Outrigger Part 1

Got started on replacing the outrigger yesterday. Right away I was faced with stiff opposition as the bolt holding the outrigger onto the bodywork was seized. I ended up shattering a 3/4" socket before resorting to cutting the head off with the grinder.

I then went from this:

To this:

The expected hole in the chassis. It's slightly worse than it looks as half of the top part was also corroded. What you can see in above picture is the top part of the old outrigger which I also removed. Sorry no pic as I was getting into the grinding 'zone' and forgot. I made cardboard templates so that I could cut new 2mm plate.

Here is the redone section with some chassis paint on it to guard against immediate corrosion.

As you can see above I have retianed the bottom part of the old outrigger as this was in good shape. I then had to do some more measuring so that the new outrigger would fit snugly into place. This was the most difficult part.

I was left with a wee gap right at the bottom for which I will have to fit up another small piece of steel and weld in place and there's some weld to go along the top of the rail.

As I moved inside and started to weld I realised something was wrong. The weld looked terrible. I found that I had ran out of shielding gas ! Honestly those wee disposable bottles are useless.

I will grind into the weld here to see how porous it is then redo.

I still have to attach the top outer to the stiffener for which I will do a bracket for the top and maybe for underneath too.

A proper big bottle of gas ordered, however I am back to work so Part 2 may be a while.

Now scroll back up to the first picture then down to the bottom picture - see the difference :)