Welding & Rust - any willing participants (pictures)?

Hi there guys,

Pleasure to meet you all and a first post! A recent new Defender 110 owner and excited to join the club.

Please forgive me here - I'm a relative amateur car lover, and generally pretty good on mechanical things (and still at the point of using a hammer when it comes to electricals). But one of my true failings is my inability to weld.

Got a 110 that has a fresh bulkhead and door pillars - but needs welding at the bottoms of the 5x doors and the two footwells. Realise all the advice is to get welding yourself, and I have bought a MIG welder (conveniently not able to reach at the moment), but to be honest I kind of want to do my defender properly as the chassis is beautifully solid, and don't want it to be my practice project.

On that I was wondering if any good welders on the site are willing to potentially help / swap with each other? The alternative is for me to head to a welder/garage, and we all know how expensive that becomes. I'm happy to pay, if it's not more than my local quotes.

Or alternatively I have a beautiful pair of new bucket seats (unused) that I'm happy to swap - Link below

Would be grateful if any Defender owners could give me advice

I forgot to mention - I'm based in the South East but can happily drive to wherever someone is.
I have all the panels needed.

Please forgive me if my scales of value of what I'm offering is totally out. Relatively new to welding and the worth

The sort of damage you have is just the stuff to practice on, that is non structural. [ although it does hold the door together] Sections of the rails are available. Test weld on similar size metals first.
Check out MIG welding forum beginners section for much good info.

Cant do the work but is an easy repair...got local metal supplier to fold up repair panels...

Where in the south east are you

Passenger footwell, you can save that just by cutting out that rotten bit and letting a new bit in, not hard.
Drivers side footwell is toast up to the fold line just above the clutch pedal rubber, still not hard, access and getting all the old bolts off is the fun bit!
Two rear door passenger doors look simple enough, literally clean up the crack and weld up, then reinforce with some plate on the back side, either weld plate on or monobolt it on.
Not done door frames so no idea on them, but if you can buy the section as mentioned, then cannot be that hard.

I reckon 1k in a garage.

haza88 said:

Where in the south east are you

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Hey man - based in Essex but she drives all fine so able to go wherever really if that helps

As above if you have bought a mig welder and want to learn the doors are the perfect thing to learn on before attemting to tackle the footwell.
Welding IMO is all about precatice. Get hold of as much scrap of the same thickeness as the door frame as you can and just set about welding bits toether. Once you are happy you can weld the scrap togther reasonably well (likely to take a couple of hours practice if you have not done any welding before) then you are ready to weld in new parts to the door frames. You can get the door frame repair sections from YRM and it is just a case of cutting the old one out and welding the new one in.

As the doors are not structural just remember "a grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't". If your first attempt at welding does not go well grind it back and put another pass on it, then cover everything in red oxide primer and top colour of your choice, then inject the frame with your choice of cavity wax to hold of the rust for as long as possible.

Or invest in a short welding course at your local college. Ours does them several times a year.

Knappster said:

Or invest in a short welding course at your local college. Ours does them several times a year.

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I did one of those about 12months after I got the welder and self taught. Having done the course the most value I got out of it was the hours and hours of actually welding and experimenting. Yes there was a tutor there who would wander around and critique and comment but you got very little real contact time, most of the time you were left on your own with all the kit and a pile of offcut steel. Hence my advice above to just do that yourself and watch some youtube videos. All I really got for my money at the college over and above lots of practice time was the city and guilds certificate.

Having just taken my other car back from an MOT where it had a bit of welding done to the arches. I am gobsmacked at how shockingly poor the weld is by somebody no doubt paid far too much of my money. It looks he was an asthmatic who decided to drool on the seams rsther than actually weld.

As a result, I think you've all convinced me that I can't do a worse job, and to have a go!

I'll take pictures and update you all. No doubt through tears when I burn through half the aluminum skin haha

HHook said:

Having just taken my other car back from an MOT where it had a bit of welding done to the arches. I am gobsmacked at how shockingly poor the weld is by somebody no doubt paid far too much of my money. It looks he was an asthmatic who decided to drool on the seams rather than actually weld.

As a result, I think you've all convinced me that I can't do a worse job, and to have a go!

I'll take pictures and update you all. No doubt through tears when I burn through half the aluminum skin haha

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Welding cars is truly a shti job, quite possibly the worst job in any garage.

The garage might have been using a gasless mig, they make super crap welds!

Whatever mig you buy, do not buy the cheapest, also avoid anything with hundreds of controls.

lynall said:

Welding cars is truly a shti job, quite possibly the worst job in any garage.

The garage might have been using a gasless mig, they make super crap welds!

Whatever mig you buy, do not buy the cheapest, also avoid anything with hundreds of controls.

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Aye Aye captain

Shippers said:

Cant do the work but is an easy repair...got local metal supplier to fold up repair panels...View attachment 297092View attachment 297094View attachment 297093View attachment 297095

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He said he would be willing to travel to get it fixed but think there are limits

HHook said:

Having just taken my other car back from an MOT where it had a bit of welding done to the arches. I am gobsmacked at how shockingly poor the weld is by somebody no doubt paid far too much of my money. It looks he was an asthmatic who decided to drool on the seams rsther than actually weld.

As a result, I think you've all convinced me that I can't do a worse job, and to have a go!

I'll take pictures and update you all. No doubt through tears when I burn through half the aluminum skin haha

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Remember the old saying "Grinding and filling make me the welder I am not" has not got to be great as not structural just has to look okay take your time practices on scrap first and all will be okay, get a fire extinguisher just in case and water and sponge for small fires just in case

Ian M in France said:

Remember the old saying "Grinding and filling make me the welder I am not" has not got to be great as not structural just has to look okay take your time practices on scrap first and all will be okay, get a fire extinguisher just in case and water and sponge for small fires just in case

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And watch Fitzees fabrication on youtube...and you dont need gas mig just buy a synergenic kit 2 controls one for weld heat the other for metal thickness and practise but dont try and do seam welds just tack every 6" let cool and then tack every 3" till youv'e joined the dots thats how I did the door bottom in the pic I posted a 59 S2 for a client here in Portugal...the bulkhead was even worse...

lynall said:

Welding cars is truly a shti job, quite possibly the worst job in any garage.

The garage might have been using a gasless mig, they make super crap welds!

Whatever mig you buy, do not buy the cheapest, also avoid anything with hundreds of controls.

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Most garages don't weld now.... the get someone else in to do it.

Like most have said, practice makes perfect, I remember practicing on steel petfood cans.

Get in and do it, it will only get better, as long as you watch videos to get an idea of what to look for..

Best advice is preparation is they key, it needs to be clean and close. Anything not will fvck the weld up.. its worth 10 hours prep for a 1 min weld.

Ian M in France said:

Remember the old saying "Grinding and filling make me the welder I am not" has not got to be great as not structural just has to look okay take your time practices on scrap first and all will be okay, get a fire extinguisher just in case and water and sponge for small fires just in case

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I think it's, a grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't.

lynall said:

I think it's, a grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't.

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I knew it was something like that

lynall said:

I think it's, a grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't.

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Ian M in France said:

I knew it was something like that

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you both need to keep up, I said that in my first post on this thread