It's half day on Fridays for us, so I decided to take one of my doors in and get started on it this afternoon.
I bought 2 replacement doors off ebay last week for the bargain total of £30. Even though they needed some work, they are in better condition than the ones currently on mine. I thought it made more sense to buy a couple of spare doors so I didn't have to rush to get mine done and back on again because that sort of thing never goes to plan does it!
As usual I forgot to take a photo before I started, but it looked like an average defender door - rotten at the bottom.
Seeing as I want to fix the spare doors and once they are fitted also repair the current ones, buying the door bottom repair peices for all four would be costly. Thankfully I work in an engineering place, so I set aboht making my own.
After a few measurements and calculations I guillatined thefront and rear strips out of 1mm cold rolled steel.
Then over to the 150 ton sheet metal press
First, second and third bends
Then over to the spot welder to attach the front and rear sections together
On to the bandsaw to mitre the ends
The old and the new
Test fit
Final weld and finish
When peeling the seem back, it was a little bit crusty in places, so I'll shout up a new skin for it too, hence why I haven't put anything between the frame and skin to barrier against corrosion. I've got a couple of other repairs to do a bit further up the frame too before I reskin it.
I bought 2 replacement doors off ebay last week for the bargain total of £30. Even though they needed some work, they are in better condition than the ones currently on mine. I thought it made more sense to buy a couple of spare doors so I didn't have to rush to get mine done and back on again because that sort of thing never goes to plan does it!
As usual I forgot to take a photo before I started, but it looked like an average defender door - rotten at the bottom.
Seeing as I want to fix the spare doors and once they are fitted also repair the current ones, buying the door bottom repair peices for all four would be costly. Thankfully I work in an engineering place, so I set aboht making my own.
After a few measurements and calculations I guillatined thefront and rear strips out of 1mm cold rolled steel.
Then over to the 150 ton sheet metal press
First, second and third bends
Then over to the spot welder to attach the front and rear sections together
On to the bandsaw to mitre the ends
The old and the new
Test fit
Final weld and finish
When peeling the seem back, it was a little bit crusty in places, so I'll shout up a new skin for it too, hence why I haven't put anything between the frame and skin to barrier against corrosion. I've got a couple of other repairs to do a bit further up the frame too before I reskin it.
