The Rebuild

The new chassis . . .

Parts Required:
Replacement Chassis - Cradock's (£290)
Hammerite - B&Q (£20)		 Total Cost:
£300
Tools Required:
Spanners, socket set, blowtorch, scrapers, wire brush, power drill with various abrasive attachments, paint brushes. 		Other Information:

Purchased a replacement chassis from John Craddock for £290. Not bad considering a new chassis costs around £800.

This chassis had once formed part of a lightweight that had been based in Cyprus. The Cypriote climate had kept the chassis 99% free of rust, the only exceptions being on the rear cross member where water had got behind the spreader plate and on the rear cross member outrigger where some of the bitumen had peeled away allowing water to sit in the pocket and corrode away a hole.

Both of these minor areas were well plated over.

 

Removed the Engine and gearbox separately using a hired Hydraulic engine hoist, then removed the axles, springs and all other remaining parts from the old chassis and moved the new chassis into the workshop.

It's amazing to see how much room all the parts of a Landy take up when disassembled!

Work then started on cleaning up the chassis (proved useful to get my girlfriend Diane to help out on this part) 

Cleaning up the chassis basically involved scraping of the old bitumen stuff that the army had piled on. A lot of it had peeled away allowing water to get under it and eat away at the chassis.

A better method of removing the bitumen would have been to use a grit blaster but I am limited to the power tools I can use because I only have a small portable generator to supply my power, the alternative used was blow torch, various scrapers and plenty of elbow grease!

With the majority of the bitumen removed I then switched to wire brush attachments and various other abrasive attachments in my power drill to remove the old paint and any remaining tar.

Note the use of woolly hat and heavy clothes, its now middle of winter and there's no heat in the workshop - bloody freezing!

Just to prove I did some work cleaning the chassis!

Once the chassis was back down to the metal it was painted with several layers of black Hammerite, which looked really good.

Also before painting i cut away the Offside engine mount in preparation for a new mount to enable me to reinstall the 2.5D engine. This would be installed at a later date by a proper welder.

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