can’t buy direct from Marsland any more. You have two choices:

1. Buy through local 4x4 specialist - this will take 6-8 weeks minimum.

2. Buy via reseller (Bearmach or Britpart) - in which case you can probably get one in a few weeks or less, however it will cost you another £500 or so for the privilege. 

 

When I picked my last one up last spring I was told that there was now a 30-week lead time for direct orders. Britpart/Bearmach take all the production priority and they are a lot slower to make now that GKN got rid of the robotic production line. 

Hmmmm. What is it that makes you prefer Marlsand to Richards? Richards seem well priced really. Sheilder chassis are another option, but they didnt seem to have the best reviews from everyone when i last searched.

Hopefully this isnt a thread hijack and is useful to the OP as well. 

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Thanks everyone for the replies.. very helpful indeed.

Landroversforever .. thanks for the heads up on Hammerite.. I guess it’s hardly surprising. I wonder what folk use instead? (I guess we try to avoid ‘red lead’ paint these days!)

Retroanaconda .. thanks for the advice... makes a lot of sense.. particularly the 1/4 vs whole chassis thing. I realise that decisions about vehicles can often be more emotional than economic but, despite having the spare cash to go for a seemingly sensible full new chassis and bulkhead replacement, from my POV I’m trying to assess whether selling this one for spares/restore and buying a newer hcap for £10-12k is a better plan than repairing (..if only mine wasn’t from my wife’s family’s farm!). I hadn’t realised that Britpart and Bearmach were retailers for chassis or that you seem to be able to buy direct from LRparts (after appropriate mark-ups) (and, no doubt, others) and haven’t heard back from KDlandrovers yet (they’re supposed to be the Marsland distributors now?, I saw) so that’s very handy to know when chatting to my local specialist.

Lightning.. thank you .. It hadn’t occurred to me that they would rot from the inside (though it’s now obvious!) and how to mitigate that. It’s particularly relevant as it’s spent the last 3+ years driving through farmland mud and the underside is particularly caked in the stuff.

Reb78.. I only mentioned those two suppliers (obviously others are available) based on my online reading where the hearsay appeared (as I interpreted it) that they were perhaps the two overall best for a mixture of reasons. I obviously know almost nothing about it myself! I’ve no problem with your comment potentially ‘hijacking’ the thread .. I wouldn’t take any discussion of defender chassis relative merits as a hijack!

 

thanks again

Keith

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1 hour ago, reb78 said:

Hmmmm. What is it that makes you prefer Marlsand to Richards? Richards seem well priced really. Sheilder chassis are another option, but they didnt seem to have the best reviews from everyone when i last searched.

Hopefully this isnt a thread hijack and is useful to the OP as well. 

I went to Marsland simply because their chassis was made by GKN to the original design & Marsland had exactly what I needed in stock, Richards had a 8 to 10 weeks lead timewhich was no good for me at the time & Shielder didn't exist 4 years ago. 

if I had to rechassis another 110, I would get another marsland chassis for it, either via Bearmach or Britpart.

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3 hours ago, reb78 said:

Hmmmm. What is it that makes you prefer Marlsand to Richards? Richards seem well priced really. Sheilder chassis are another option, but they didnt seem to have the best reviews from everyone when i last searched.

Hopefully this isnt a thread hijack and is useful to the OP as well. 

I had issues with alignment with the Richards chassis that I used. An outrigger was around 1/2” out of position.

Conversely when I did the 90 using a Marsland chsssis the body went straight back on with no issues.

Plus the Marsland ones look a lot better, being made to the same design as the original. There is argument however against this and in favour of Richards in that the four single sheets approach they use does in theory mean fewer internal rust traps. But the galvanising mitigates that to some extent.

They're all F-ing expensive now, but nobody does a re-chassis on a Land Rover purely for financial reasons.

For the OP - my advice would be to fix up the one you have. You could spend more on a newer one, but in 10 years or less it will be in the same boat. Spend the cash on the old one and the chassis at least will last for donkeys years. 

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If the back end of the chassis is that bad then it doesn't hold much store for the rest of it. Replacing the back end with a new 1/4 or 1/2 chassis will be marginally cheaper than a complete chassis change and take less time but you won't really know how rusted the rest of it is until the rot is cut out plus, it may be false economy in just replacing part of the chassis as, like I say, you don't really know what the condition of the rest of it is like and as said, they rot from the inside out so another 12 months on you may need a complete chassis rendering your 1/4 or 1/2 chassis repair uneconomical in the long run where you could put the cost of that into doing a complete chassis change. In doing a complete change it also gives you an opportunity to address any other parts that need replacing as I can tell you from experience that you will encounter a lot more things that need replacing, I just had my 1994 Defender County 300TDi chassis replaced but it didn't stop there, far from it, I will at some point post up the pictures and what had to be done. You see advertised LR specialists advertising chassis swap services but the prices and turnover time they quote will not account for anything else that needs doing once it's all apart. My advice would be to go over the vehicle thoroughly inspecting everything before you decide on a plan of action including the bulkhead foot wells, behind the brake servo and heater and also the seatbelt mounting points under the body and the battery box. If you do decide to go the full hog, again, as said, you will end up with a vehicle that will potentially be worth at least double what you spend on it.

