Rear floor & body cross-member replacement

[Orange]

On a sunny day in the summer of 2007, I enlisted the help of Mark to replace the floor and rear body cross-member in my 92 Range Rover Classic. The full size pictures are in one of my LR4x4 albums if you want to view full size ones!!

We started with this:

Went through this:

And approximately 2 weeks later (4 solid days and a load of tarting up) ended up with this:

There’s more to it than that though!!!!! I’ve got a load of pictures of the whole process (pm me if you want anything specific) but I thought a brief description of the work was best, so here goes…

Firstly, the rear of the car was stripped of it’s carpets, lights, seats, tailgates and sundries (anything flammable, basically!!) so we started with room to move and room to investigate.

Then the fun really starts… Let’s see how far the rust actually goes:

You get the idea!!!

First thing to do is the remove the rear crossmember. There are loads of spotwelds to drill out, so best to get at least one spotweld drill bit.

There are some that are hidden and will involve bending various bits of metal to get a cold chisel to!!

When you get close to the point of complete detachment, best to prop the sides up with something adjustable. This will make it easier to wiggle the replacement one in! It will be easier if you are just using box section and fabricating body mounts, but an original one piece crossmember requires quite a bit of jiggling!

Old one out:

The replacement crossmember from (I think) an ’83 model given a good wire brush and a coat of weldable primer:

Then cut the rest of the floor out:

And wiggle the replacement crossmember in and clamp it in place:

Then do up the new body mounts (tight, but not silly tight) and tack it in place. After it’s all lined up, it’s time to get the Welding Bitch to do his thing… Including re-fitting the rubber seal mounting flange:

You can probably see from the last picture that there was nothing left or the floor supports at each side. Now is the time to enlist the help of your favourite local blacksmiths to get them to fold some flat sheet steel to create a new lip (cheers Messers RogueVogue and Wightman) using their uber-good press and gilloutine equipment. We could only manage to fold one section, when we actually needed a double fold to create the new step and overlap the existing metal. This meant welding a flat strip of steel to the folded section. I haven’t explained it very well, but this next picture gives you the general idea of what was needed/achieved:

Add in the new floor supports (same as Disco 1 ones) and you end up with what Land Rover intended to hold the floor up.

During the process of attaching the new floor support sections, we blew several holes in the wheelarch, so ended up making running repairs:

Once that was all done, it was time to turn attentions to repairing the offside wheelarch and door pillar. After a good grind and wire brush the looked like this:

Bear in mind you can see the floor through the wheelarch!!

After several plates were cut and shaped, we ended up with repair that looked like this:

The extent of the primer gives away how much was repaired!!! The primer has been applied after a good layer of seam sealer was worked into all of the welds/overlaps.

A quick slap of silver paint:

Then we come to putting the new floor in. This was recovered, along with unperished rubber sealing strips, from a pre 1986 model in a scrapyard. I think it cost £20 in total – Mark will correct me if I am wrong!! (As usual!!)

Tell you what – if you are doing this and don’t have an air rivet gun, go out and buy one!!!!!!!!!!

The floor was put in with a liberal application of sealant to all joins, even along the rubber strips.

With all that done it was a case of rebuilding the rear end with it’s wings, tailgates and lights and away we go!!

All in, the cutting, fabbing and welding took about 4 days. The strip down and prep/painting and rebuild after took a further week of evenings. A bit long winded, but it’s now more solid that it was when it left the factory!!!

As I said above, there’s loads of piccies if you want any specific areas in detail!!

I'm sure Mark will be along in a little while to explain more of the tech side of things. AFAIK his welder is a Butters MIG 175, but that's about it...

[Bowie69]

Some really nice work there! And many thanks for the great write up =)

I guess being pre-1986, you mean the floor is Ali?

I am thinking this may need doing to mine sometime soon...........

[Mark]

The floor we replaced was in a 92 but I think the ally floor came out of an '84 car (it was on an A plate)...

The ally floor seemed like a much better idea than our original plan of cutting and shutting a discovery floor to fit. The ally floor also does not have 2 of the supports that the steel floor has, so we didn't replace them. I wish I had done it this way on my disco to be fair!

