How hard is a chassis swap?

So, in the mists of replacing the tubular outriggers. Have already bashed the **** out of one of the replacements, as it refuses to slot into the hole of the old one.

Today went out and bought a cheap die grinder kit from tool station. Need to get the rust out of the old tubes somehow, and the sanding spindal thing and rasp and files aren't working.

Anyway, having beaten the crap out of the new outrigger to get it in, I've dislodged and uncovered yet another hole in the fecking chassis. The lumps of rust just keep coming off and revealing more holes. Great, another patch to make. After the hours i spend last march welding the fecking thing for the mot. It really makes me think that a new chassis is the only way.

So how hard is it? Im concered that there is also a fair amount of body rot (white power stuff) in strategic places to make it more difficult, and only uncover mucho body panels that needs replacement also. And I'd imagine that it might be a good idea to replace the rear wiring loom if not all of it.

Can i just unbolt it and drop it out and put a new one back on? Or will it end up being a complete nut and bolt restoration regardless?

What's your experiences of chassis swapping? How long did it take?, and what pitfulls did you encounter?

Personally i'd love to do it, if i wasn't using the landy everyday as my only vehicle and could afford a replacement.


Thinking of the scenario, you're going to uncover an awful lot of **** whilst doing it, bolts will snap, rust in other areas are going to show up, the list will go on, lets face it, you're already finding areas of thought, so stripping it all down is going to show you more.

On the other hand, what an incredible way to spend your nights n weekends stripping it down to nothing and rebuilding it!

If cost isn't an issue then i'd say go for it...

quite easy on defender if you lift entire body ,bulkhead ,wings etc as a lump ,cut as many bolts of which there arent that many with slitting discs others with irwin style sockets leave wiring loom on outside of chassis for rear

mundungus said:

Need to get the rust out of the old tubes somehow,

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Erm - You sure its supposed to slot in?! I think you're meant to just cut the whole lot out and weld the new in. At least thats what I did.

Yours looks very similar to mine - and yes given the state of that outrigger you can expect a great deal of decay in the chassis. I must have spent several weeks welding up the chassis to a point where I'm confident its all solid. Huge chunks had been done in the past and needed re-doing. A rechassis would be the best long term fix. I did mine as a project but would never do it again. If I keep it long term it'll definately get a new chassis.

Pics here of my rear outrigger swap

Nice job arc, seriously rusted to start with

I'd say the answer is how long is a piece of string?
Without being big headed I reckon I could swap a chassis in a week or two.
The problem is you won't just swap the chassis. You'll start looking at other bits that are a bit tatty like springs. Before you know it you've sunk a few grand into it and a month or two of weekends at least.

So if you just want to swap the chassis, it will be fairly easy. If you want to do a proper restoration then it becomes a lot harder.

arc said:

Erm - You sure its supposed to slot in?! I think you're meant to just cut the whole lot out and weld the new in. At least thats what I did.

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I'm pretty sure. After much googling, I only found one real post on another forum that mentioned about replacing these. He said he cut the old ones off and the hammered the new ones in and welded around them, on the outside of the chassis only. It kinda makes sense. The original chassis outriggers are uniform solid round tube. The replacement have a narrower bit on the chassis end and (after much belting the ****e out of it) have gone into the old (cut off) tubes about an inch. The trouble is that as the steel rusts, it bubbles up. So the inside of the original tube are now a lesser diameter than it was originally.

Thanks for the pics. I think my chassis is similar to yours. I already patched up so much of that last year. It was mainly the bottom (water traps) that were rotted through. But now I'm seeing that the top and other parts are bad also.

Just the scenario that I didn't want to get in with the creeping rust bug.
Chassis change for me was £1.5K plus the chassis. I did spend more but that was for bits that you have already done. It took me from October 2005 to July 2006 working outdoors. That was not full on and I did take all of the 110 bodywork apart. So if you went for it you you could trim that time back majorly.
It was the best thing I did as it's all down to bolt on bits getting swapped now and no chassis rot.

I think we need pictures!! And get ya sen a sandblaster! have you got a compressor of about 20 cfm? itl make your life soooo much easier you know where you stand as arc has demonstrated its possible to repair chassis change can be real easy and it can be real hard depends on what kit you've got to help you! Block and tackle? ramp etc?

ARC nice job! it was very rusty did you do any treatment to the inside of the chassis like some acid?

Dont write your chassis off prematurely, though how good is your bulkhead?
If its good then its worth lifting the body off like james martin said though if your bulkhead is a bit nasty , its worth changing at the same time which means a strip down but that means in parts you could do the swap without heavy equipment just another pair of hands for the body tub and bulkhead

LR90 said:

ARC nice job! it was very rusty did you do any treatment to the inside of the chassis like some acid?

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Thanks. Its not 'like new' but it should stand firm for a fair while. Re insides - yeah whenever a cavity was opened up sufficiently for an arm / brush the rust killer went in followed by bondo zinc based rust primer.

There is no chance I could have used the remains of the old outrigger - it simply wasn't there anymore! And scarily, I only did the NS because I thought I might as well do them as a pair. On the outside it looked fine!

arc said:

Thanks. Its not 'like new' but it should stand firm for a fair while. Re insides - yeah whenever a cavity was opened up sufficiently for an arm / brush the rust killer went in followed by bondo zinc based rust primer.

There is no chance I could have used the remains of the old outrigger - it simply wasn't there anymore! And scarily, I only did the NS because I thought I might as well do them as a pair. On the outside it looked fine!

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Yeah thats good! Zinc primer is awesome and red oxide etc Iv got a drum of acid so i always slop that about everywhere i can get, then zinc primer and hot waxoil (my own mix) it goes hard on top but never dries fully inside and smells HORRENDOUS! i wear a mask but everyone else who comes to look carnt stand it LOL iv put it on once on my old TD5 had it for 5 years and nothing has even come close to rusting or disturbing i did scrap a bit off as a test after 12 months after some wading to check it wasnt holding water or rotting underneath it was like brand new! i should re patent the stuff (a few people have told me to)

That out rigger doesnt look to bad apart from the big missing bit inside the chassis LOL :doh: