body work

I took some time out to play with the front wings. It's cool how these come apart. I took one outer wing off and reshaped it and then bolted it back on. The other fender I left the outer wing bolted and just did a quick reshape with my air planisher. I think I'm going to be able to bring these back into shape. Take a look back at the pics when I brought these home and you'll see how much better this is already. I really just wanted to see what I could do. There's more to be done here, but it's a start...

 

rear spring hangers

I cleaned up the rear spring mounts and measured a million times before fully welding these in. I also gusseted the rear crossmember just like it was done from the factory.

 

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.