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Its my enforced half term holiday, it's lashing down and blowing a gale, resulting in the workshop has lost its power: so seems like a good time for an update. I have spent a fair bit of time this year working on the rear body, in fact two rear bodies; soon after I purchased the station wagon, I squired a second rear body, since mine had a bit of accident damage on one side and the other side had an aluminum skin hiding more damage. This rear body was purchased unseen and initially I was happy with it. It had been blasted and lacked any accident damage. It sat in the yard for a few years and from time to time I would take a look at it, I noticed that the sides were not straight and actually dipped up and down like the Seven Sisters on the South Downs, probably from blasting it too hard, never the less I had my blasting chap, knock the mold and lichen off it and I attempted to put it right. I decided to have a go at shrinking the metal back and pull it back into shape, after numerous hours with a blow torch and hammers I was getting nowhere. I looked at other options, filling was a possibility but in places i would have slabs of filler up to 15mm in depth, not a route I wanted to take. I could have had a go at making new sides, but these would need to be riveted and bonded into place, since I was not able to spot weld them, this gave me concerns as to how strong the structure would be, as well as the fact I would need to pick the whole structure to bits and realignment could be tricky. So i decided to go back and look again at the tub that was on the vehicle when I squired it. After all what had I to loose? I started by tackling what I considered to be the worst, damage on the left hand side. You can see this in the photos of the vehicle before I dismantlement it. With the aid of some blocks of wood and a couple of bottle jacks positioned between the inner wheel arch and the body skin, I slowly pushed the crease out aided with a bit of bashing on the exterior side of the panel. Finally a bit of dressing with a hammer and dolly, convinced me that I could save this body.
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Last Edit: Nov 2, 2023 12:31:04 GMT by landieles
1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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I ended up here. The final bit will need a skim of filler. I stripped the ally skin off the right hand side to find the damage amounted to no more than a small dent, then set about stripping all the old paint and the underseal from the under side.   Before and after cleaning the underside. Whilst cleaning I made an interesting discovery (for an early Land Rover anorack), that there was Dove Grey Paint (the body colour) on the underside. Normally Rover did not paint the parts of panels that did not show, the only exception being proto-types and pre-production vehicles. This is quite significant, as I knew this body was not the original seen in the black and white photos (I will discuss latter)and had assumed that the swap had been done by a previous owner. Now it points to the Manufacture, Rover, replacing it. Why do I say this? The grey paint was sprayed not hand painted, it was all over the underside, including bits where it would be impossible to paint when fitted to the chassis. It was only grey once, when at the factory, the log book then records it as green,(No mention of the sand colour). The sequence and layers of paint, all match up with other parts of the body. Getting rid of the paint is a tedious process. Paint strippers have become worse since they have removed all the good (harmful) chemicals out of them. I have found that the screw fix own brand to be one of the most effective, if you follow the directions. This softens up layers of paint for easy removal, except the original enamel. This stuff is bomb proof, requiring several layers of stripper, wire wool and sandpaper to remove. To make matters worse a pot of white paint had fallen over in the back of the wagon at some point in its life, spreading a thick coat of paint every where. This needed a chisel to remove it. Whilst I do other repairs paint stripping is still ongoing.     |
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1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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I keep saving this as short posts as I am worried the electricity will cut out. Its the bain of our lives around here, every time there is a bit of wind. It's what you get for living in the sticks and power supplied by overhead cables. Anyway; assessing the rear body tub, there was a lot of electrolytic corrosion. The aluminum strengtheners had rotted where they had come into contact with the steel supports and in some cases the floor had rotted out too. The back lighting panels were tatty and corroded where they bolted to the chassis, likewise with the aluminum strengthener that ran across the back edge of the tub. It was a similar story where the rear seat frame bolted to the floor. There are also a few holes drilled in the side of the body. Folks just love to drill holes in Land Rovers it seems.  The floor strengthening ribs posed me a bit of a problem, It is possible to buy replacements for series 2 and 3 vehicles, but these have a deeper profile than series one's. If they were used the steel body supports would not fit. The width of my bender is not sufficient to make them, I would also have a problem doing the reverse bend. Their profile is like this, _[]_. The solution I came up with was to bed up some U section bits, around a meter long and bond these over the top of the existing sections so these bits bridged the gap. Perhaps not the most elegant of solutions and the purists wouldn't like it, but it did stiffen the floor and it will be unseen, unless actually looking for it. I came up with a similar bodge for the holes in the floor, cutting out patches from some aluminum lithographic plates I acquired from a previous place of work, where they had sat unused for a couple of years. I don't know what is in this alloy, but it is extremely durable and very thin. I have used a bit to patch my tin shed and it shows no sign of oxidation some fifteen years latter, even in it's unpainted state. These patches were bonded to the underside and then the holes filled from the top. Small unwanted drilled holes, were counted sunk, before using aluminum solid countersink rivets to fill them, followed up by linishing the top. The areas around the seat mounts needed a different approach.   Spot welds were drilled out the the section separated.  resulting in this. These bodies are much like a patch work quilt, lots of separate sections spot welded together,by either using folded in edges or bracing sections underneath. In the picture above you can see both, however the section at the top has seen better days and not capable of supporting a new bit of floor. To solve this I removed the plate visible at the bottom of the picture and cut one to fit right across, then cut a new bit for the top and used countersunk solid rivets to bring both parts together, there by encapsulating the damaged fold at the top of the picture. When I am finished the seat frame will bolt through 6mm of floor, rather than 2mm, which can't be a bad thing in my view. |
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Last Edit: Nov 2, 2023 16:48:21 GMT by landieles
1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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 This shot shows the under side of the body, with most of the repairs discussed above. I will run abit of seam sealer around the edges before painting. For the rear end I was very fortunate in picking up a couple of new panels and a new strengthener, new, but second hand via the Series One Club forum. These parts are well made by a company called Bits for Landies. I acquired them for about half their retail value. I was going to make some but it saved me a lot of work. Originally I was going to turn the strengthener around, as it is symmetrical, riveting the tatty bit to the underside of the floor and using the good edge to bolt to the chassis. It is a common restorer's dodge, but with an accurate copy didn't need to bother.    The galvanised cappings were temporarily bolted in place to check for alignment. |
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Last Edit: Nov 2, 2023 17:40:01 GMT by landieles
1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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Around the edge of the door cut out a large galvanised capping bolted, which strengthens the whole area of the body. This is secured by an number of captive nuts. These are attached to steel plates and "float" in an aluminum cage which is spot welded to the body. some of these were missing, damaged by corrosion or in one case bug*ered up by me during dismantling. The result being I needed four. To my knowledge these are not obtainable, so I had to make them.
I formed the cage over a former I had made, brazed nuts to plates and riveted them in place.
Be kind, I'm a chemist, not an engineer.
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1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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Do any of the factory records from when this was built survive?
One of my MK2 Jags was a factory devopment car and the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust had the records for it showing what was done to it in the time they had it, it seems the main thing they were doing was trying to stop oil leaking out of it!
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Apart from the photographs I have found out very little from time spent at Gaydon. Unlike production vehicles there seems to be very little in the way of records. A few chance finds have led to rough idea of when it was built and an entry in rovers register of vehicles they "owned" and run themselves, gave me the date of first registration.
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1954 Land Rover 107 Station Wagon
1955 Land Rover 86 Utility
1956 Land Rover 107 Pick Up
1986 2CV
1947 Ransomes Crawler Tractor
2001 C15 Citroen Van
2017 VW crafter
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