Gooday fellas. Didnt sleep much last night, here is why...

I climbed a gutter at about 35kph. Pretty slow, but some damage was done. The mounts for the control arms both sides were stretched, the radius rods both bent, with rubbers cracked. All easy enough to fix, but the disturbing thing it uncovered was rust in the chassis rail at the front. The paint was intact but the rail paper thin, rusted from the inside. Coolant had been slowly leaking down there from the over flow on the old A12. Ill put a photo up tomorrow night. I dont really want to transplant the ca into another ute shell but if I have to, I will.

Anyone had any experience with plating and welding the front chassis rails? Or any chassis rails for that matter. It is not really a load bearing spot, infront of the cross member, but still has to do some twisting during cornering.

More info tomorrow after work.
cheers fellas
Mely

What were you doing in [i presume] a public street that allowed you to lose control [?] of your car & severely impact the gutter?

It's possible that you can get the new parts that you require from your Nissan dealer as utes were sold here into the 80's.
I guess you have a choice now. You can repair it right, or you can "fix" it. There will be those who are ever ready to offer advice on how to botch, umm,.. i mean ,... bodge it up, but a proper repair will give peace of mind.

Get a screw drive & find out how far the rust goes Try making some holes in the rust & spray some rust convertor in the rail get some 1.5 - 2mm plate cut & bend it to shape & & weld it on.

Don't plate it do it right the first time.Get it flush and then grind down the welds so it's like new.

After all it's is your car so you do it how you want this is just my 2 cents.

The problem with cutting and grinding down though, is that what strength a nice weld added is lost when it is ground down thinner to look flush.

To keep the structural integrity of the chassis, I would cut the rust out, and sleeve the chassis rails top and bottom.

Gee sounds like something i saw one day.

Quote:
Its called Butt Welding for a reason. It looks good like nothing ever happend Butt its not strong. You can still overlap the metals from inside and spotweld them in places for strength, then full weld it from outside and grind it all down for looks and still retain strength