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Thanks again. 

I think the advice / opinion is both very clear and very sensible.

Even if I used Foleys I doubt the overall cost for a full replacement Marsland. chassis and associated parts that come to light would be much more than £10k.. and in rural Somerset where I live likely considerably less (and even I can do some of it myself!). Then I’d have as good a vehicle as I’d need.

Looking at what can be bought for £10-15k I think it’s unlikely I’d get anything like as good a 110 hcap as I could get by replacing the chassis & bulkhead.

Thanks all again

cheers 

Keith

 

Edited by Keith1984
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To give you some idea Keith my Defender 90 cost me just under 4K to rebuild including the labour. Everything below body floor level was replaced except for the wheels and axles including all mounts, all nuts, bolts and washers, both footwells and battery box, fuel tank, new radiator and while the engine and box was exposed a new timing kit was fitted as was a new radiator and complete heavy duty clutch assembly, I will post it all up with pictures sometime. You are quite right in assuming that doing a rebuild will be better than replacing the vehicle, you would probably have to fork out much more for another than the cost to rebuild yours and 12 months down the line the replacement one could well need the same treatment. Total labour time spent on mine was 80 hours.

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Thanks again FarmerFred and FridgeFreezer (excellent video!) ..very useful in helping me to understand.

I think it’s now clear to me from both of you that it’s not just 30 man hours of work to replace a chassis and associated bits and pieces (not least welding a bulkhead to a chassis). 

Assuming that a Marsland galv chassis via LRparts (Britpart) is £2.5k ish and a bulkhead is £1k ish, plus a few hundred for tank, battery box, brake lines etc, then parts look like a £4.5-5k including vat.

Even if I can get away with 60hours labour only, I doubt I’ll get a rate of less than £40-50 per hour (plus vat) from an LR specialist (local steel welders/fabricators with fewer overheads and a community minded approach are still £30/hr)... so that’s £3-3.5k .. and at 80 hours labour it’s £4-5k.

This is how I was getting to an £8k-£10k cost figure in my rather naive mind... but that’s me theorising .. if I’m a long way out please do let me know where I’ve misunderstood.

Thanks again to everyone who’s helped.. it’s much appreciated.

 

 

 

 

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Um, you don't weld a bulkhead to a chassis - it is held on with two long bolts. Whole job requires zero welding, and only needs a grinder if you have to cut a stubborn bolt off (hence buy new nuts & bolts so you can sacrifice a few).

Also, the chassis swap is mostly just unskilled labour and a bit of heaving & ho-ing.

If you don't own one, borrowing or even buying an engine crane would pay for itself for this job alone. With that, a grinder, and not a lot of other stuff you could do it, albeit slowly, single-handed on a driveway if you really had to.

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I was fortunate in being able to reduce the cost of my rebuild in that it being linked to my buisness I could reclaim the VAT, if I had to loose that 20% it would of added almost another 1K to the cost plus the mechanic I use is not VAT registered and his labour charge was £20 per hour, he's very reasonable and knows his Land Rovers. The LR parts shop local to me are also very reasonable in their prices and having an account with them further reduces the cost of parts. The way my mechanic and I planned it out was for me to fetch and deliver the new chassis to him and then for me to buy and supply him with the parts as and when he needed them, that way nothing would get damaged or lost, especially all the small bits. He supplied odd bits, certain nuts and bolts, he made up all the new brake lines and with his 'consumables' such as fluids, welding etc. all that came to under £200. If you have to put in a new battery box go for the aluminium one, this comes in a kit of parts which fits all together with pop rivets but one tip to observe is that when riveting in the base of the box you need to have the flat heads of the rivets on the outside, if you don't the rivets will foul on the chassis.

Edited by Farmerfred
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I did mine entirely myself over a number of weeks (about 14 days worth of work if I recall correctly), there's a thread in the members vehicles forum which covers the process.

I was in for around £4k in total once I'd finished, and I only replaced what was necessary (plus a few bits that made sense in terms of access etc.) - the chassis was over half that.

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I did a straight chassis swap, no other items replaced took me 27 days working evening & weekends & a full week off work to get it done with the help of a friend, this including T wash/prime & paint the new chassis. my thread is in this forum.

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