rear frame work

I started work rebuilding the rear frame and setting up the rear crossmember. these land rover frames are interesting. They are made from thinner gauge steel but they are huge box sections that are fully hollow and welded. They are so different from the Toyota FJ40's that I'm used to working on. That said, I love how they are made. The welds on the stock frames are really ugly, but it's just a result of how they were constructed. I built this rear section of the frame out of thicker gauge steel that matches the stock rear crossmember thickness. It's going to be strong. I was lucky to have the rear tailgate hinge plates still itact on the rusted crossmember, so I cut them off and relocated on my new crossmember. I'm using the original factory drawing of the frame plus drawings I've made of the frame in CAD. This has required a ton of measuring and rechecking over and over as well as using the tub as reference. This means I've taken the tub on and off a million times.

 

series II rear crossmember

I've been working on building a rear crossmember for a Land Rover Series 2A. I need to add the grab handle holes,  a couple of other drain holes, and then gusset the rear section where the hitch mount comes through. Other than that, I think I'm looking pretty good. I had the outer sections to work from, but they were pretty rusty. It was enough to give me the dimensions I needed though. I pulled those dimensions into CAD and tried to cross reference some existing CAD drawings I had found of Land Rover rear crossmembers. They just didn't match, so I ended up building my own from the dimensions I took of my tub floor and the mounting strap hole locations. I then built a CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) version so I could confirm the inner bracing and all the details. Then I went back to my CAD model and made the necessary adjustments. I know I could probably buy one of these for a couple hundred bucks, but this would dip into the family budget and I have plenty of steel. Besides I've heard online that the reproduction ones are thin or they don't fit right. This will end up being a one to one version and I'll use the stock thickness of steel. I think it should end up fitting better if I just build it from scratch. 

I've had a couple snow days so it kept me from getting into trouble in between shoveling the driveway.