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The rust bug my series 3 has got holes

Hi all,

Decided to install spotlights on the front of my Series 3, round circular ones, make it look nice. Sadly, I took off the front cover (In front of the radiator) to make sure I made the wiring look neat and discovered a rust hole in the chassis on top, left hand side (sitting in drivers seat), This is where the chassis joins the bumper,

Some questions:

  1. Is this an MOT failure
  2. What thickness metal do I have to weld it with (I have 1.5 mm and 3 mm)
  3. Must it be seam welded.

I will of course use weldable zinc coat before welding and afterwards use bitumen black with waxoyl. I will then soak the inside with waxoyl.

Yours

Andrew

Landie is

Series 3, 88 inch, 7 seater, 1983 on a Y plate.

Reply to
Andrew Renshaw
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I hope you understood that the hole is nowhere near the drivers seat, it is on the left when you are sitting in it, and is in the section of the chassis where the chassis meets the front bumper.

A
Reply to
Andrew Renshaw

Its all to do with how far away from the suspension mounting points it is. I'll let someone cleverer than me answer this, but i'd say probably. You could always put the bit of trim back on and cover it up again, and then it wont be a fail!

Its up to you. You dont _have_ to use any perticular thickness.

If its on top of the chassis then its easy to get to, and seam welding it isnt gonna be that hard! I always seam weld everything, but ive seen a lot of crap repairs that are mot passable (pop rivets and glue!)

I've always done the welding on my cars to the specifications that mean that i trust it to do the job!

If i were you i might be tempted to take the bumper off and check behind that, they always tend to go at the very end of front leg behind the bumper. If you waxoyl it now it might get messy when you have to weld that later!. Until you know its solid, dont be tempted to be recovered or pull anything with your front bumper, else it might come off! (it happened to mine when we first dragged it out of the shed it was in!)

Reply to
Tom Woods

Yes its a failure point. As Tom's said, you wan't to take the bumper off. The bolts will probably be seized up, best to use a cold chisel or nut splitter on the nuts underneath. Grinding off the heads will not help you... There's nearly always some rust under the bumper too. Once thats removed, its only a few hours work. Attack with a gringer and cut some plates. Just clean up the surface of the metal you want to weld too with a light grind, after chopping out the rot. Ideal steel plate is about 2mm, 3mm will be fine. Everything on the chassis should be seamed, doing it any other way is a bodge I'm afraid, and it will give you trouble later on.

All the best Andy

Reply to
Andy Warner

Andy and Andrew Hi,

Browsing through the classifieds of this month's LROI I found this very interesting site

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It appears like this stuff is used for painting sea water submerged items (if you can call a submarine or bridge foundations an item)

Have not tried it yet but with my house and the landies parked right in front of the sea this is meant to happen pretty soon.

Hope this will be useful to you and the fellow listmembers.

Take care Pantelis

Reply to
Pantelis Giamarellos

It will be an MOT failure, had the same prob myself, if you have a hole in the chassis, fix it , it will not get better.

Reply to
Larry

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