Hi Guys and Girls, some opinions needed, my D2 went in for its MOT late March and needed a load of welding on the passenger side chassis where I have had a load of problems before and had various garages weld it back together over the years. To keep the story short,I was driving down the road on Saturday and had an explosion like a cannon blow out from the wheel. Thought it was a tyre but when I pulled over to have a look and noticed the car on the bump stops and the tyre fine, I knew it was the suspension. Limped it the last 100 metres to my farm but had my family in the car so wasn't able to do anything about it then so went home and ordered a spring conversion kit intending to swap them out. However having now got the wheels off and the body up and seeing the damage i'm not so sure she'll live. It can be hard to see from the pictures but the chassis has actually split almost the full circumference where the shock has been welded on to the repair patch. My question is-
1. is it repairable
2. Is it worth repairing bearing in mind I pull trailers with this thing
3. Should I get the garage involved as i'm pretty sure the air bag exploded as the weld holding the sensor arm had either failed or it was not calibrated properly to its new position and has over inflated the bag.

Thanks, any advise appreciated

The air bags are quite easy to change, as are the ride height sensors. New bags are about 140-160 quid a pair and the sensors are about 30 quid each.
Over-inflation of the air bags is usually an indication of a faulty ride height sensor.
Looking at your pictures, I would say that unless you're handy with a MIG, it would be a good idea to get that area of the chassis looked at closely PDQ.
Changing to coil springs is an option but you would lose some useful facilities apart from which you'd need access to a compatible code reader to alter the settings in the SLABS ECU.

Even I wouldn't repair that .. well, not without a half or full chassis replacement! Certainly you need the rear tub off and check it out properly before you decide what to do. If you need it quickly get another for now .. Sorry, D2 ... body off or at minimum boot floor out ...

You sure the bag went first? I wouldn't worry overly about it as you're all OK, but it could easily, by the looks of it, have been the chassis that broke and forced the bag/shock/all the suspension to move in an unexpected way which burst the bag ...

Sorry, that parrot is dead.

Thats a shame, looks like I will be evicting the mice from the glovebox and pressing the old 300tdi disco back into service. Will probably have a go at welding it all back together as I have the MIG and workshop to do it but judging by the comments on here, google and the lack of repair panels for this section of chassis on Ebay, things aren't looking up! Thanks for the replies, Ben

Another problem where the sea air hasn't helped!

Mine was very similar to that to the point where the shock mount actually ripped right off. I did fix it and got it all working, the problem is knowing that unless you like doing chassis welding or have deep pockets you’ll have to do it every year until you give up on it.

That’s what I did with mine and I’m currently looking for another focussing more on chassis condition rather than what toys the vehicle has.