Safari door woes

[JeffR]

The next thing to break will be my patience.....

Now comes the really fun part, noticed that the door skin has separated from the frame (LR never did use a decent sealant, it dries out and turns brittle, throw in the different thermal expansion between aluminium and steel and separation is always going to happen) removing the old sealant/glue/ brittle stuff and resealing the skin to the frame.

Foul language begins in 5...4...3...2.......

[JeffR]

All change..... Now deskinning  the door cos there is some rot in the frame that needs addressed.

Will I get the skin off without trashing it ?

Will I lose my temper and beat it to death with a lump hammer?

 Who knows, just watch this space

[JeffR]

So the deskinning is actually quite easy, if one takes care and time. Now this is a genuine parts door which has seen very few road miles. 

If you wonder why doors disintegrate:

 

So what other horrors hide beneath the skin.....watch this space

Edited April 19, 2023 by JeffR

[JeffR]

I'm contemplating making my own skin out of 2mm sheet and bonding it to the frame.  Has anyone got any photos of stress cracks on rear doors as I might as well strengthen the frame white its in bits

[Junglie]

You know you can buy 2mm carbon fibre sheet quite cheap these days. Or even 3mm.

Just wondering if, for something like a rear door, that might be a good way to go - it's flat anyway and CF is dead easy to work with using a Dremel... 

 

[Junglie]

Yeah, maybe I was being optimistic - unless you want to make the door out of 300x300 tiles (which could look cool perhaps) it will be...expensive.

[miketomcat]

14 minutes ago, Junglie said:

Yeah, maybe I was being optimistic - unless you want to make the door out of 300x300 tiles (which could look cool perhaps) it will be...expensive.

Large sheets of composite including fibreglass are difficult to find to buy, unless you make it yourself.

Mike

[JeffR]

I can smack aluminium with a hammer to convince it to fit...

Its interesting looking at the door frame, only the bits you can see were painted by the factory. No bloody wonder the doors rot

[JeffR]

As for why the doors crack and split, well it would help if the factory actually fully welded the frame, again, they only weld what you can see:

Rather poorly made don't you think.

By the way, the skins (with the exception of the top one) all came off rather easier than expected and with minimal damage, with a wee bit of hammer and dolly work, they'll go again.

I figure that if I fully weld the frame, it should be a lot stronger

[Snagger]

Do that, clean off the rust with a wire wheel, prime with red oxide, apply duct tape to the areas that press against the skin, etch and prime the inside of the sun and then put it back together.  That’ll outlast almost any new built door unless galvanised.   Don’t forget to cavity wax the frame once it’s painted.

[FridgeFreezer]

3 hours ago, Snagger said:

apply duct tape to the areas that press against the skin

I'd splurge on UHMWPE tape, very resilient and way less likely to dissolve into a sticky mess.

[Snagger]

Even better.  The pint is to have more than just primer separating the metals, and tape is a quick and neat way to do it.

[JeffR]

It will be welded, rust killed (Neutrarust 661) inside and out, primed and painted. The best way to get rust killer and primer inside the box sections is with a cavity wax applicator (when I work out what  safe place I tidied the bugger away to....)

Skins bonded to frame with PU sealer. Last one I did for a customer tiger seal was applied in thin layer with a filler applicator and left to cure, once almost cured a bead of PU applied round frame and skin clamped down till that cures. Then the edges are clinched over. Takes time but really works. 

I had a old safari door (pre 200 tdi) kicking round (well the bottom half sans window part) that I took apart a while ago, the frame on that was rotten, but it was fully welded by the factory, one has to wonder why they stopped doing the door frames in that way, cost no doubt.

[FridgeFreezer]

1 hour ago, JeffR said:

one has to wonder why they stopped doing the door frames in that way, cost no doubt.

Probably - after all, even your "bad" door lasted this long which is longer than most cars.

[JeffR]

Can anyone guess where I'm going with this idea.....Why have loads of bits welded together when one can have a single bit.

RIP double width filing cabinet, you will live on in my memories.

This may be getting out of hand a wee bit......

