Problems with Richard's Chassis

exmed wayne said:

I was recently talking to someone clever, about why nobody has ever made a Stainless steel chassis - apart from cost.
He reckons large areas of Stainless touching small areas of aluminium is a "bad" thing (accelerated corrosion), however stainless screws etc - small bits of stainless touching large bits of aluminium is OK.

Hence, my signature block - when I win the euromillions I'm going to get a bespoke made Titanium Chassis ........it may be a while until you see that thread.!

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Isn’t stainless more brittle than just mild steel? Also harder to drill or weld than mild steel so cost and hassle would have been a big factor

exmed wayne said:

I was recently talking to someone clever, about why nobody has ever made a Stainless steel chassis - apart from cost.
He reckons large areas of Stainless touching small areas of aluminium is a "bad" thing (accelerated corrosion), however stainless screws etc - small bits of stainless touching large bits of aluminium is OK.

Hence, my signature block - when I win the euromillions I'm going to get a bespoke made Titanium Chassis ........it may be a while until you see that thread.!

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Weight, strength, and stainless being a very hard material to work would also be factors.

And at the end of the day, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Vehicles are disposable, and it is quite easy to make a Landrover last as long as anyone would want to drive it anyway. Lots of other stuff will have rotted away long before a good galv chassis or well painted and Waxoyled one will have.

exmed wayne said:

That's interesting....
Wonder if you can buy a "new" chassis that isn't galvanised.....and then get it electroplated instead?

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Yes you can buy new, ungalvanised chassis, black painted from RC, and they are a lot cheaper than the galv option.
However, my RC galv 110 chassis was just about perfect when it arrived, and there were no problems at all fitting her all back together again.
If I ever take on another rebuild, I will be using another RC chassis.

exmed wayne said:

I was recently talking to someone clever, about why nobody has ever made a Stainless steel chassis - apart from cost.
He reckons large areas of Stainless touching small areas of aluminium is a "bad" thing (accelerated corrosion), however stainless screws etc - small bits of stainless touching large bits of aluminium is OK.

Hence, my signature block - when I win the euromillions I'm going to get a bespoke made Titanium Chassis ........it may be a while until you see that thread.!

Click to expand...

Titanium is too light for a tall vehicle, it make it top heavy. You'd have to add extra weight low down to improve the C of G. I suppose you could fill your titanium chassis with concrete, they would also help to keep it rigid.

Col

Colthebrummie said:

Titanium is too light for a tall vehicle, it make it top heavy. You'd have to add extra weight low down to improve the C of G. I suppose you could fill your titanium chassis with concrete, they would also help to keep it rigid.

Col

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Naaaah....I'd put "boy racer" lowering springs on it

exmed wayne said:

I was recently talking to someone clever, about why nobody has ever made a Stainless steel chassis - apart from cost.
He reckons large areas of Stainless touching small areas of aluminium is a "bad" thing (accelerated corrosion), however stainless screws etc - small bits of stainless touching large bits of aluminium is OK.

Hence, my signature block - when I win the euromillions I'm going to get a bespoke made Titanium Chassis ........it may be a while until you see that thread.!

Click to expand...

Most stainless alloys are also too brittle, the added chrome makes the crystalline structure of steel even more crystallic and thus more prone to fatigue. Stainless steel covers 100's of type of steel that is stainless so it depends on the makeup but remember unless you are Rolls Royce the chances are no mill is making sheet stainless of the makeup required for making a chassis - also, RR probably own the license for it and it would cost a small fortune.

Galvanic corrosion is a problem that many of us know all too well - in all honesty aluminium in the presence of ordinary steel is bad too - galvanised is better because to all intents and purposes zinc and aluminium are adjacent to each other on the galvanic series that is why a galvanised door frame with aluminium skin doesn't corrode - or rather takes such a long time that it "solves" the issue.

Your titanium chassis would be even worse for the aluminium of the defender, they are even further apart on the galvanic table. If I was to come up with a solution I think it would be an all aluminium or all steel design with suitable paint protection - everyone else manages!

Even with the best jig in the world, a bad welder can mess the work piece up by welding too much in one location and not spreading the heat. Also, as @Turboman says, galvanising can cause major distortion. Perhaps RC should have a quality check jig that a finished chassis goes on to ensure it is still straight !!

Turboman said:

Probably moved a bit while they were being welded.

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Turboman said:

Bear in mind also that the reason Rover stopped galvanising chassis in 1949 was because they were worried about the tendency of chassis to distort during hot dip galvanising.

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These chassis are fabricated in a jig, of some sorts, so this says as much about QC as anything.
It would be beyond credible to have a LR chassis distort with hot dip, given the overall fabrication of that unit.

tailhook said:

These chassis are fabricated in a jig, of some sorts, so this says as much about QC as anything.
It would be beyond credible to have a LR chassis distort with hot dip, given the overall fabrication of that unit.

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Could it be that you are to challenged with this project and are looking for a excuse?

Thor 1950 said:

Could it be that you are to challenged with this project and are looking for a excuse?

