7161 Chassis restoration

[mec]

haha yea i did that, spent a fortune at the powder coaters ! lol

[eric]

A quick trip to pickup the trailer (flatbed car trailer)….

Sweeeet jesus it is the biggest thing I have ever seen, I have towed a fair bit but this was nearly 1 foot wider than my wifes XC60 each side and about twice as long.

I hitched it up looked at the additional width and thought about the 74 miles to Nottingham followed next week by the 10 hour marathon to take it to Alex D's later in the week or early next.

"Brown pants moment", M6, M1

Then I spotted this little thing in the corner;

"Can I take that ?"
"that's an old motorbike trailer" says the chap
"I don't care its perfect"

and it really is, likely 1/2 the price as well.



Match made in heaven I think so..

[cis6409]

Great work Eric, tonnes of progress.. I've heard other people putting the bolts back into the holes while being dipped to save re tapping.

I didn't do that on mine as I found out after the fact.. so all my threads had to be re tapped.

Shane

[eric]

Thanks Shane, do you know that's such a simple good idea....How hard was the re-tapping, I assume its just clearing an existing thread in most cases and cleaning it up rather than cutting a new one.

Alex D did say he could shove some cement of some kind in there which would solve it and mean minimal effort but I am a worrier.

It just puts the fear of god into me as having to re-cut a size up because I buggered the thread is not a good scenario. I have only re-cut 2 threads with a 50 percent failure rate.

I wasn't going to galvanise but seeing how many box sections there are which are hollow but you cannot get to at the rear makes me think its a good idea.

[eric]

All righty then lets strap her on and away we go.



To where you might ask.... The stripping place in Nottingham....




79 miles there and 74 miles back... I lost 5 miles on the M1 which I will never get back, thats the second time I have screwed up crossing the M1 and ended up on it so must nail that for the next time.

Friendly chap eyeballed it as a Lotus chassis straight away and helped me lift it off. He showed me some other chassis and recommended zinc plating which is apparently the in thing now and better than standard galvanising. Not sure about that will likely just follow Mec and Rich.



As we left her.....



Apparently the first stage is a 500 degrees oven, to burn all the crap off.... I was under the impression it was acid as per the docs.

Prostrip Ltd. Has developed Phos-Strip™ a chemical dip process for the removal of paint, rust and underseal from complete car shells or individual panels. Its chemical formulation strips away contaminants from all internal and external areas.

But the chap doing it didn't seem to think so.

I was hoping to get it ready for the weekend but I think it will be into next week when they get it done so it may be the week after for the tortuous 5 hour drive to the East Coast...



I am not looking forward to that one..

I just noticed 3 weeks to the day from deciding to do the Chassis off, to getting it to pro strip, not bad for evenings and weekends.

[mec]

That's superb progress mate, a note on the tapping of threads, we used the fire cement method on my chassis which made thing very easy, once i got it back you can knock the fire cement out easily and then run a tapp through the existing thread just to clean it up, it worked fine on mine, your choice of course but because some of the bolts on the D are specific thread you may have trouble finding "donor" bolt to fit for the dipping.
Also i would deffo recommend Galvanising, are you going to use the company near Alex for yours ? thats who i used they did the galv and P coat

[eric]

Thanks Mec, Yeahh Alex mentioned the fire cement, couldn't recall the name.

I will be using the same place and probably going Galv route. There isn't that many frame holes to clean really, I forgot all the core Chassis bolts are captive nuts, so its a handful really probably mostly on the tank pan.

[cis6409]

The fire cement great idea to.. At least You have choices. Which is good to have.

Most of the holes weren't too bad as they are captive but some of the rear suspension bolt holes got nearly completely filled up with galvanising - the rear upper arm link attachment springs to mind.

Is that bolt 1/2" unf thread or am I remembering wrong,???

I got my mechanic to do them as I wasn't anywhere near confident enough to go at it at the time.
Its mainly time consuming, so I' think the fire cement method is good choice you know it works. I definitely would have done either option if I had known at the time.

Shane

[cis6409]

Definitely powdercoat after the galvanising, If you can.

didn't do that at the time and regret it now.
(For astethic reasons and easier to keep clean plus it' adds another layer of protection)

Also galvanising is hard to paint properly after if you wanted to . you need special 100% acrylic - latex or other special made for galvanised paint.
Normal 1k and 2k alkyd based paints will not stick long term as it reacts with the zinc oxide.

Powder coating attaches really well to galvanised steel.

Shane

[cis6409]

Also worth double checking the front box section where the frame extension attaches to. The cross beam where you'd put a jack to lift the front - its just in front of the fuel tank.

That' can be tricky to get the epoxy off as it has 2 dividers that make 3 "compartments " so it's hard to see if you've got 100% of the epoxy off.

The burn oven at that temperature should make light work of it though.