Will this fail an MOT??

If the body is secure on the chassis, it's a pass. Be careful how the seat belts mount though, they need to be anchored to the chassis via steel bracketry. On my 110 they attach to the steel brackets that support the ally, it's the steel-ally-steel sandwich that causes the ally to rot in the first place..... Badger.

Thanks for that Badger......but I'm not so sure; I described the issue to a local well respected LR engineering company and they said it would be a fail, although I'm not 100% sure they understood exactly what I meant. I'm saying that the actual part of the aluminium crossmember that bolts to the chassis will be a repair panel, and this repair will be pop-riveted to the original rather than welded. It will certainly be secure, but on a steel-bodied vehicle, even one with a separate chassis (e.g. Shogun etc.), such a repair would definitely require welding right around it for the MOT. Can anyone else shed some light on this? It looks to me like it must be a very common area for corrosion on the rear tub so surely others must have done repairs here when re-chassis-ing landrovers. Cheers, Ruaridh.

The rule about repairs being seam welded patches applies to structural bodywork around suspension, steering and seatbelt mounts. As far as body mounts are concerned, it is only a fail if the body is so insecure that it is likely to cause a loss of control or danger to other road users, you can have a body mount completely rotted away, as long as the body is still held in position securely by other mounts, it will pass.

Which is what I said, roughly. Strangely enough though, taking a disco as an example, if the rear x-member body mounts on the chassis are rotten it's an instant fail. If the body mount is rotten and the chassis mount is good, however, it's a pass as long as the above para re. security isn't breached. Badger.

Ah luckily I saved the link

if you do want to try a spot of Ally welding not withstanding Badgers comments.Derek

... and there's this lot

Thanks guys; Badger, I hear you - I guess I'm paranoid because last year when I was fixing my brother's Shogun it got a fail for a 50p size rust hole in a non-structural bit of inner wing - but now that I remember the category then was "corrosion within 30cm of a steering component" (in this case the power steering resevoir!). Most interesting to hear what you say about the body mounts - certainly no danger of anything on my new galv. chassis being a problem, so I'm inclined to think my nice pop-rivet repair especially all covered up with black underseal will be fine. (I also have all the brackets for the seatbelts). Thanks for your help.

Re. the alloy welding / brazing rods, has anyone ever used these? I remember seeing them in shops years ago and thinking they must be a bit of a gimick but those websites are certainly quite believable. Especially the BrazeTech HTS 2000 one. If they really work I suppose I could weld round the outer seam of the riveted patches just to confound any over-zealous MOT testers!! :-)

Cheers, Ruaridh.

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I bought a pack but thus far I haven't needed to use them - I'm probably tempting fate to bite me saying that. Derek