 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by JeffR

[JeffR]

So job stopped for a day or two, neighbours had a sense of humour failure about after about 150 spot welds were drilled out and ground down. Mind you the rain, hail, snow and sleet didn't help...Must clear the garage this weekend.

Never mind, deconstructing the door frame has been an education, they are sooooooo poorly made.  Frame top hat sections measure out at 1mm thick metal, the "closing" panels measure out at 0.9mm....Not intended to last very long, clearly. I have some YRM repair sections (bought for another door) so measured them. All made of 1.2mm steel, rather than the tinfoil Landrover seem to prefer. Also measured some bits of 1985 safari door, guess what, all the steel in them was (cue drum roll and fanfare) 1.2mm.

There are a surprising number of small, and not so small, rust holes that appeared when frame cleaned up with angle grinder and knotted wheel. 

The nastiest bits are all around the door lock aperture.

Mind you I did find out why the door skin used to deform when the hinge screws were tightened down, the anti-crush tubes sit a couple of mill below the frame...

So plan is to plug weld the pin holes (yes I know I should cut the rot out and weld in patches) and patch the bigger holes before welding on the one piece closing panel thats replacing the myriad of bits that Landrover used. But got some work to finish first. Oh and I cannot find any 1.2mm plate locally so waiting for that to arrive (when did sheet metal get so bloody expensive?)

 

 

Edited April 26, 2023 by JeffR

[Snagger]

We shouldn’t be surprised at the crush tubes being wrong. 🙄

[Junglie]

Presumably we can use this project to map when Land Rover went from incompetent but caring to incompetent...and not giving a monkey's.

Somewhere after 1985 would be my guess.

[hurbie]

so a door made in 1985 that's in need of work is proof that it is a incompetent buisiness , how many car's have you owned that still have doors made in 1985 .....

most off that age cars are long gone ....

[Junglie]

1 hour ago, hurbie said:

so a door made in 1985 that's in need of work is proof that it is a incompetent buisiness , how many car's have you owned that still have doors made in 1985 .....

most off that age cars are long gone ....

It's a fair point. But no - I'm not suggesting that a door in need of work demonstrates an incompetent business. It's more the reason why the door needs work...

And my 1972 Alfa Romeo still exists, though it takes a lot of work to keep it that way. Beautifully made, but the materials are carp.

[JeffR]

2 hours ago, hurbie said:

so a door made in 1985 that's in need of work is proof that it is a incompetent buisiness , how many car's have you owned that still have doors made in 1985 .....

most off that age cars are long gone ....

The 1981 Mini in my garage still has the original doors and they were really badly made.... The area in which I live, Northern England, still has a surprising number of 70's/80's vehicles that are in regular daily use

The mid 80's 110 door I dissected was made of much thicker material AND was painted inside and out.  The newer door is made of 20% thinner material and only painted/primed where the paint could be seen. Weld penetration on the corners was non existent on the newer door (can still see where it was cut (bandsaw). 

It was , deliberately, made cheaper. There were no drain holes either, hence the natural drain holes that are present... Given that it was a Genuine Parts door, the quality and workmanship  is absolutely shocking.

[JeffR]

13 hours ago, Junglie said:

Presumably we can use this project to map when Land Rover went from incompetent but caring to incompetent...and not giving a monkey's.

Somewhere after 1985 would be my guess.

I suspect the rot (pun very much intended) set in circa 1988 when BAe acquired Rover grp and set out out to maximise profits at any expense, this was exacerbated in the BMW/Ford  years that followed

[fmmv]

Part of the problem is the steel quality. When it's made it's poured into an ingot mould. The steel on the outside cools first and that is the most pure metal. Eventually there is a core of slag and carp. Then it is rolled into sheet, like rolling pastry, and so you have effectively a sh** sandwich, outer layers of decent metal covering a porous layer of goodness knows what that is keen to return to the earth. If rust gets into that middle layer it can travel through the middle of the metal. Now in the seventies and eighties, Italy bought Russian steel in exchange for the Fiat 124 at the Togliatti plant, hence Alfasuds are scarce as hen's teeth. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, the rust returns. So possibly a small part of the OP's problem was the steel at the time was not good, this accounts at least partly for 300 era chassis rusting faster than earlier.

