Banged Into Shape
May 27th, 2007 by C. Alexander Leigh
“You know the drill for the ramps… 4wd and go kinda fast”.
The Rover is mostly banged back into shape now. Tried heating the torn bracket with Aaron’s new oxy torch, but being so close to the gas tank, and with the thickness of the metal it didn’t want to bang back. Finally he just cut it off with a Sawz-all, banged it back in a vise, and welded it back on. That takes care of that!
While I took off the front quarter panel and sills, and did the front brakes Aaron & JP refinished the rear tire carrier (it was rusting out) and the spare tire rim. It was this flat grey that was not entirely unattractive but just did not match. The hi-lift jack ate the old plastic cover, so I just tossed that and have a bare wheel look now.
The quarter panel more or less banged out; it’s still a little crumpled but everything lines up now. When the sills were removed we discovered some idiot had jacked the truck up by the body at some point, crushing it. This probably crinkled up all the paint and it’s rusted through pretty badly; it’ll need to be cut out and new steel welded in. Oh well, another weekend sometime.
I’m going to get a new brake pipe ordered up this week to replace the mangled one (that is still working fine, but I am leery of it anyways), and then I’ll figure out what to do about fabricating some sills. As far as a replacement bumper goes, so far I am leaning towards the TJM one (I am very happy with the front bumper, also a TJM product).
I also went around and put anti-seize on all the lug nuts (Loving my new impact wrench. I have another, but it doesn’t have the oompf). The nuts have been corroding pretty badly to the studs, probably because of all the wading. This should clear it up entirely.