Lightweight bulkhead repairs

With the Lightweight back in the barn I have been able to crack on with some remedial work on the lower bulkhead and it's mounting. On the passenger side, close to where it mounts to the chassis, the main bulkhead rail had suffered quite badly to corrosion. Initial thought were on how best to repair it, but the more I poked away at it, the less savable it became.

Wanting to get it done right and not have to come back to it again in a few years time, I took the decision to fabricate a new lower section to replace the heavily corroded part. Although the final piece is to be a channel section, I started off with a length of 2" box section as this was what was to hand and could ofcourse be cut down to size. Using the lathe a hole was soon bored close to the bottom to accept the lower mounting point/spreader tube, which was then welded in.

In an attempt to make sure every thing lined up, a basic jig was made up from a piece of Dexian, which seemed to work quite well as it already had all the holes in it I required.

Old and new bulkhead sections side by side

Old piece removed

New piece in, welded and painted

Outer panel also fitted.

RBRR 2008

Woops, a bit of updating needed here.

The RBRR has been and gone, but I'll back track a bit first. As mentioned in my last post, I got myself and fitted a pair of re-conditioned control arms. The effect of fitting these was to tighten up the front end, but unfortunately at the same time it knocked the tracking out of alignment as it had put the suspension geometry back in the right place after having dropped partly through the old rubber bushes.


With the tracking re-done there was not much else to do in preparation for the RBRR other than put a basic tool kit together, grab a few spares, then give the car a polish and add the car stickers.
Joining me on the run was Bruce Sellers, aka GT6Boy, aka MotherTheressa and Nikolaj Blomberg, aka Nick B, who flew in from Copenhagen to do the run, whom I met for the first time at the start of the run a few hours before the start.

I've not that much to report from the run, we drove on some good and at times challenging roads, oh, and it rained a few times. The car generally behaved itself, with us only having to stop once to fix a wire up to the overdrive switch, which had failed close to a crimp joint and that was made good again using a inline connector I had in the spares.

With the run and travelling to the start from South Wales, the car covered about 2,300 miles, returning about 32mpg, not too bad for a 42 year old car I thought.

Since getting back from the run the car has been de-stickered, washed and waxed again, but that's about it for now. The Lightweight Land Rover has returned, so I can see a few hours going into that again soon.

Thanks to Nick Jackson for this last picture and there are more pictures from the run, taken by Nick B here