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Riv-bonding' Aluminium monocoque panels issues

7K views 16 replies 5 participants last post by  Reggraham 
#1 ·
Well after 5 weeks in the dealers.

I have been told the creaking Issue was with 3 panels in the boot area were they meet and that during production of the car no lubricant was applied in the aluminium monocoque sandwhich which was causing the creaking.

Lubricant has now been added and this has fixed the problem. So I am told.

Anyone else had the same issue, as this sounds like the same issue others have had with joints/rivets on other Jaguar and Land Rover models.
Fixes include re riveting, felt applied to joints etc.
 
#2 ·
Lubricating panel joints to enable them to move more easily, not bonded at all ! - I would be asking for a full explanation, what, where, why and how. How often does the lubricant have to be renewed.
 
#4 ·
Same issue on discovery sport, they chiseled the seams apart till the e-coat clicks and separates, then spray lub in , used pliers to close the seam then repaint it. It's normally hidden under the rubber seal trim.
Not one case of lubricating the panels worked long term.

It took 3 years for them to sort out the DS by repressing new panels and changing sealant flow at the factory and repositioning welds . Only fixed a couple of months ago
It either creaked or ticked in hot weather , I rejected my DS for this creaking ticking issue on panels. Some folks had it on their replacement vehicles too. Quite a lot of rejections too.

As above I'd ask to see a copy of the repair procedure or at least JLR the bulletin number they used , ask them to explain exactly what they have done it has to be a documented repair process.
 
#5 ·
Yes definitely told it was Lubricant,
June16 confirms this is correct as I was unsure myself!
I had asked were the seams separated and told no just lubricant applied.
As suggested I will ask for the report and full details.
Thanks for the responses.
 
#6 ·
Barthog said:
Yes definitely told it was Lubricant,
June16 confirms this is correct as I was unsure myself!
I had asked were the seams separated and told no just lubricant applied.
As suggested I will ask for the report and full details.
Thanks for the responses.
It may well hide the noise but for how long, ask them if they have had or seen this issue before themselves.

As above I would be surprised if it's not a short term fix and your be back, if the two seems rubbing is making the noise I can not see lubricant working, as stated if they are meant to be a tight no moving bond then you would not expect to see the factory using lubricant.

Good luck and keep us posted.
 
#7 ·
Jagfpacejk said:
Barthog said:
Yes definitely told it was Lubricant,
June16 confirms this is correct as I was unsure myself!
I had asked were the seams separated and told no just lubricant applied.
As suggested I will ask for the report and full details.
Thanks for the responses.
It may well hide the noise but for how long, ask them if they have had or seen this issue before themselves.

As above I would be surprised if it's not a short term fix and your be back, if the two seems rubbing is making the noise I can not see lubricant working, as stated if they are meant to be a tight no moving bond then you would not expect to see the factory using lubricant.

Good luck and keep us posted.
Agree there is no lubricant used in production, it's down to panel clearance, tolerance of gaps and thickness of e-coat applied on dipping the car, and sealent tracks. The lubricant won't last forever. I guess getting some sort of extended warranty on that specific fix might be worth chasing?

The DS issue manifested itself in the B Pillars , right next to your ear. It used to either tick on rough ground when steering input caused flex, or creak on uneven ground. It was more predominant in hot areas as expansion made the issue show up. Googling discovery sport B pillar tick is an eye opener .

It took nearly 3 years , a lot of unhappy customers who had cars basically vandalised by repair shops. But there are still many DS vehicles out there that this can materialise on, we all dreaded the thought of the size of the bill if this appeared when out of warranty.

Here is the fix in production we gleaned from LR only last month. The paint flow mentioned is the coat. It's the same type of process,

*******
From JLR:

"Further to my previous post I have been liaising further with the engineering team who have advised the below.

"Having investigated a number of vehicles that exhibited the noise, we determined that there were several factors that contributed to multiple noise sources (although they sounded like a single tick in most cases).

In addition to the changes made to the welds on the seat-belt reinforcement panels, we made very subtle changes to the press tools to make slight dimensional changes to a number of panels. Additionally, we re-positioned a number of welds and we extended and tuned the sealer path which changed the characteristics of the paint flow.

We developed specialised, additional end-of-line testing which allowed us to find issues in plant and we put a large number of vehicles through this test without a failure before we were confident that we could release the Assured VINs. As it is understood that the noise tends to manifest itself at higher temperatures, we also put cars through our hot test chamber on a continuous basis and completed the hot climate testing on more than 300 cars before we released the Assured VINs.

Finally, we have a number of markets where the higher temperatures and more arduous road conditions resulted in a much higher failure rate than in other territories. There have been no noises on cars past the Assured VINs in these territories."

