Looking good!
I like the home made wooden rotisserie... may copy that some day.
Looking good!
I like the home made wooden rotisserie... may copy that some day.
Chappers said:Would you rather me update the thread real-time, or save up a bunch of content and update in one go?
I will start going into withdrawal real quick if you don't post again soon. Please keep them coming!
The spot welder was only $160 from Harbor Freight and its already paid for itself.
I made a start getting the quarter panel on.
Before that I had access to spot weld the closing panel on.
*I made a small mistake here, that I have to rectify when I get to putting in the companion bins.*
Then lined up the panel with a million clamps until I was happy, then tack welded the front edge. And spot welded all the seams.
Then Ill leave the welds to cool, and tack weld again, over and over until its fully seam welded.
Welded the front edge of the quarter panel and dressed the weld down.
There are a few spots that ended up not perfectly smooth. But I'll end up skimming it lightly with filler.
This upper b post area turned out better than I hoped it would.
Got the arch to boot floor stiffener bracket welded on tonight.
Yesterday I bolted it on to the floor with M10 bolts to align it.
But the flanges didn't sit on the arch, they were about 1/4 away.
So I improvised with my long jaw clamps and a bit of square section tubing and managed to clamp it up tighter.
Marked up where the bracket now sits, sanded the e coat off and coated the area with weld thru primer.
Drilled some holes for plug welding and painted the bracket with weld thru primer too.
Left it to dry over night and tonight I clamped it up.
And plug welded it on.
I need to grind down the welds tomorrow.
Today I also placed another order with Mini spares for both inner wings/flitch panels, mk1 companion bins and the scuttle repair ends.
That will hopefully mean I have all the panels I need to be able to get the floor all welded up, seam sealed, stone chipped and painted and then off the rotisserie.
I've ran out of money to spend on parts for the project for now (until I get more Patents granted), but I've got plenty to do with what parts I've got.
I've set myself an initial target of mid May to get it off the rotisserie, so we'll see.
I did a bit in the garage tonight.
Relocated the extra bracing in the boot from the left side to the right side.
Here's the right side arch that will be chopped out.
And the right side quarter panel.
Drilled out the spot welds here
Cut along the lip on the quarter panel
Removed the arch
A little bit of hidden rust on the rear bulkhead to arch flange. Easily removed with a paint stripping disc.
Offered up the new arch.
Fits very well all clamped up.
So it gets marked up where it meets the boot floor and the rear bulkhead, then paint stripper disc used to remove the paint where they are going to be welded and zinc weld thru primer applied.
And left to dry overnight.
So while that was drying I had a look at tidying up some previous plug welds.
The left side boot to arch bracket.
Even though its hidden behind a fuel tank, I ground down the welds to make it look neat.
And sprayed some etch primer on to protect the bare metal.
While I was painting, I put some on the quarter panel seams where it was spot welded
In reply to Chappers :
Really well done! This is awesome.
This is awesome stuff. Please keep it coming!
Love the rotisserie! I would add a couple of U bolts to prevent the pipe from falling off if you're really pushing on the car. I'd hate to see it fall off and set your work back. Unless I,m missing something. I am looking on my phone. Love the project too! Great work!
Wow...great job on this little car. Should be around for a good long time after this rebuild. I did a similar project wtih a bugeye where I held the key in the general area of where it should be and built a car around it.
This picture caught my eye
Had this been structural steel, I would not have given it a second thought, but for thin steel, I use the trigger pulse method of MIG welding panels. This is obviously more like what I would do with a continuous bead on structural. It's not TIG and I see where you like to weld plenty hot. Care to educate us a bit on your process?
Pete
Amazing effort! I'm really impressed!
Almost, but not quite "ship of Theseus". Please take that as a sincere compliment to your efforts and skills.
I agree that you have most certainly earned the right to power this build in any manner you desire.
Looking forward to more installments!
In reply to NOHOME :
All I know is he's running flux-core in his MIG. Really clean welds for having no gas!
In reply to PMRacing :
That's a good idea! I did originally want to add metal straps over the ends of the wooden uprights to hold the pole in place, but with the weight of the shell and the V groove in the wood it really doesn't go anywhere. I have a steel disc on one end that I use to pin the rotation, that stops any for and aft movement on the spit.
When the shell comes off in May, I'll disassemble the whole rotisserie and someone else can have it, if they are willing to collect.
In reply to NOHOME :
This is the heel board to boot floor T joint, what i didnt make clear was that it is usually spot welded only (I plug welded). 
I just chose to add a few additional stitch welds (not necessary) and which will be seam sealed over anyway.
Belts and Braces approach, haha.
In reply to Floating Doc :
Thanks!
I think technically I'm doing a reshell/clone really, but I cant afford the brand new body shell, so I'm just doing it in installments. HA!
Maybe 50% new panels. I dunno.
maschinenbau said:In reply to NOHOME :
All I know is he's running flux-core in his MIG. Really clean welds for having no gas!
OK, then I have to eat some crow. My message to anyone listening has been that gassless flux core is useless for automotive welding.
There IS such a thing as gas shielded flux core wire, and it is made for thin gauge welding. gas-shielded, flux-cored wires, Lincoln sells Outershield®, and UltraCore® as examples of this wire for this process.
Any chance this is what we are seeing?
Pete
In reply to maschinenbau :
Actually I'm using 0.6 mild steel wire (welding 18-20 gauge sheet metal) and 75/25 gas, 80CF size bottle. Welder is a 110V Millermatic 140A.
It was originally set up as Fluxcore when I got it, about the time I built the spit. I bought the welder second hand on eBay and it did come with a 80CF bottle, but FedEx would not ship the bottle to me, so the previous owner kept it instead, grrr.
