Right then, first up a couple of pics of the doors now they have been reunited with the door tops
As mentioned, the back door was ready to be worked on
It had holes in the bottom which were fixed by cutting out the old steel and welding in a new plate
There was also a big hole around where the door lock goes so this was welded up. (the picture shows it before the welds were ground back down)
The door was then given a coat of kurust and then I painted the steel sections with red oxide
The next task was door seals, these are the on the roll ones from paddocks which dont have a metal strip in them. I have heard some stories of these not fitting well when put on but so far they seem to sit in the channel quite well and when stuck in place seem to match the old ones, we shall see when the doors are put on. It does help to cut the seals to length beforehand.
The way we stick them on is to wipe where the door seal sits clean with white spirit and wait for that to dry, then using sicaflex, a good bead is run down the channel. The seal is then pushed in place and held with spring clamps to ensure the sicaflex bonds properly.
With little clamps you can use them direct on the rubber but with larger more powwerful clamps, we used a bit of wood on top of the rubber to protect it. Here are some pics to show it
Clamps and wood in place:
many clamps are put on the curved section by the doors to help hold the rubber down and give it a chance to bond properly
Heres one we prepared earlier (its actually a lot straighter than it looks in the picture on the windscreen edge). The sicaflex has bonded to it well and it makes for a good strong bond
We elected to do the back door seal in one piece instead of 5 (excuse the poor lighting)
Also swapped the transfer box knobs around for new ones. The yellow one is a pain, you need to get underneath and wedge something so that the yellow lever does not push down (i.e. it is kept in the fully up position). Then you put the spring on and compress it enough for the thread on the locknut/knob to start (you can compress with no tools, just using your hands). One hand kept the spring compressed and the other wound the nut/ knob on. The manual states that when the lever is depressed, "adjust the locknut until the compressed spring length is 58mm (2.312" ) "
The console has been fitted at the top, just needs attaching at the bottom (hence the gap)
I dont think I showed you how we mounted the stereo aerial so heres a couple of pics
with it fully extended
More to come soon! Going to finish off the seals tomorrow (we leave the sicaflex overnight to allow it to get a strong bond - it does go off quicker but its better than disturbing it beforehand) and then when they're done the doors are ready to go on