***
 
#9 ·
Nearly 6 weeks without my car now, waiting on a response from JLr to the request dealer made.
 
#10 ·
I would be surprised if they made changes to the pressing dies at well over a £1M for the dies and the fact that they press each panel with 5 separate dies, any change to those is only at a complete model change. The face lift is one very minor change, minor exterior changes maybe the bonnet in the case of the XF but the main body panels stay the same. It was more likely they change the jigs that hold the panels while glueing and riveting. That was the only process that looked a bit suspect to me when visiting the factory. The panels are glued together held lightly and moved to the next station for riveting. During this move they are moving a whole body from one station to the other that has not yet been riveted the jig holds the body in shape, although the bonding is supposed to be strong, the robots then rivet all the panels together. Everything in the body assembly stage is done by robot only maintenance and top-up of supplies is done by humans.
 
#11 ·
Reggraham said:
I would be surprised if they made changes to the pressing dies at well over a £1M for the dies and the fact that they press each panel with 5 separate dies, any change to those is only at a complete model change. The face lift is one very minor change, minor exterior changes maybe the bonnet in the case of the XF but the main body panels stay the same. It was more likely they change the jigs that hold the panels while glueing and riveting. That was the only process that looked a bit suspect to me when visiting the factory. The panels are glued together held lightly and moved to the next station for riveting. During this move they are moving a whole body from one station to the other that has not yet been riveted the jig holds the body in shape, although the bonding is supposed to be strong, the robots then rivet all the panels together. Everything in the body assembly stage is done by robot only maintenance and top-up of supplies is done by humans.
If you'd seen the amount of rejects and bad press they got they had to do something.
On the forum of over 200 active members it was running at 1 in 3 affected at one pointt over 2 years , even rattling and creaking when driven out of the showroom when new. Some folk rejected 2 for the same fault within 3 months.
They don't have to recreate a die press to make changes , they can make subtle changes to tooling as stated.

In any case no more came out if the manufacturers after this fix.

Looking at this issue though there doesn't seem to be many affected so it may just be one bad pressing ?? It's certainly not on the scale of the DS.

In any case riv bonding uses heat to make the bonding material hard , did you see any heating after the bonding was applied?
 
#12 ·
The story of riv bonding is here , the bond is super strong adhesive.
https://www.jaguar.com/about-jaguar/reliability/aluminium.html

Using lessons learned from the aerospace industry, we have created a revolutionary way of building an aluminium chassis, called 'riv-bonding'. Aluminium panels are stuck together with a super-strong adhesive, and then punched with zinc-coated, boron steel rivets with up to 10 tonnes of force.
 
#13 ·
No I didn't see any heat after the glue was applied the jigs just seem to push them together then they were moved straight to riveting, come to think of the guide did mention that the final bonding took place when the cars were baked after painting the heat helped the glue finally harden. I only saw the panels come together as a monocoque get riveted then the next time we saw them was starting final assembly. But at least they seem to have sorted it I hope as I'l get mine sometime soon.
 
#15 ·
Maybe, it was amazing to watch you would see F-Pace panels picked up and glued together and moved to the next bay for riveting the robot arms then if needed changed the jig to the velar jig and picked up velar panels and glued them by the time that was done the next bay had changed its jig for riveting a velar. They told me the paint process was dipped then sprayed then bacon baked knowing liquid is fantastic at penetrating the smallest gaps if the glue wasn't applied perfectly all round that would leave areas bare and if the panels weren't stamped perfectly that would also allow gaps for paint to get in and disturb the bonding process. The robots doing the gluing and riveting had cameras at the work point which was being analysed by the computer systems to make sure that they had done their job properly.
 
#16 ·
Yes , that point of incorrect bonding makes sense with respects to paint flow , it was the other correction in the DS line.
"
....tuned the sealer path which changed the characteristics of the paint flow.
"

I guess ( hope) all these anomalies are fed back by dealers so JLR can see there is a problem .
I watched the DS build at Hakewood so didn't bother with the FPace one ...but I was tempted.
 
#17 ·
I did a VIP tour as I asked the guys at the experience centre and they managed to find the day and rough time of when my car would be on the final production lines. Very different to the last time I was in a car factory which was in 1977 and they were building cortinas and fiestas. Still amazing that they managed to build both on the same line, we saw maybe a couple of fiestas then cortinas and back to fiestas. Then Dagenham did everything they built the engines made the panels as well as make the interiors and then final assembly. Funny we never got to see where the seats were made just told what building it was in. They still had their problems we saw a car come out of the spray shop with a rub mark all down one side and it still went through production they said it would be fixed at the end.
 
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