sill/arch repair welding questions.

For what it is worth;

Pre made panels are the best route - time saving and they are mostly bang on to start with.

Practice, Practice, Practice - nothing worse than learning on your motor and when finished, looking back and thinking its crap.

Finally think how long it will take and then double it at least. Be practical as if its worth the effort, then its worth doing it right. All because you are doing it yourself to either save money or time, it doesn't mean you should sacrifice quality of repair.

Good Luck - I am needing to start the outer sills, rear crossmember, both inner arches at the front and both headlight panels. I will certainly be using YRM Metal as linked in a post above.

Ian

Hi fellas, Im at picture 2 stage at the mo having removed both rear arches, I toyed with the idea of patches on my arches too as they looked pretty much the same as the pics, I then decided that a complete panel replacement was the best way to go for me. I know a few local welders who would do the job for me but that will A:cost me money B:I will never learn myself how to do it and quite fancy another "feather in my cap" so to speak. My mates a scrap man so im gonna get a bit of scrap off him to practice on 1st until im entirely satisfied with my work before attempting the work on the Land Rover.

Thats the way G,do it once and do it right and you dont have to go back and do another hole right next to the first one.As I have found out the hard way.

Practice on various thicknesses of metal,look at the tutorials on the MIG site linked earlier,and learn the basic types of joint and get a feel for things,how hot you can go without blowing through,wire speed,hand speed,the settings on your machine etc etc.Since your mate is a scrappy,cut some bit out of car doors and bonnets with shears or whatever rather than paying for sheet metal for your initial practice.

The best buys I made after the welder were an auto darkening mask,mole grip welding clamps (the wide flat headed ones are good for making clean bends in sheet) and magnets.The triangular ones are dead handy,also some round ones off the back of an old speaker cone or the magnetron of a buggered microwave (mind the capacitors though).You can use them to attack your earth lead close to the weld area when the clamp isnt viable (common when doing that wheel arch job) and to hold bit where you want them.Not least of all to check that metal is steel or ally without taking the paint off !!

Done my offside arch today, thought about patching it but decided to do a proper job, took me 4 hours, doing the NS tomorrow.

Panel was Britpart and cost £27, not perfect as pretty warped where the metal has been streched but it dont show, but the fit was pretty good.

So it went from this



To this

its all coming along slowly but nicely, can anyone tell me is this a good buy?

land rover sill repair painting sealing rustproofing on eBay (end time 30-May-11 14:56:10 BST)

Or could anyone recomend a better/cheaper alternative?

Cheers.

buy a pot of brushable seam sealer it hardens similar to original,brush over welds then paint zinc primer,top coat

Ive kindly been given a mig by a welder who makes fire escapes etc it was sitting in his workshop and no good to him so he let me have it fair play. It has everything to get me going and i can get my hands on old car panels to practice on aswel so all is looking good .

The only thing concerning me is that when I mentioned what I was using it for he told me to be careful as he once had an old Audi that needed a baffle rewelding and he did it with a mig and after that it never ran again, he said it fried the ECU even though the battery was disconnected.

This has knocked my confidence slightly now as the last thing I need is to structually fix my landy only to kill it at the same time so I thought I would ask you lot?

Whats the chances of doing any damage like that to my landy and what preventative measures can be taken to ensure this doesnt happen?

Im going to see a landy mechanic and a welder who loves his discos to glean some more info during next week but the more info the better i thought.

Cheers.

Always have the earth as close to area you are welding,I always undo and remove both battery leads but know people who dont some people unplug alternator aswell.A device can be bought to save losing radio codes and supposedly protects ECU's Welding Vehicle Spoke Surge ECU's Battery Protector Kit | eBay UK

Earth lead off battery should be all you need,that and get a magnet to clamp your earth lead as close as possible- the earth will take the path of least resistance.But if you feel safer with a battery protector,then hey,do it ! Theres nothing like peace of mind to let you concentrate on the job in hand.You got enough worries welding what with hidden bits of wiring close to the weld are melting,carpets and trim and underseal catching fire,etc etc

Choice of wire thickness is something I have problems with in the past - I have found that 0.6 wire is a better choice for body work than 0.8 or 1.0.....you can always up the power on 0.6 if you are not getting the penetration,but you can only go as low as the machine on thicker wire.Im sure I said it before,but one of the major trip ups on lower price machines is not how high the power goes,but how low.I have the use of a big sealy machine that is great,high powered etc but with 1.0 wire it blows through body panels like hell unless you are very quick,so I end up using my old little clarke machine for body panels rather than switching and wasting wire - I have an adaptor to use the large gas bottles on the tiddy machine.

Its all in the tutorials on the MIG site that is linked,that and a forum for specific worries like the ECU issue.

Some interesting opinions here.......

Disconnect battery before welding. URBAN MYTH?

,,,and here....

Suspected welding damage to cars electronics. - Welding Forum

enjoy! Just made me MORE confused than ever !

I cant seem to find out what these surge protectors actually ARE....whats in them?A big capacitor?MOV /metal oxide varistor? Anyone know ?

shocker said:

I cant seem to find out what these surge protectors actually ARE....whats in them?A big capacitor?MOV /metal oxide varistor? Anyone know ?

Click to expand...

Would be interested in finding out!There seems to be 2 sorts 1 that goes across the battery and another i have seen mentioned that connects to a slave battery and plugs into the test socket.
Luckily the cars i usually play with dont have fancy lectrics so i havent needed to find out more.

I will ask my mate in australia on the 12volt forum, he know effing EVERYTHING !!!Really !!

mrnice said:

Ive kindly been given a mig by a welder who makes fire escapes etc it was sitting in his workshop and no good to him so he let me have it fair play. It has everything to get me going and i can get my hands on old car panels to practice on aswel so all is looking good .


Cheers.

Click to expand...

Just a quick update: The welder came into my shop with the mig, went to show me how it works and couldnt get it to work, he said he would take it back get it working and bring it back the following week.

Well a week past and he finally brought it back and said "I got that welder working I only needed to press a switch that we had missed, it works lovely now, it leaves a lovely clean weld, So im keeping it" I then said well can i at least borrow it to which he swifly replied "NO"

Honestly.

Couldnt F+$%ING believe it!

Horse62 were the arches a Bstard to do?