I converted it to gas when I was building the truck and I wanted nicer welds.
Last night I got the right had side rear wheel arch welded in.
Here's my hard working HF spot welder ready to go. It's pretty heavy and I dropped it from about 5 foot high the other day. I was welding something sort of shoulder height and my arms got tired and it slipped out of my hands. It landed on its side right on its power cord and severed right through it! Breaker didn't trip, I just ended up shortening the power cord and rewiring the plug. Tested it and it still works like a charm - Highly recommend this welder.
See, I even do some durability/destructive testing for you guys! 
Spot welded up.
The boot floor with its new wheel arches.
Then I repeated the bracket on the other side. Bolted into the subframe mounts, clamped into position and outline marked up.
Lightened it because this is going to be a race car....
Cleaned up the surfaces with a wee little paint stripper stripper disc on the die grinder, very effective. I got them from, yes you guessed it, Harbor Freight. Although about 1 in 5 discs is a duff and instantly breaks and flies off some where in the garage. (I'm just like, weee, there goes a dollar)
Both the bracket and the boot floor get the E coat stripped off and zinc primed.
While I had the zinc primer out I slapped some on the boot floor underside seam where the valance panel is going to go.
As one of the next jobs is the attach the valance panel.
Which I got second hand, for free! But it isn't a very good stamping TBH, it had very thin black paint coating on it so it had some surface corrosion coming through.
I stripped the paint off the underside and got a couple of coats of primer on it.
I'll spot weld this on tonight and it will explain why I had to paint it before hand.
NOHOME said:My message to anyone listening has been that gassless flux core is useless for automotive welding.
Why?
Crackers said:NOHOME said:My message to anyone listening has been that gassless flux core is useless for automotive welding.Why?
Because of the way I weld tin. I do a series of dots where the trigger is released after each dot is created and then a next dot is half laid over the first one.
Flux core leaves a residue of flux after the bead cools. Since you can not weld on top of flux, ( or can you?) you would need to chip the flux off after each tack. The option would be to do a continuous bead as if doing structural steel. I can't do that with the MIG without burning through.
Chappers shows a stich weld that does not look like it uses the trigger pulse technique that I use and I was curious how he managed to do a continuous bead on tin. Always looking to learn new stuff.
Oh. No, you can. That's how I've been doing all the welding on my wagon.
Ideally yeah, you'd brush between passes (or tacks) but in this scenario you're hot enough relative to the base material the old flux burns off right away.
However, I do brush right before the last tack where you join two beads together. (At least, I do when appearance counts.)
If you're hot enough, it's not nearly as fussy as people like you to believe.
Amusingly, the first time I ever used a FC machine was in the auto body shop at my trade school. It was all they used. LOL
Up until that time I was under the same impression that FC wasn't really a desirable process.
As far as solid beads on tin, I wouldn't do it on a tee joint (unless I was ok with distortion) but on a butt joint or corner joint where I have hammer/dolly access it's faster for me to warp it and straighten it back out than to make a hundred tacks while wearing out the contacts in my trigger.
In reply to NOHOME :
Ah I know what you’re talking about now.
I used the pulse technique. Wire speed on 7 and power on 5 on my 140A Miller.
For my plug welds I turn power up to 7.
Yesterday I finished work a little earlier, got home and everyone was out, so I managed to do quite a bit.
First thing was to weld on the stiffener bracket in the boot. The zinc primer was applied yesterday.
Ground down the welds.
Then I could start on the valance panel. As I can't properly paint behind the valance once its welded on, and its impossible once the closing panels are welded on, I pre-painted the inside of the valance. (silver paint is all i had to hand)
This seam is masked off and then painted with zinc for welding.
I bolted the closing brackets to the boot floor
Then attached the valance panel, by bolting it on through the rear bumper mounting points.
This isn't a Heritage panel, so I was expecting a fight to get it to fit right, but it ended up fitting nicely. I pulled it a little here and there to get the ends to line up nice with the rest of the body seams.
Pleased with the fit, I did as many spot welds as my hand could muster, and my forearm felt like it would drop off.
Once I did that, I could then mark up where the closing panels sat, their mating faces to be taken to bare metal and zinc primed.
Then I seam sealed the valance to boot floor joint, as I won't be able to get in there when the closing panels are welded on.
Here where the spare wheel well is makes it tight. Which is the main reason I painted the back side of the valance.
I couldn't get the tube/gun in so I applied the seam sealer with a long flat blade screwdriver, not as neat but its better than nothing.
Threw some zinc primer on the closing panels and the boot floor.
Here's the way I like to take the E coat or paint off. These little twist lock surface conditioning discs for the die grinder.
I'm actually about to head out to the garage to weld these panels on and then I think the back end panel work will be done! Just tidy up of the welds here and there.
Hopefully the next installment of panels will arrive soon and I will be moving on to the front end.
I'm really jealous of you guys and your ability to buy replacement panels. Not that I want to pay for them. 
What is that primer you're using? I'm guessing it's a brush on, right?
I buy knockoff Scotchbrite Rolocs off Amazon for <$0.50/ea. Work well for me, and I've gone through dozens with zero failures. I'll get a link for you if you want.
In reply to Crackers :
Ha yeah! I’ve spent over $3k on panels so far, 10x what I paid for the car. But i’m trying to do it right first time.
What are you building Crackers?
Primer is Transtar weld thru primer, it comes in a spray can, but it’s so thick it immediately clogs the nozzle. So I pierce the can, let the propellant vent outside, decant into a jar and then paint it on with a brush instead.
Yeah please send me that link. I’ve been buying 50piece packs of roloc sanding discs. But just recently tried the conditioning discs for removing paint.
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