Hello,
I finally got round to replacing my body-cappings yesterday - I thought some pictures of the job might be useful to anybody considering doing the same...it's also quite surprising just how easily the hardtop comes away from the tub!
...so, from the top left -
1. The rust was quite bad from the outside...
2. ...but even worse from the inside!
3. The other side was only slightly better. There are two bolts here you need to remove to release the rear quarter panels from the tub.
4. I removed the bolts holding the roof to the rear quarter panels...
5. ...and loosened the ones along the edge, so I could lean the sides out.
6. I had to lower the head-lining at the front to get at the final bolts securing the roof and the seatbelt mounts.
7. In retrospect, you could leave these brackets attached to the sides and just remove the bolt holding them to the tub.
8. Also, I thought I had to loosen the seatbelt mounts more than I actually needed to.
9. The top door hinge has to be removed to allow the body sides to swing out.
10. Er...ignore the H&S issues here - the easiest way to raise the roof is to jack it up like this - it goes up miles without having to loosen the bolts above the windscreen, it turns out!
11. I chocked the roof while I was working under it (most of the time...)
12. The rust has really eaten away this side-capping!
13. Here's the bracket that holds the rear quarter panel to the tub...a bit rusty on mine!
14. It turns out there are rivets holding the side-cappings down between the sides and the tub - awkward to drill out (without removing the sides) and even harder to replace!
15. One side-capping removed - you can see the side leaning out for access, here. The side-capping's pretty easy to remove - you lift it up and then slide it inside the vehicle...
16. Here it is removed - the roof is mainly held on by large round fixings in the corners - as you can see, mine have turned entirely to rust! There should be bolts securing the sides to the capping via L-brackets towards the middle - mine didn't have these, probably due to the side-hatches - I think this is probably why my side cappings rusted so badly, too, as the seal between the side and the side-capping wasn't compressed properly as a result.
17. Here's the new side-capping - an older two-part capping, but it fits fine (well, sort of...more on that in a minute)
18. The original sealant between the side-capping and the tub had long since desicated and blown away, so I fitted strips of 10mm x 5mm neoprene instead.
19. Lots of clamps! I'm not sure which was bent, the side-capping or the Defender (almost certainly both), but I had to clamp it all the way along to get the correct fit before rivetting.
20. Same story at the front - actually, this wasn't particularly difficult, just laborious and back-breaking...
21. And there it is, job done...well, almost...
22. ...because, as it turned out, none of the holes in the capping matched the holes in the Defender. I decided to re-drill the defender rather than the capping, as I didn't want to damage the galvanising on the capping and I'm going to repaint the Defender anyway...
23. I filled the old holes with chemical metal, sanded it back and then drilled new holes from the inside out - once rivetted, that really was job done...
24. ...again, almost - this is one of the corner fixings that holds the sides onto the tub - these new cappings have much deeper tube sections (to take poles for a canvas roof?), so these don't fit - which is a bit of a b*gger, as I ordered four new ones before I realised...oh well
Anyway, I hope that wasn't too boring and hopefully it'll help somebody out in the future...
Cheers,
Paul