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The OP raised a valid question and I'm glad he did as it started a very useful and wider debate around chassis fabricators.

Not an expert on jigs but would they not be primarily for putting the actual frame of the chassis together, and then the add-ons done manually? It is the holes on the outrigger that the OP was questioning - therefore might it be the wrong outriggers? or wrongly drill holes? rather than the whole chassis being inaccurate?
I have some experience of this type of error.....

tailhook said:

These chassis are fabricated in a jig, of some sorts, so this says as much about QC as anything.
It would be beyond credible to have a LR chassis distort with hot dip, given the overall fabrication of that unit.

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Sorry, but that has not been my experience, or that of several other experienced fabricators known to me.

Both welding and hot dip galvanising can, and does, distort even large structures.

Beneagles said:

It is the holes on the outrigger that the OP was questioning - therefore might it be the wrong outriggers? or wrongly drill holes? rather than the whole chassis being inaccurate?
I have some experience of this type of error.....

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LOL. Welcome to my world
I would have expected a set of QC checks with the welded-up chassis still in the jig or frame and those checks would have covered alignment and a host of other measured checks.

tailhook said:

I would have expected a set of QC checks with the welded-up chassis still in the jig or frame and those checks would have covered alignment and a host of other measured checks.

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For what is probably about £150 worth of mild steel and £30 worth of zinc, being sold for a couple of grand - the value is in the labour and the quality control.
I have seen lots of information about hot dip Galvanising potentially causing warping, that's the nature of the beast, but surely they would check the chassis on the jig prior to releasing it to the customer?

Also, every company can make a mistake - inconvenient, but not necessarily a drama.
To me, the value in a company is how they treat you and rectify the mistake afterwards.

Turboman said:

Sorry, but that has not been my experience, or that of several other experienced fabricators known to me.
Both welding and hot dip galvanising can, and does, distort even large structures.

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Probably one of those subjects one could debate all night about! Many so-called fabricators make no allowance for internal stresses during, for example, welding. Excessive welding, different metal thicknesses, etc, all contribute to internal stressing and potential distortion when the thermal stress of hot dip is applied.
My point would be that a defender chassis, with its particular design and construction does not create huge internal stresses, so you could hot dip it all you like. Sand-blast a tail-gate panel (err, the steel bit!) and it'll likely distort immediately; it's thin and unsupported. Experienced fabricators, where a structure design lends it to possible thermal distortion, will ensure stresses are minimised but in my experience, the actual design and spec take care of such potential bear-traps.

I don't think that anyone would build lots of chassis then dip them in a galv tank with fingers crossed that they won't distort.

Int early days of lr design they looked at galvanising. The history books tell the story of rover choosing not to do it because of the distortion. They had problems getting panels to line up after. Worst case was 6 inch out over total length of vehicle. I has no idea why they struggled. It was therefore not used for production. Yer would eggspect modern build to be much betterer.

tailhook said:

Probably one of those subjects one could debate all night about! Many so-called fabricators make no allowance for internal stresses during, for example, welding. Excessive welding, different metal thicknesses, etc, all contribute to internal stressing and potential distortion when the thermal stress of hot dip is applied.
My point would be that a defender chassis, with its particular design and construction does not create huge internal stresses, so you could hot dip it all you like. Sand-blast a tail-gate panel (err, the steel bit!) and it'll likely distort immediately; it's thin and unsupported. Experienced fabricators, where a structure design lends it to possible thermal distortion, will ensure stresses are minimised but in my experience, the actual design and spec take care of such potential bear-traps.

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standard chassis distort when dipped some more than others which was the reason i understood why galv chassis were thicker and built differently

Except that Marsland chassis are built by GKN in exactly the same way as Land Rover ones, in the same factory and (until recently)* on the same line. And you don’t hear of many problems with Marsland ones, certainly not compared to the more ‘home made’ ones from Richards or Shielder, for example. I’m sure they do all distort to some extent, but I’m not sure it’s significant.

I had a Richards 88” chassis with an outrigger in the wrong place by 1/2” - unfortunately it was the ‘wrong’ way to just pack it out and I had to cut down the tube in both the outrigger and the bulkhead foot in order to get the correct door gap. Conversely the Marsland chassis under my 90 went straight on without adjusting anything. All the shims and washers are exactly the same as those that came off. Not a large sample size I accept but still, I know where my money would go.

* Since some time shortly after end of Defender production GKN still make the chasss for Marsland however they’re now welded by hand rather than by machine, hence (or part of the reason at least) the big price jump in 2016.

When I bought my Richards chassis and I was told by the experts that it wouldn't be any good and I should have bought Marsland.
Thing is I didn't pay a lot for it, it is thicker steel than the original and everything lined up perfectly, some galv had run into some of the fixing holes but soon fettled with a file. I'm glad I didn't pay the extra for Marsland, my chassis is just what I wanted, only difference is that I can't tell everyone that I bought a proper chassis and paid through the nose for it, Richards is well up to the job as far as I'm concerned and you wont find me slagging them off, happy customer