Thoughts on a repair option for this...

[Eightpot]

I've got a bit of a problem on my Rangies rear spring seat (see pic)

Due in part to a bit of rust, and a lot of stress, one side of the spring seat has split away from the chassis.

On the photo you can see where a garage (in Namibia) attempted, poorly, to repair a crack that had formed vertically near the side of the spring seat, and have put a bit of plate over, which only seemed to be attached by a few gobs of weld.

The chassis is good (for a 30 year old one) but there is a bit of rust by the spring seat, so I can't hammer it back and repair or just put a new spring seat on.

My thoughts are to grind the spring seat off, clean up the whole area, then make a 'fish plate' a bit like this <=> maybe with a fold over top and bottom, seam welded, and plug weld through it to the chassis behind. Then weld a new spring seat onto this.

I can't do a chassis swap as it's not a normal rangie (see avatar), has a stretched chassis, and I don't have the facilities to dismantle it.

Plus the rest of the chassis seems pretty well aside from this bit.

Anyone tried a similar repair, or think it won't be strong enough??

[discomikey]

i think you can buy spring seats new as replacement weld on parts, i would grind the old one off flat, make sure the chassis leg is good enough, then fully seam weld the seat on, both sides of each weldable edge. then maybe add in some extra bracing depending on how much you trust your welding.

[HPLP]

Hey,

It depends on where you are! I take it that if you were back in the Uk you could redo the whole area and thats what I would suggest, but the extent of work to do would depend on facilities and competancy of welding.

To get it strong would take time.

H

[Les Henson]

Mostly chassis rot there by the looks of it and just the one side of the spring seat. I would remove the spring, cut the side of the spring seat off, then repair the chassis itself. Once done - the side of the spring seat can be fabricated and replaced as well. Looks awful, but is a fairly straight forward repair really. I would be careful about use of the vehicle with it in that condition - the chassis could easily bend/crack at that point if you go over a bump/pot hole.

Les.

[zoltan]

Had a good look through your pictures of your trip and would imagine that if it were going to bend, judging by where you've been, it would have done so by now. Impressive journey!

[Eightpot]

Yes, we're back in the UK now, the car arrived at Southampton on Thursday, so just assessing the long string of jobs that needs doing before it can go back on the road. It's been out of the country for over a year so can't be driven anyway till it's MOT'd etc.

I did about another 5000 miles after I initially found this crack, so it's done pretty well - in fact it only split like this in the last 20 miles after I loaded the back up with half a ton of fuel, hardwood furniture, oil and souvenirs on the way to Mombassa docks.

I ideally want to change the spring seats as they are only 6" rangie ones, and with the weight of the car I think 110 seats will give me the spring options I need - hadn't thought about just doing one side of the spring seat, but I really want to take the whole thing off, hence my thoughts about nailing a nice wide solid plate across the chassis, on to good solid steel, and then welding new seats to that. My only worry was that it might cause too much stiffness and make new cracks, or be inclined to peel away from the chassis under load.

[missingsid]

I had the same problem and in fact still have a spare seat.

I had to remove the old seat and repair the chassis before adding a new seat that I bought from Designa Chassis. In the end though the chassis was scrapped as it is very rotten.

Marc.

[Range Rover Blues]

I'd stick with the double spring set-up it has, it seems to be working fine. If you fit wider springs I'mnot sure it they will line up with the chasis, but I havn't been out and looked at one recently.