My out rigger repair

[Tant]

All

I just wanted to try and give you all a little inspiration to get stuck in and tackle this job if you need to...

I started off in March, wanting to get my gearbox out and recon it....rather than mess about with the box from underneath, I thought I'd get the engine and gearbox out, tidy up the engine bay and give the engine a bit of a spruce up as well, as I was never very happy with the hot idle oil pressure.

Sods law though that while I was underneath, I spotted that the outriggers looked a bit rough, and that the OS corner pleates were rusty, with one rusted through. I cut out the corner plate with the body in place, only to find that the tubes had rusted right through where the rubber pieces go. There was only one thing for it, and that was a body lift.

I didn't take that many photos, but the ones below might show the main parts of the job...quite satisfying to get it done myself, and only cost me about £20 in bits and 2 days work, including cleaning all of the outriggers back to bare metal, rust treating, then 2 coats of primer, 3 of hammerite and a good covering of underseal.

Body lifted


That'll be the rusty bit then...



More rust....


Tube slugs knocked in and ready to weld on new tubes


New tubes in place and welded up..


new corner plate welded in..


The studs on each side are to bolt on deflector plates (making some up in stainless) to deflect water and stones away from the front tubes.

The engine has been rebuilt and is back in, the gearbox and brakes all done and she now runs and drives, although only up and down my drive so far. It's good to see my oil pressure back at about 75 PSI on cold idle, only dropping to about 50 at hot idle...must be those nice new bearings and fresh oil pump.All that remains to be done now is to get her MOTd on Tuesday.

Photos of the engine rebuild, gearbox and clutch install etc to follow.

Cheers Ant

[Dave_M]

Looks brilliant! well done

[Steve H]

looks fantastic, did you do it all on your drive or in a garage?
Steve

[Tant]

On my drive Steve...don't have a garage as yet. The worst part of the job was wire brushing the chassis using the angle grinder....those little bits of wire get everywhere, and embed themselves deep in the skin if you lay on them...

Although the outriggers look bad on the first photo, they cleaned up very well, with only very mild surface rust....wish I'd got some photos when they were gleaming with black hammerite now...seeemed a shame to cover them in underseal..

Cheers

Ant

[Steve H]

Wow all credit to you. - do need to do a lift on my S1 soon. Did you find it easy to do? Any tips? I assume a mobile welder could do the work for not a lot of cost

[tinks v8S]

YES this is a credit to you, well done looks great

[Barkychoc]

Nice job Ant, and I think its a good plan to keep the sound bits of the outriggers and weld in sections - it makes lining up the new bits hassle free.
Nice welding there.

[magpies]

Brilliant piece of work

[Adrian@]

In NO way meant to undermine what is a lovely job....but a thought on increasing the strength of the joints, the 'slugs' driven up the old tubes could be 10 gauge material so that the welding/welder can penetrate into this, OR even making angle cuts in the joins so that the joint is elliptical (you could double the length of the welded joint) and THEN rather than making perfect joints these joint need a 1/8 inch gap, so that when the welding is done you have welded the 3 parts together (with full penetration into/through the 10 gauge) PERHAPS even drilling 10mm holes in the new and old tubes first and puddle filling these (which is what I do when I want to move a 'slug' along the internals of a piece of tube to get it into the correct position). Adrian@

Edited by Adrian@ on Saturday 5th June 11:50

[Tant]

Thanks for all the positive comments chaps.
Adrian, as you said, I drilled holes through the new and the old tube and puddle welded them , and left the tubes a couple of millimetres apart at the joints so that the weld could fully penetrate into the slug piece...the slugs themselves were 80mm long with 40mm into each tube.

It seems to do the trick...can jack up the car on that corner with no problems.

Thought I'd post a few photos of the engine job too...

This is the engine pretty much as stripped down as it can be.



And getting more or less rebuilt



and this is how it looks now I have got it all back together





cheers

ant

[DJ8226]

Excellent job, engine bay is enviable too. Well Done You