Dershum Posted March 9, 2013 Share Posted March 9, 2013 I just thought I'd post a little of the progress I've finally managed to make on my patch panels. It's taking forever to get through these, but it feels good to have a little bit of progress finally! Before After And another in progress Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 11, 2013 Author Share Posted March 11, 2013 Not to necessarily self-bump this, but I was hoping one of the folks out there who are a bit more of a welding expert might be able to help me out a bit. I started welding on my new patch after spraying the area behind the patch with weld-thru primer, and also painting the back of the patch with the same primer. It's that Eastwood self-etching stuff. When I did some test welds against an old piece of the body that was cut out, and a piece of the same stock I made the patch from, I simply sanded the piece I was welding to, and proceeded to do a few plug welds to weld the test piece flat against the old piece of body. Everything went great. Then when I started welding the patch to the body, the wire from my MIG started "skipping" around a lot when I was trying to weld. The wire started by coming out, the arc would start, and the wire would "hit" the metal, and either break off or skip around...it was like it was a partial arc or something and I just couldn't get a clean weld. It rode very proud on the plugs and I wasn't able to get any penetration. I'm guessing this probably has to do with the "weld-thru" primer, so I probably just need to sand off the area and try again with clean metal instead of trying to be fancy with it. But I wanted to throw it out there and see what folks thought of the issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morbias Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 Either sand off the primer as you suggest or crank up the power level on the welder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 11, 2013 Author Share Posted March 11, 2013 I was thinking about cranking up the voltage, but the test welds I did came out just right so I figured I had the settings pretty close...plus I don't want to blow through the sheet metal on the body...had that problem with some previous welds! I'll give sanding the primer off a shot and see what happens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mditt8671 Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 So in the 3rd photo for the TC box area fix, you're bending both the patch and the reinforcement panel? I'm in the process of doing this repair myself and wasn't sure if I needed to make the bend for the patch itself... I was definitely going to bend the reinforcement panel though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zinpieces Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 By chance were you holding the patch in with a magnet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 11, 2013 Author Share Posted March 11, 2013 @mditt8671, I was just bending the patch panel. There's what looks like an intentional bend in the sheet metal (this is the driver inner fender area, just forward of the firewall along the frame rail), so I bent the side of the patch to match as closely as possible. Best I could do with a small vise that had an anvil plate on it and a hammer. @Zinpieces, nope...no magnets involved. Just the vice grips holding the bottom lip of the patch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mditt8671 Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 OK so you removed the steel of the patch panel down onto the bent horizontal part too... I didn't cut that far down, not sure if I should or not. I was going to hold the patch in with magnets if I ended up butt welding the patch (without the bent part). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 I had to remove that much, since the rust hole went that far forward...there was a pretty big gap there. Here's a "before" pic of the same hole on the passenger side. The driver side one was a little longer. I managed to get it welded on finally, and it's looking pretty good. Still have to grind it tho. The lessons learned here were: 1. Weld-thru primer is a lie. 2. ALWAYS re-check your welder settings. My wire feed speed had mysteriously been turned WAY up, I think when I moved the welder after doing my tests. Once I set it back down, things went much more smoothly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zman0690 Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Weld-thru primer, in general, is not designed to actually weld to or thru. Its more like a high heat primer that does not flake off when the surrounding metal heats up. I mean think about it this way, do you need primer under your weld? No, but the surrounding area is where it is needed. I generally spray the area surrounding where my weld will be and then sand off the portion directly where the welds are going to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 Weld-thru primer, in general, is not designed to actually weld to or thru. Its more like a high heat primer that does not flake off when the surrounding metal heats up. I mean think about it this way, do you need primer under your weld? No, but the surrounding area is where it is needed. I generally spray the area surrounding where my weld will be and then sand off the portion directly where the welds are going to be. I was primarily using it for the area I was plug welding to, since