Land Rovers don't rust.

Don't they just! All that lovely 'Birmabright' aluminium is riveted securely to a steel frame that in the tradition of all British motorcars from the 80s rusts like billyo.

The chassis is now galvanised, so immune (almost), but some of the body work is showing its age. The back doors wouldn't close anymore because the little aluminium triangle panel was pushing out too far - the cause was the expansion of the rust built up underneath. A little work with a cold chisel to remove the rust also brought out cakes of mud collected up in the metalwork cavities by the wheel arch. I must have pulled out a couple of kilos of compost that has probably been in there since the first time it drove a muddy lane. I reckon that if you took a brand new Defender and drove it round a muddy field, it would probably collect a few hundredweight of mud in all the cavities underneath.

So, the next job is to reinforce the body frame (where the bit is missing) and then to make up a couple of shielding plates to fit in the wheel arch to stop it all filling up again. Then it gets covered over with a smart laser-cut sheet of tread plate. So next time you see a Land Rover that looks like it has been designed for people to walk on the sides of it, you'll know that it is covering up the thin plating underneath that has got galvanically corroded by it being in contact with steel. It is such a shame Land Rover didn't just galvanise all the steel in the first place.