WITW - Ricky's van attack

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by Ronin

half way down page 10. steel subframe is 30kg and aluminium one is 20, they had to modify some bracket and bushes too, too much work.

enjoy your time off!

I did thank you We weighed the subframe with bushes today - 21Kg.

I took the tank off yesterday in preparation for welding. I was pondering whether to try and work round it, but in the end it made more sense to just take it off. Practice for doing Big Red in the near future It actually wasn't too bad and took about 3 hours. It'll be much easier next time.

Start by disconnecting the gubbins in the wheel well



This crusty clamp connects the filler neck to the tank and disintegrated as soon as I touched it



Coupler removed



Slide this coupler down the filler neck and then the tube can be removed



Mark and disconnect the vent hoses



Disconnect the fuel feed and return. Random suspension bolt in the fuel filter to stop it dripping, although it still poured a load of fuel down my arm



These nuts on the tank support are known to be problematic as the studs are just rivnuts and tend to come loose from the body before the nut comes loose from the stud, so I just slice the nut straight off.



I supported the tank on a trolley while I removed the forward retaining straps - these are all on stronger captive studs so not a problem like the previous one.



The electrical connectors are removed in the boot and then the car is lifted off the tank. With two people, you could probably just lower it by hand.



All these vent hoses have to be carefully pulled through the chassis leg without kinking them



Around this time I am getting very nervous about removing weight from the rear, with the engine and gearbox still in the front, so I strapped the car to the lift!



Tank out



Once I got a closer look at the crack, I was glad I did remove the tank as it just curved round the edge slightly.





I pulled the back seat to a; make sure it didn't catch fire, and b; open up any body grommets to make sure the chassis leg is empty and not full of expanding foam like the sills. Good access inside the parts to be welded is essential in case anything does catch fire (wax is often a problem).

I replaced the weight of the back seat with wheels



Cleaned off the underseal and paint ready for welding

[MikkiJayne]

Welding day!

This taped-over hole was actually the best access to the void above the crack, such that it lit up from the welding arc I was standing on a ladder with the fire extinguisher while the welding was happening underneath. I knew when the crack was sealed up again as I could no longer see arc-light through the hole.



Craig the welder drilled holes at the end of the cracks to stop them propagating, then tig welded the crack back together



He then laid a second bead down next to the first for added strength. You can see from the bead going left from the main one where the crack had also gone sideways - this would have been impossible to get to if I had left the tank in. Apparently I didn't quite remove enough underseal though, so that got a little crispy!





Smoke mostly cleaned off and the whole area wiped down with thinnners



Underseal reapplied in the original locations. I will paint over the underseal and the weld tomorrow once the underseal is dry.



One of the body grommets also undersealed back in place



Hopefully tank and subframe back on tomorrow

[RICKY D]

I think I’ve read through this 3 times now

My first thought was the tank just looks super bulky and just awkward to work on

Then I started to think about the prep work that went into the welding. I know from experience that one momentary lose of concentration and the car and workshop would be toast.

My friends garage went up in flames in a matter of minutes after his colleague was welding and didn’t remove enough foam. My flat used to be opposite the garage and I had a front row seat to the biggest bonfire I’d seen. Horrible to watch and once it took hold everyone was completely helpless to fight it.

You guys rock

[gninnam]

Nice bit of welding there

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by RICKY D

I think I’ve read through this 3 times now

My first thought was the tank just looks super bulky and just awkward to work on

Yes it is. Its big and heavy and awkward to handle and just a general pain in the posterior. Its a huge packaging compromise.

Originally Posted by RICKY D

Then I started to think about the prep work that went into the welding. I know from experience that one momentary lose of concentration and the car and workshop would be toast.

One of the benefits of working exclusively on aluminium cars is that bodywork welding is a very rare occurrence in my workshop I won't weld anything unless I can see the other side and get an extinguisher hose to it. When we did the sill on Big Red I had the body grommets out of that too, and removed a load of expanding foam from the area beforehand. As the welding was taking place, I was feeding CO2 in to the void using my mig welder torch to keep everything under control.

There are only four instances of D2 welding so far - BR's sill, the crack in Vera's suspension turret, the broken strut brace bracket on Bert's manual swap, and this one.

[Green Goblin]

Not much danger of anything catching fire from welding work on a D2 - everything’s ususally soaked from water ingress. Who needs fire extinguishers when you’ve got Botang’s Hole

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by Green Goblin

Not much danger of anything catching fire from welding work on a D2 - everything’s ususally soaked from water ingress. Who needs fire extinguishers when you’ve got Botang’s Hole

Painted the repaired area today but that's all. I'll hopefully get the tank done tomorrow.



Silver rustoleum. Not like it actually needs painting since it won't rust, but it seems incomplete to leave it bare...

[MikkiJayne]

I put the tank back on yesterday. It took about 30 minutes to put the tank back in place and bolt it up, and then an hour fighting with the pipework to the filler neck

Back in the way it came out - lower the car on to it, being careful not to trap anything in the process. Note how close the fuel filter is to the arm of the lift - its equally tight on the brackets for the under-trays so I shall remove this next time.



The vent pipes can be put through the hole in the chassis leg when the tank is still 6-8" down from final position. Lifting them up to meet the hole saves bending them horizontally.



Reattached. The pipe clips are NLA and a bit of a mess so I've used jubilee-type clamps in this pic, but they are too bulky. I'll need to recover the originals I think, and research an aftermarket solution for future projects.



The dual hose clamp here is also NLA as it's D2-only. Tbh I don't see any reason to attach the two clamps to each other - that only makes it harder to assemble. They're stock sizes though so easy to replace with single clamps.



Subframe next

[RICKY D]

Whenever there is a new WITW thread, we also find out what else is now NLA

There appears to be so many specific D2 parts not shared with other models. I suspect the thing that makes D2 so appealing to me, and probably others (exclusivity) is the same thing that makes them a bit more of a PITA as they get older.

One thing I wanted to ask MJ, is there a possibility of bent shock absorbers with these types of impacts? I’m not even sure how you’d spot this unless it was a super obvious bend on the body of it.....check it with a spirit level laid horizontally perhaps??

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by RICKY D

Whenever there is a new WITW thread, we also find out what else is now NLA

There appears to be so many specific D2 parts not shared with other models. I suspect the thing that makes D2 so appealing to me, and probably others (exclusivity) is the same thing that makes them a bit more of a PITA as they get older.

But we also find solutions to many of them The vent hose clips actually cleaned up fine with a bit of elbow grease so not a big problem.

Originally Posted by RICKY D

One thing I wanted to ask MJ, is there a possibility of bent shock absorbers with these types of impacts? I’m not even sure how you’d spot this unless it was a super obvious bend on the body of it.....check it with a spirit level laid horizontally perhaps??

My main concern with the shock was that it may have bent the shaft at the top where it goes in to the top mount - this is the usual failure mode for them. Luckily in this case the top mount had enough give to accomodate the angle of the shock and so there is no damage. I checked it by rotating the shaft and looking for runout in the top mount and there isn't any