the metal was going to be overlapping and I was hoping for some rust protection between the layers. It'd be kind of hard to get just the plug weld spots on the underlying metal clean while leaving enough of the primer to make it worth the effort tho. I'll probably just skip it going forward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morbias Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 I've not had any problems welding on weld-thru primer, I'm using U-POL power can primer: http://www.tptools.com/U-Pol-Weld-Thru-Primer,3185.html?b=d*12663 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 A little more progress. The inside of the passenger strut tower (the outside was in the first post) ready for welding. Got to play with my new cleco's that I got for my birthday! It's amazing what having the proper tools (got a cheap benchtop belt sander) can do for fabrication time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scartail Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 A little more progress. The inside of the passenger strut tower (the outside was in the first post) ready for welding. Got to play with my new cleco's that I got for my birthday! It's amazing what having the proper tools (got a cheap benchtop belt sander) can do for fabrication time! IMG_0689.JPG Looks good. Just curious, how does the piece you are cleco'ing to look? How did you primer it? I'm doing some homework on how to tackle my project. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 18, 2013 Author Share Posted March 18, 2013 Looks good. Just curious, how does the piece you are cleco'ing to look? How did you primer it? I'm doing some homework on how to tackle my project. Thanks. I'll try to remember to take a pick before I burn it in. There was rust through both layers of the passenger-side strut tower (and driver side that I haven't touched yet). I cut both layers out, and had already welded a patch to outside-facing side. So that panel is the engine bay side of the passenger strut tower, just south of the cutout in the body sheet metal where the strut/spring goes through and up to the upper mount. I cut the panel and then popped holes in it with a cheap panel flanger/hole cutter that I got from Harbor Freight, so that I can plug weld the panel to the one behind it as well as weld around the perimeter. There's only two holes (where the cleco's are) going through the panel underneath. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 27, 2013 Author Share Posted March 27, 2013 Got those two panels burned in and mostly ground out. May do a little more cleanup, but frankly, I'm sick of grinding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scartail Posted March 29, 2013 Share Posted March 29, 2013 Got those two panels burned in and mostly ground out. May do a little more cleanup, but frankly, I'm sick of grinding. IMG_0707.JPG IMG_0708.jpg IMG_0709.jpg Looks good. When you get to that state, do you just putty over it? Or weld buildup any low spots? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 29, 2013 Author Share Posted March 29, 2013 Looks good. When you get to that state, do you just putty over it? Or weld buildup any low spots? Honestly, I haven't quite gotten to that part yet I think that for the strut tower, I'm probably going to seam weld the whole thing all the way around on both of them. There's a little bit of gap there between the patch panel (and the rest of it really) and the body. I suppose I could squirt some seam sealer in there, but welding the seam seems (haha) like it would improve the overall rigidity of things. As for the surface of the two patches, I'll probably use some putty for the small holes and major blemishes, but I'm not going for perfection. If someone can look closely and go "yep, there's a patch there", it's not the end of the world to me. But that's mostly because they're in behind panels and such...if it was an exterior panel, it'd be a different story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dershum Posted March 31, 2013 Author Share Posted March 31, 2013 (edited) Well, for every two steps forward, we get a step back. First, some more progress (yay!). Passenger side, just forward of the firewall in the outside fender well along the frame rail. Cut out and patched. This one came out even better than the last one, so I guess practice really does make perfect (or better at least!) Engine-bay side of the driver strut tower. That's the backside of the fender-well side of the patch. And here's the step back. I knew there was some rust behind brace panel (or whatever that thing is called) that the crossmember bolts to. I drilled out the spot welds (there's a LOT of em) and found this. I don't think it's as bad as it looks though. Looking at the frame rail behind it closely, there doesn't seem to be that much rust on it...just surface rust. I think what we're seeing here is water that's gotten between the inner fender and that little bracing panel, and rusted it from behind. I think it's going to be a bit of pain to patch though, since I'm going to have to repair the fender well, and then make a new brace that will weld over that patch. Also, that brace is much thicker metal (16 gauge if I had to guess, I'll check alter) so I'm going to have to hunt down some material to work with. Edited March 31, 2013 by Dershum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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