[JeffR]

Well, having fully welded the door frame, I am amazed at the difference. The frame is so much stiffer and less floppy. Just got a few pigeon droppings welds to dress, a few dinky patches to make, internal box sections to paint, drain holes to recreate/make, half a million plug welds to do and door skins to dolly flat and fix back on.

The absence of photos  is due to finding out that if one leaves a samsung phone outing the monsoon that identifies as spring in Northumberland, it ceases to function, waiting for second eldest child to come home and extract said photos....

[JeffR]

Took a break from this for a while as, according to my cardiologist, having a stent or two shoved in my coronary arteries was somewhat more important.

So the door progresses had to move inside as rain and mig do not make good bedfellows... Cannot use garage due to very angry swallows nesting. Chicks are fine, they'll take mealworms from my fingers, parents are just thugs.

anyway, plug welded new one piece skin to door frame after repairing/replacing most of the rot (way too many plug welds, but I borrowed an 8mm hole punch and got carried away, what can i say it was fun)

hours of grinding later and a gallon of paint stripper. . A couple of coats of my favourite rust killer and frame officially done. Note, cleco clamps are worth their weight in gold when plug welding edges.

Got to admit to cheating a wee bit, there were a couple of small rust holes in the bottom frame, so rather than cut em out and weld chunks in, I enlarged them and they now identify as drain holes.

Some subjective observations on safari door frame.  The way LR do em, using multiple pieces is ok, but leave way too many gaps for water ingress. Also the frame flexes quite badly at these joints. In the interests of scientific observation I (before I removed the LR applied multiple bits of tin) I put the door on the ground and raised the bottom left corner, frame flexed by  a good half inch. Tried it again after welding one piece skin on and flex was not measurable. So a one piece replacement has increased the the torsional rigidity of the frame, can't wait to see how difficult its gonna be bending the door to fit the hole...

on to skinning the bugger.... Now I could have simply deleted the door skins, the door looks , well, like a door. But I thought to myself, lets see if I can flatten the skins I carefully removed (lets be honest here, it took bloody ages to get em off relatively intact, warped to buggery and back is a more accurate description. So out with a hammer and numerous bits of scrap metal (panel men call them dollies). Lots of hammering finger nails and their attendant digits later (still not got a huge amount of control over what my arms do, makes life interesting to say the least) and we have this 

In terms of time, it would have been significantly cheaper to use new skins (£60 or so from fleabay) but as I'd spent so much time taking the old ones off and hammering them flat(er)....add that I'm kinda bloody minded and you can see where this is going.

Everything got a couple of coats of Neutrarust, and I mean everything. Its probably a carp barrier for bimetallic corrosion, but what the hell , like I said before, I live dangerously...

So back to applying skins. Bottom skin first of course.

Was in a bit of a quandary, here. Ally skin is not truly flat, neither is the frame, also its a big flat (ish) bit of flappy metal thats gonna drum and vibrate and generally become a work hardened pain in the ventral orifice.

Out with the Tiger seal....... Half a tube of pu goop and 4 pop rivets later , bottom skin more or less attached. I spread the pu thinly using a wallpaper scraper, then using every clamp I could beg steal or borrow and numerous bits of wood, compressed the living bejesus out of everything. Lets see that bugger separate....

The two little side pieces treated the same

oh and one of the cats (Nougat) decided to help (gotta cut tiger seal out of cat fur)

 

Just need to fit top bit, sand old paint and prime.

So was it worth it? 

A new door shell is a couple of hundred quid, I've used about 40 hours of my life and all it cost, financially, was £17 for a tube of tiger seal. Metal was free, yeah I didn't cost in mig consumables and electrickery, but I learned a lot, it was fun (once the battered finger nails grow back and the cats fur grows back)) and I have a door that will outlast me.

Would I do it again?

NO

Buy a bloody door....

Edited July 2, 2023 by JeffR