Bed time!

Time for the bits I had been really looking forward to. That’s right, some serious structural surgery, and now I had the sills and floors and footwells as solid (and actually a lot stronger) than they used to be, I turned my attention to the crossmember.
This runs beneath the floor pans, and is welded to them, the transmission tunnel and the castle rails on each side. Jacking points are usually fitted to the cross member, but Valleri did not have them when I bought her and she won’t get new ones, they look bad, are a moisture trap, and the original jack is lethal and ineffective at the best of times.

The Chassis rails also needed replacing, but I wanted the cross member done first to give plenty of strength to the shell before I removed anything else. Also, the chassis rails are welded to the cross member at their rear ends, so I needed the new cross member in place (and in exactly the right place) to aid with the correct location of the new chassis rails/legs/side members (whatever you want to call them!).

I have a rather lovely spit for attaching the car to, which is brilliant for most work on the undersides. However, seeing as the next area of work was the cross member and chassis rails, and the spit attached to the front ends of the chassis rails… erm.. Houston….
Fortunately Rod of the “Oooooh I’ve got chrome ROStyles” fame had a mattress handy, and it was decided that the car would be laid on its side on this, similar to what Nigel has done with his car. The tendency for the car to wobble around makes some things very difficult, I am very glad I have the spit rather than having to use a mattress all the time. With Nigel’s help, we rolled the car off the stands onto the matress, as simple as that, with the roof leaning against the floor/cupboards and the whole thing fairly stable. The mattress prevents damage to the nearside panels, it’s not a bad way of doing things really as long as care is taken not to wobble the thing too much!

There she is on the mattress. Not quite as precarious as she looks, and oh dear the Lister's float chamber looks a bit scruffy.

There we have the old crossmember and chassis rails, note how they have been patched together. The new floorpans look delicious I must say, lots of nice new metal to weld more new metal too!

Before cutting anything out, thought must be given to the residual strength of the surrounding area. So this bar was welded in to keep the transmission tunnel the right shape and size....

And this one was welded next to it to keep the chassis rails in place, seeing as they were only tacked to the floorpan at this stage. Look at that nice new heelboard extension....!

Unfortunately, the chassis leg/cross member area had obviously rusted away in the past and had been patched. Therefore I could not tell exactly where the rear of the chassis legs were, which was going to make things a bit trickier when positioning the new cross member. Still, I took some measurements and scribed some lines into the floor pans and Newcastle rails and seat about lopping off the old cross member.

Nasty awful yucky welding, whcih looks to have been doen with an Arc welder from underneath by a frightened guillemot. This is better gone!

The flat plate which seals off the top of the cross member while it travels under the gearbox tunnel had seen better days, so I quickly made up a new one seeing as it was very simple and not worth not doing.
Then I decided to do a slight modification to stop the new cross member becoming a rust trap and corroding again. There are two holes in the cross member which allow the wiring loom to pass through it, along with mud, water and all sorts judging by what was inside the old cross member. So I sealed it off by rolling a piece of steel into a cylindrical shape, trimming it to size and welding it in then welding a seam to make it waterproof. So the crossmember now has a tunnel instead of holes, which should reduce water ingress. I’m not too fond on completely sealed box sections though, and the floor pan will be drilled in several places to allow injection of some sort of anti corrosion substance, and whether the holes will be plugged with plastic plugs or left open to allow it to breath is yet to be decided.

A bad photo admittedly, but you can see where there is a tube for the wiring loom instead of just a big hole in each side of the crossmember.

Afterwards I did the usual paint stripping of the new one, drilling the holes for plug welding, weld-through then zinc priming, after which it could be offered up to the body. I had it in precise vertical alignment due to the spacing between the castle rails, it fitted in perfectly. But fore and aft alignment was harder, as when I cut the old cross member off all I was left with were dodgy patches. I decided to go by the rearmost gearbox cross member hole, and space the cross member the correct distance back from that, which would be as precise as any other method. I measured the distance between the rear gearbox cross member hole and the rear chassis leg on one of the new chassis legs which was waiting to be fitted, and used this to space the cross member the correct distance back from the remains of the chassis legs still in position on the car. All was square and lined up properly, the new cross member also fitted into the lines I had scribed on the floor pans around the outline of the old cross member before I removed it.

With the corssmember gone, everything was taken back to shiny metal and the flat plate (bridging the transmission tunnel) was replaced, then it was all weld-through primed.




The crossmember got the usual two-tone treatment.

Then it was welded into place, a small area at a time in a completely different place each time to minimise heat buildup and burning off of the nice new primer. As usual it was plug then seam welded, and to ensure a perfect fit to the floor pans, every other plug weld hole was drilled all the way through and a small bolt were used to hold the floor and cross member tightly together while the surrounding area was welded, once it had cooled the bolt was removed and the hole was welded up, like a normal plug weld. This was very successful, and I will use the same technique when fitting the new chassis rails.

Yay! Shiny or what!

And there I had a new cross member. Well that was very promising, so the next thing to do is replacing the chassis rails. Death or Glory awaits!