Mounting Bolts - Inner Wing:Body Shell *SOLVED*
Along with the many other things I'm doing while I have the opportunity with the body off, I thought I'd replace one of the inner wings which had rust at the front bolt mount point and rear where it meets the main shell (this is the very last panel on the whole shell to do).
Taking it off though, one of the two main bolts sheered (12mm ones that go through the shell - see attached pictures).
Just wondered if anyone knows how accessible they are from inside the vehicle (I can't get into mine at the moment since the jacks and stans stop me opening the doors!
Hi
Those bolts don't have a hex head on the other side, they are welded in there, have a cap on other side.
You can see them if you look through the speaker hole. You may me able to reach in there with a welder and tack another in after removing the old one, I can't remember exactly how much room you'll have. A PITA job but possible!!
Hope this helps, cheers Scott
No worries.
Another way to tackle it is from the outside. Drill the spot welds out and remove some of the outer skin.Cut the doubler out (part of it) that the bolt is welded to, weld a new bolt to a new piece of doubler, then weld it back in and weld outer skin back on. You'll probably find rust under that outer skin anyway as the water gets between the skins where the bolt protrudes. Good luck!
Had same issue on mine.
Did a slightly naughty fix .. I cut a bolt down and welded it to the existing stud you have sticking out then dressed it down so it is the same diameter of the stud. You can do this as there is a spacer between body and inner wing so about 15mm of stud does not need thread. Ran a tap down all the studs too, fitted new nuts and lots of goop.. plus plastic liners.
This is naughty as the weld will be weaker than the stud but given that we have a beefy chassis and that chassis is really the crash structure I thought it worth the risk compared to ripping very heavily into the bodyshell to get to the other side of the stud which would probably compromise the bodyshell more. Plus this should be under compression/shear not tension so again not loaded so much.
I'm going to leave it until I can get back inside the vehicle I think. I don't think there is any rust in the panel itself though so I'm reluctant to chop into it if I can avoid it.
I did wonder if it might be accessible if I removed the aluminium casting above the steering column onto which the brake boosted mounts.
Hi
No, it's not accessable with that removed.
You could drill it out and put a bolt through there, that's another solution.
You could also make a stepped bolt, where the step becomes the spacer and thread that on to the stud that's still there, assuming you have a lathe or access to one.
There are many ways!
This is now fixed, though it might be useful to update.
In the end, no hacking or body work cutting was needed (though it was a good opportunity to see if there was any hidden corrosion, but it turned out not, otherwise this would have been warrranted).
I simply drilled out the corroded bolt (which had corroded around 1/2 way down where the plastic spacer is) and was then able to fit a replacement stainless Hex M10 accessed through the speaker cutout bottom right.
The solution to holding it all together when trying to screw the bolt down was actually to assemble the whole wing (secured on the top bolt) with a temporary bolt or 10mm dowl pushed through and a tiny bit of gap sealant (black rubber pannel seal adhesive) applied to the back of the plastic spacer so that when you remove the dowl (to fit the new bolt), it doesn't slip out of place.
The new inner wing was lightly sanded then resprayed with POR15 base and then topcoated with POR Chassis coat (thinned 10% sprayed at a slightly reduced pressure to give a matt finish). 3M rubber underseal finished the job. Wing reassembled with panel seal adhesive and it looks better than the factory black original finish I think.
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A PITA indeed.. why on earth did MB think that was a good idea :/ New inner wings are going to get POR15'd I reckon! Thanks for the help.