A weekend of excuses…
Again, a frustrating lack of progress. Most of the weekend was lost to rehearsing for a stand-in gig on Saturday, this time playing lead guitar for Kenny and The Motives. I wasn’t very pleased with my performance to say the least, a touch of nerves made me feel as though I was wearing thick woollen gloves. All musicians are the same in that one’s mood is exactly as good as the last gig so Sunday was poor. The night was a definite success overall with a really good crowd, just my performance that was lacking.
Lower dash, continued from part 2
Enough of that, back to the lower dash. I only had a couple of hours on it and there aren’t many photos to show. This is more to do with the fact that I am a very messy worker when using anything remotely sticky and I didn’t want to wreck another phone.
Having replaced much of the ‘lip’ with aluminium and riveting aluminium sheet over the biggest holes, I used fibre glass matting to cover the smaller ones, or just where the metal was at its thinnest. I then used P38 filler to start levelling it off:
Airtightness
Bearing in mind that this hulk is meant to be a duct for the heater I thought I should take some steps, however futile, to prevent leakage. Series Land Rovers aren’t admired for their heating systems and when every available drop of warm air is needed for the screen demister it would be annoying for any of it to escape into the cab. So I poured epoxy resin into the joints between my aluminium fabrications and the existing structure. This would help strengthen it too.
Bad planning…
I had used some very thin sheet to block off the mess that had been made by a poorly fitted radio in the section that would normally house optional gauges. This was riveted in place. I then thought that the rivets could cause things to get caught up in the parcel shelf and would be unkind to cold fingers when searching blindly for whatever gets chucked in there. As I was wielding the epoxy resin I decided to pour some over this assembly to give a smooth finish (this is hidden from view). As it was setting I realised that this wasn’t the best idea as I hadn’t allowed for the rubber trim piece that covers the metal edge.
To compensate for this, once it had hardened I cut out a channel with a small disk on the Dremel. So although this wasn’t the best thought-out scheme I think it will work well in the end.
Series 3 Land Rover Ramblings 
After a couple of years, I was expecting that the difference in expanding and contraction of materials due to outer temperature would delaminate the epoxy resin from the joints… how did it come?
LikeLike
Yes, that’s a possibility, I haven’t noticed anything like that as yet but it’s early days and I understand what you’re saying, especially as the steel is very thin and subject to temperature variation. It’s a tricky thing to repair, especially with my limited skills and equipment. Cost-wise it’s not feasible to replace it, so a bit amateurish! The best I can hope for is that it has arrested any further deterioration.
LikeLike