Flat Bed Disco 2 Project - Anderson Connector Finally Fitted.

Plenty of good work there nice to see you cracking on with it

OK, go easy people, some offensive pictures in this thread. In my defense, I'm **** at welding, mainly because I've never done it before. This is my very first attempt at an actual welding job. My previous experience is a couple of minutes attempting to tack a couple of pieces of scrap steel together in a vice.

I've made some brackets from scrap steel and bolted them to the top and bottom front seatbelt mounts then welded in a couple of pieces of 20mm box section to cross brace the body ready for lifting. Pretty it is not but they do the job.

Sorry that may be many things but welding it is not!
Are you trying to use stick or is it gasless mig?

Stick. Perhaps I can claim to have glued the steel together using some blobs of molten metal?

Rather than clamp the 2 pieces to be joined tightly together you need to leave a small penetration gap between the two pieces to aid the flow of the weld.. This can be achieved by putting a small amount of folded wire between the pieces before clamping together. Once you set off with the weld use a small side to side even weaving motion. With a bit of practice you should get an even neat weld where the slag virtually peals itself off without the tapping hammer.

In all seriousness, and I'm not taking the P, but I wouldn't trust that to lift the body, surely you must have someone local who can weld and come along and put a run over the top of each piece

I'd hate to see the body damaged when lifting or perish the thought that it drops on you
Even a half body shell isn't the lightest thing in the world

Welding wise, we all had to start somewhere, but in the early days gaining practice on something non structural is advisable

Anyhow, have a great Christmas and New Year, and if you do decide to lift the Body, don't get near it

Thanks for the tips.
Just to clarify, the brace is just to stop the body flexing when I lift it. IT WILL NOT be used as a lifting point.

DefenderPilot said:

Thanks for the tips.
Just to clarify, the brace is just to stop the body flexing when I lift it. IT WILL NOT be used as a lifting point.

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Ahhh, trust me I read that wrong, but glad to here that, it will probably be ok then

Made the final disconnections between the chassis and body today. Rigged up a lifting frame with the same 40mm box that the bed is made from. So tomorrow I'll be trialling and erroring to find the centre point of the weight and hopefully lifting the body up a bit just to make sure everything is OK. I'm not quite ready to take it off completely as I need to make a frame to sit it on. This will have heavy duty castors fitted to it so I can move the body around.

I'd say I've reached a project milestone. Body succesfully lifted. It only took me two attempts to find the centre of the weight. I had to add another scaffold pole across the top to support the weight though. It was obvious on the first attempt that one wasn't going to be enough.

Nice work Maestro

When does the Shiny Chassis arrive ?

Are you going to collect ?

I cannae imagine the delivery cost to you, would be extortion just to us and we are NW Mainland

The chassis is ready and I'm having it collected by someone local at a cost of £480 sometime in January. Probably the latter half. That's it collected from Richards and delivered to my door. It's the cheapest way I could do it. It would cost me more than that to collect it myself so I'm quite happy. I tried asking some haulage firms for quotes and I was getting ludicrous prices in the region of 1 to 2K.

Yeah them's the sorta delivery quotes I got, and they likely got the same response as you gave.

When the time comes I will take a trailer down and pick mine up, at least 14 months away though, hopefully I might even get 2 years on D15KOE's current chassis, next MOT is end February and will pass that one fine

It's been a busy day. I've made a frame that bolts to the bulkhead and rear body mounts. I'm about 75% through making a trolley that will bolt to the frame. I've welded the trolley and these welds are a tiny bit better than my previous efforts. Still not pretty though. I've pictured a few for critics to judge, though not all. When the trolley is done I'll test all the welds with a lump hammer before committing the weight of the Disco to it.

Some parts have come as well. My castors for the trolley and a new lower steering shaft. It was advertised as being LHD and a fair bit cheaper than others I'd looked at but it looked the same as mine so I thought I'd take a punt. Looks like it'll fit OK. My new set of power steering pipes/hoses arrived today as well but I haven't pictured those as I haven't taken them out of the box yet.

DefenderPilot said:

It's been a busy day. I've made a frame that bolts to the bulkhead and rear body mounts. I'm about 75% through making a trolley that will bolt to the frame. I've welded the trolley and these welds are a tiny bit better than my previous efforts. Still not pretty though. I've pictured a few for critics to judge, though not all. When the trolley is done I'll test all the welds with a lump hammer before committing the weight of the Disco to it.

Some parts have come as well. My castors for the trolley and a new lower steering shaft. It was advertised as being LHD and a fair bit cheaper than others I'd looked at but it looked the same as mine so I thought I'd take a punt. Looks like it'll fit OK. My new set of power steering pipes/hoses arrived today as well but I haven't pictured those as I haven't taken them out of the box yet.

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Like they always say, practise, practise and more practise ... looking good anorl ...

Cheers. I've had some feedback on social media about the welding. It seems I've had the amps too high and I'm going too quick so I'll try lower and slower tomorrow on the remaining welds.

DefenderPilot said:

Cheers. I've had some feedback on social media about the welding. It seems I've had the amps too high and I'm going too quick so I'll try lower and slower tomorrow on the remaining welds.

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Have a look on the tube for some MMA welding tutorials by Lincoln Electric. Very good IMO, and I speak as a welding engineer .... ( retired ).

( MMA = Manual Metal Arc, AKA "stick" ).

Cheers Mr. Disco. I hope I've not upset you too much with gratuitous pics of metal torture. Hopefully todays will be a litle better.

DefenderPilot said:

Cheers Mr. Disco.

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HTH.

DefenderPilot said:

I hope I've not upset you too much with gratuitous pics of metal torture.

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Struth no, no problem at all - we all have to start somewhere! ... and most of us, including me, started where you are now I've taught quite a few people to weld, and very very few just "get it" right from the start...

DefenderPilot said:

Hopefully todays will be a litle better.

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They will! practice makes perfect watch your angles, your current, and your rod length - cut a few in half whilst your muscles learn to steady the holder properly - I.E.:- just tight enough... use both hands if it helps - use a headshield if it helps ( rather than a hand held one ), use the right shade lens for the current ...etc....

I've never had any problems with rod length.