seam welding

[johnc]

Its actually pretty simple but requires a complete teardown of the car and a lot of prep. You cut a 1.5 mm slot along each seam, inside or outside of the spot welds and deep enough to only cut through 1 of the panels spot welded together.

 

Then, using a TIG welder (no MIG too much heat - panel distortion and discoloration) you run a bead in the slot joining the the two panels back together. Then you carefully grind and fill everything so its smooth and then undercoat or paint.

 

Again, its hundreds of hours of prep and clean up after. So, whichever racing series you're cheating at better pay a lot in prize money. I also suspect that, since I was told of this trick, the cheaters have found another, easier, better way of achieving the same thing. Whenever you're told of a "new" trick, you can bet that its not the "new, new" trick.

[pparaska]

Wow, that's a ton of work.

 

Seems it would be easier to just add additional spot welds between the original ones, and then fill the divets as to hide them. You'd get a good amount of stiffening if there was a spot weld every inch or so. Heck, place 2 between every factory spot weld and fill them in in one swipe of the bondo scraper. For places like the pinch welds in the door opening, you'd want to be careful that the edges of the sheets stayed separated, so it might require opening that up with a stiff putty knife and hammer before doing the bondo work.