Re: galvinizing my 109 Posted by Mike Nieuwoudt on June 23, 1999 at 12:58:20: In Reply to: galvinizing my 109 posted by wendallnorth on June 22, 1999 at 18:36:28: Hi Wendall When a welded structure like a Land Rover chassis is heated to above certain critical temperatures, the built-in stresses in the structure wants to "sort" themselves out to a nominal stress-free condition (stress-relieving). This happens over a short period of time (temperature dependant), and during this period there is a very real possibility of distortion unless the complete chassis is held in a rigid jig until stress-free, actually ideally until cooled down again. During hot-dip galvanising a chassis must thus be constrained otherwise you may find that mounting holes just don't want to line up again. A second danger with a box chassis is that the amount (and thus weight) of molten zinc contained inside the hollow sections when being removed from the bath does not just run out instantaniously, thus care must be taken to not bend the chassis on removal. I would be very wary of galvinising a Land Rover chassis without proper support in the form of a rigid, pre-stress relieved jig, and an operator that is known to take the utmost care during processing. My 1989 110 SW has a galvanised chassis from new. The SAfrican built 110's up to about 1995 all had these (built by a local franchised manufacturer AAD), but since the official Land Rover South Africa took over they only paint it. Disadvantage of a galvanised chassis is however that you should not weld on it without good zinc removal in weld area. Afterwards there is an unprotected area, specially on the inside where the galvanising burned off. Cheers
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