Body/bumper misalignment

is the rear bumber (crossmember) straight all the way across, or bent slightly? If it was the body itself that moved, you'd have touble with your door catches / door seals etc, windscreen, and theres a lot of bolts and mountings that would have to move too.

Sounds like your rear crossmember has been bent inwards with someone parking and hitting you (or you revesing into something) - if they hit you right on the edge it wouldn't mark much, or if they hit you on the flat part with a soft plastic bumper, again it wouldn't show much - I know this cos a bin lorry lifting one of these huge wheely bins, glanced the wheely bin onto my old landy with the exact same effect and no obvious scratching...

In answer to your question. muddythelandy, the rear bumper is straight all the way across. As I said, from about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way across, there's gradual misalignment, culminating in a difference of almost one cm.

There's absolutely no mark on the bumper, and rarely is the vehicle parked where anyone's likely to hit it. And surely it would have had to be a mighty whack to cause such misalignment.

Anyway, that's history and speculation. What to do now is the main point.

Ignore it? Have it checked? ................?

SOMETHING must be bent otherwise the mis-alignment would be all the way along. 2 straight lines can't only be missaligned from 3/4 way along...

It doesn't have to be that big a dunt - just something heavy pushing it a wee bit at a low speed and not enough to mark it.

If it was the body tub that had moved there would be all sorts of obvious evidence, like body ripples, bent brackets, broken seals and misaligned door gaps (more than the factory built misalgnment anyway!) plus having just removed a rear tub, there is a helluvalot of stuff that needs undoing to move the thing a millimetre.

fiver says it's a dunted crossmember.

(just remembered, someone at richard's chassis told me a while back that all TD5 rear crossmembers are slightly bent)

you need a 6' straight edge to put up against the bumper. that'll show up any deviation from the true.

how would you know? ah bet even yer straight edge is bent

slob said:

how would you know? ah bet even yer straight edge is bent

Click to expand...

It had better not be or it going back to the place ah stole it frum ah mean brought it yea i did ah brought it.

Bung a piccie on so we can have a look.

It's made of metal and if you dunt (as in bash, press hard, push hard, etc) it hard enough or with something massive and unweilding (big / heavy), it will bend - bending more with bigger forces and less with lesser forces.

Your landy is a hefty bit of metal stuck to the ground with four locked wheels. This has a lot of inertia. If you push it with something big and heavy, chances are that the bit of metal will bend or could bend with less force than the force required to move the Landy, if it's hit in a certain way.

Mine got hit in that certain way and bent - it was an older 90 and it's crossmember prior to the bump was straight - after it wasn't.

I've been out and had a look at my 110 td5 (2002 model as yours) and the rear crossmember is slightly curved from one end to the other when measured with a straight edge. The td5 rear crossmember also bolts to the rear tub differently with a removable bracket, wheras the older landy has fixed welded tabs. The tub is I'm sure pretty much the same on both vehicles, so with the Td5 there's bound to be parts that line up better than others (mine is aligned at the centre and about 3-5 mm out at each end)

Could be that yours when built wasn't aligned quite the same, as they are generally thrown together by monkeys, but the rest of the body was aligned to your tub, so everything fits.

Or it's been hit and slightly bent. The crossmembers actually not that thick steel.

stick a piccy on , lets have a look see