Paul in Sussex said:

Hi all
I am putting a new galvanised chassis under my 200TDI and have hit a snag.

The fuel tank wont fit - it seems the tubular outrigger to which it mounts may be too far forward.

Does anyone have a known-good chassis from which they could measure the distance from back face of outer tab on rear cross member to the front face of the body bracket on the tubular outrigger on the tank side of the vehicle?

The problem as I see it, is if I cut and shut the outrigger I will damage the galvanising - ditto if I hit it with a big 'ammer and bend it back. I guess it also means there are going to be issues aligning the tub.

Not quite the outcome I was hoping for having invested significant sums of money and effort. I have owned the vehicle for ten years and put about a hundred thousand miles on it (total now 285k ish). I thought I was building my 'forever' Land Rover - not something that is compromised right from the start.Not a great way to end the weekend...

Thanks
Paul

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Litch said:

On my Richards that I fitted 12-months ago the tubular outriggers were slightly further back than the originals, this didn't affect fitting of the tank (a new one) but I did have to fit a nylon spacer between the outrigger tab and the front of the rear tub however this posed no problem.
The only problem was that my old Bearmach rock-sliders no-longer fitted as they were non-adjustable and I had to replace them with a pair of Terrafirma which have an adjustable bracket.

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Paul in Sussex said:

Hi all
The Defender has been back on the road for ages now so I thought I would finish off this thread.

The first replacement chassis was a Richards, supplied by a local independent through Britpart.

When the issue around accuracy of fabrication arose they offered to take the (now rolling) chassis away and 'sort it out'. I declined...

I had to get rather 'legal' in my dealings with the local independent/Britpart. It was eventually agreed they would supply a replacement. I was offered the choice of another Richards or a Marsland, I chose the latter. I also extracted a few hundred quid for the time wasted changing over all the bits from Richards to Marsland. All done working alone while failing to recover from botched heart surgery, cue violins...

The Marsland chassis is everything it should be. The only detail I didn't see coming was that I would need a different drawbar - not a disaster.

While changing the chassis I took the opportunity to do loads of minor jobs, shocks, bushes, pinion seals, engine main & rod bearings etc etc.

Needless to say it flew through the MOT - only for the head gasket to let go...

Overall a great project and judging by the state of the old chassis something I might usefully have done years before.

So that's the story. Landy is now better than ever. Me? - not so much, but still green laning and loving it.

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