The main bits that took the time were the fiddly bits like the bottom of the C-pillar. The wheel arch was fun, and involved riveting the new metal in place to hold it while I welded it in properly.

The repair pieces along the edge of the floor, to create the recess for it to sit in, were something like 40mm x 15mm x 25mm. 40 mm sits flush against the side of the wheel arch and puts the 15mm step in the right place. As has been said, the brake press didn't have the tooling to do such a shallow step, so they were made as 2 pieces welded together to form the section.

There isn't much technical stuff to get into here. It's not a fun job to be honest, but replacing the cross member is whole lot easier with no floor in place.

The rust doesn't look too bad in some of the pictures, but I only planned to do this once, so it all got done together!

As Adrian has failed to mention, The truck is up for sale now, so if anyone wants a rangie with a very solid rear end, this is it!

Cheers

Mark

[Bowie69]

ARGH... don't tempt me with it again!

[steve_d]

Nice job.

I have an ali floor going begging if anyone wants it.

Steve

[Orange]

ARGH... don't tempt me with it again!

[Mrs Doyle voice on]

Ah - go on, go on, go on!!!

[Mrs Doyle voice off]

[Rustyrangie]

Nice job, Orange

I did the same to my '90 Vogue

Having stacks of time and little money (early retired and a cheapskate!) I made up all the floor support panels from 20 gauge sheet with a clark bender.

The floor is a Disco one which is about 4 inches too short. I fitted an extra floor support bar above the fuel tank and used 20 gauge sheet to fill the gap to the rear crossmember.

The disco floor has all the holes (Seat belts & fuel pump access) in the right place if you do it this way.

Bob

[Shackleton]

Nice! Didn't realise thats what the rear cross member looked like

Question though - see the way you can look down your chassis rails once the rear bumper is off, as in inside the rails...

Is that normal cause if so mine have been capped front and rear, or maybe were the early cars capped and not the later ones?

PS - is that a big green classic bus your RR sleeps with?

[Orange]

The chassis is blanked off about 3" from the rear crossmember... Don't know if Land Rover made any alterations to this set-up. My previous 1987 Vogue is exactly the same...

As for the classic bus - yes and no. Yes, It's a GreenLine RF. It's my dad's hobby!!! And No, it doesn't sleep with it. I can only blag workshop space for a few days at a time as where the RR is parked, another bus normally lives!!! Bl##dy parents - how dare they fill their own workshop up with their own stuff!!!

[kyotekid]

Long time since this thread has seen the light of day, but I don't suppose you have any clearer pictures of what parts of the cross-member actually needed to be welded back in, as I am planning on doing a cross-member soon myself, and wondered what was involved in putting it back, and where it needs welding, particularly round the back where it joins the goalpost section. Thanks.

[ratmanrover]

Long time since this thread has seen the light of day, but I don't suppose you have any clearer pictures of what parts of the cross-member actually needed to be welded back in, as I am planning on doing a cross-member soon myself, and wondered what was involved in putting it back, and where it needs welding, particularly round the back where it joins the goalpost section. Thanks.

I'd like too know this too please!

[Shackleton]

Was debating whether to bump this one again by asking a question likely not to be answered, but I can help with the last two comments so figure I might as well. The rear cross member needs a short row of plug welds underneath the bottom of each goal post. Then behind each goal post there's an L shaped bracket the sits on top of the cross member and again meets the back of the post, this one's tricky, I've yet to finish it. Down the inner and outer edge of each post along it's flanges you need to do further plugs. Finally the trailing edges of the side sections of load area floor [the panel the spare wheel sits in, and the opposite one the jack sits on] are welded to the top of the cross member. HTH and I'm saying plug welds, those being the closest thing to what was there originally, but you could do seam welds too I suppose. You can see everything I'm talking about in videos I made of the job I did on my '91 Vogue here.

My question is about the rubber seals. I'm going the same route as Orange [the OP] and using the earlier style seal but I see he's also welded on the old lip for the newer style seal. Orange if you see this I'm guessing you trimmed down the rubber from the '86 seal? Mind def won't fit if I put the lip back on the cross member. Just looking for confirmation either way. Sláinte!