O/S Bulkhead Outrigger

The old front fuel tank outrigger was never welded along the top, and since it was welded along the bottom moisture had run down behind it against the chassis rail over time and sat there - and rot through the rail.

When I cut rot out from behind it I looked at the driver's bulkhead outrigger and knew it would be the same since there was an enormous pile of bad weld on its top edge that had not penetrated well and so popped away from the chassis rail under stress. It was also not level, being too low beneath the door pillar.

So I cut them both off at the same time, along with about 18" of rail..

Old driver's bulkhead outrigger

Behind the rail it was ok. The floor and sides all rang well under the hammer. I re-taped the wiring loom with insulation tape, ground out and drill-brushed the floor, top and sides of the rail inside, and painted it all out with Chassis-in-one.

Before. I forgot to photo 'After' I'd cleaned it up and painted inside..

This time I started with a slightly larger repair section and ground down to fit. This went much better than before. As it was 18" long I tacked the points that were flush with the adjacent metal and then used the point of a chisel to slightly lift over sections into line before tacking. Then I welded all around the section and flushed it off and was happy I could run my hand along the rail without any obvious contours. I probably spend too much time on this kind of thing.

18" chassis rail repair section ready for tacking

When I offered up the new outrigger the fun began. It didn't fit. I measured it against the new one on the N/S and it was the same. I got the spirit level out and checked various points on the chassis, and the driveway.. after a while I turned the radio off. I do that when I get worried. :)

I couldn't work out was wrong, and then I noticed the door pillar's foot on this side, that the outrigger bolt passes through, was not running parallel beneath the edge of the floorwell like on the other side. I know the pillar needs replacing as it's badly corroded, but I think it may also have taken a hit at some point as there's lots of other evidence for the previous owner using it for leisure off-roading.

I couldn't weld the new outrigger on to fit the damaged pillar because when I replaced the pillar the outrigger would then be wrong. I had to the weld the outrigger on correctly, square and flush with the top of the chassis rail, as I'd done on the passenger side, and bring the damaged pillar into line.

To cut a long story short, it took two hours, two jacks, some bits of wood, an axle stand, and a lot of swearing, but eventually I got the outrigger square on the rail with its bolt running through the pillar's foot - and quickly tacked it into place. Then I slowly removed the shims I had holding everything square, one-by-one, and slowly welded the outrigger on as I exposed more and more edges of its back plate.

Compare the pillar foot running straight underneath the floor well with the angle it runs at in the photo of the old one above..

The result is square and straight, unlike the previous one

This solves a mystery and a problem. The old outrigger was not level. I suspect it was welded on after the door pillar sagged or was hit, which is why it ran down toward the pillar's slopey foot instead of sitting level. This also explains the huge pile of bad weld on its top edge - because it was running downward off the rail there was a huge gap at the top - too much to fill with weld, but that didn't stop them trying.

One more outrigger done, and the bulkhead should be sitting a bit better now too. I've wondered why my driver's door didn't fit very well.. :)

Rear Fuel Tank Outrigger

I've been working on fitting a new rear fuel tank outrigger on and off for the last couple of weeks. It's been a bit interesting with the mount point under the rear tub having been corroded by the steel and birmabright reacting, and the new fuel tank having a slightly different angle to the filler neck than the old tank.

The new outrigger didn't come with a bracket to fix it to the underside of the tub, so I cut the old one off and welded it to the new outrigger to re-use it. The previous post talked about how I 'moved' one of the holes that had been drilled offset. The hole in the tub just needed widening a touch to take the bolt in the new position, which was not a big deal as the tub behind the bracket was already quite badly corroded and would need reinforcing anyway.

This is not a load bearing mounting point, it's just to give the tub some extra rigidity by connecting it to the chassis, but I decided to cut some aluminium plates to reinforce the section anyway.

The chassis rail behind the outrigger needed a repair section welding in. While I had the rail open I was able to check the loom. This vehicle has had a new rear quarter-chassis fitted at some point, and I think while that was done the loom lost its binding somehow. I re-taped these wires up with insulation tape and pushed them to the back of the rail away from where I'd be welding.

Here is the repaired chassis rail with some weld-through primer applied, and the bracket (before I 'moved' the right-hand hole), and aluminium plates in position. There's another plate on the other side, and I have some rivets coming in the post so when they arrive I will put a rivet in either side of the bracket to hold the tub and plates together and take the stress off the original corroded section.

Next, I clamped the outrigger to the chassis rail and jacked the new fuel tank up into position so I could tack weld the outrigger to the bracket in the correct position. Then I removed it all and welded the bracket to the outrigger in the garage where I could move to get a bead all the way around it.

With all that done it was reasonably straightforward to weld the outrigger on. Here you can see the modified bracket with stainless steel fixings that should not react with the aluminium plates or tub where they go through.

I had to cut about 3-4mm off the top of the outrigger's back plate, and a bit more, at an angle, off the bottom because it was slightly deeper than the chassis rail. Making these cuts meant I could get nice flush beads along the top and bottom.

There was some more awkward welding than with the bulkhead outrigger. For the front bead, under the driver's seat, I had to sit up inside the seat base where the fuel tank would normally be and weld left-handed. I wasn't looking forward to the top bead, as there's not much clearance between the chassis rail and floor, but that actually went quite well - watching from one side of the outrigger while controlling the gun from the other actually worked perfectly.

I need to bolt the sill stay back on and rivet those plates, and then the next job is the front fuel tank outrigger. I wasn't going to replace that one, but as the new fuel tank has a slightly different filler neck, I've got to move that front outrigger back about an inch to get everything lined up, and so I may as well fit a new one.

So far so good, and the worst welding on the vehicle is still not mine! ;)

How to Move a Hole

I wanted to re-use the bracket from the old rear fuel tank outrigger that connects to the underside of the rear tub. But the holes in the bracket were not very even, so I needed to move one of them..

I read recently how you can use something like copper as a backing plate to fill a hole in mild steel, since it does not take the arc, and so I thought I'd try it.

The old bracket on the new outrigger.. holes not my own!

Copper pipe hammered flat

Clean hole to fill and clamp copper beneath

The copper refuses the arc, lift away when done..

..and tidy up