Mini ST

Next project - try this bad boy out!

220V Miller spot welder.

Several issues.....

1st, it's heavy as hell, 30 lbs is my guess. Trying to hold it still and clamp down in the right spot, time the weld etc? Fraught with peril! Need to dress the tips before I try it on anything too.

2nd, I'll need to wire up the appropriate plug, I do have a circuit available and a long extension cord.

Lastly, learn how to use it to get good welds.....I guess I have enough scrap metal around to practice on before I attack the Mini body. Probably should have used it on that back panel for both the side seams and the flange at the bottom, but I know how to weld with the mig, so I thought in the interest of getting it done I should just use what I know.

We'll see......
 

Had to go buy an end for the extension cable, but Home Depot had one. So I gave it a try.....

After welding these two together I could not drive them apart without tearing the metal, so it seems to work. I only gave it about 1 second of power too. I tried it a couple times for maybe 1 1/2 second but it made a lot of sparks like you see in the movies.....using 1 sec it didn't.

I'm not sure where I can use it at this point, maybe at the top edge of the side of the floor panels where they meet the door step....wish I had tried it earlier, it would have worked great on that back panel!
 

I wish I had one of those for about half of the welding I've done.  The bottoms of sills, in particular, but welding door posts and other various flanges.

Been working/thinking/planning on the q panel work, first I had to cut another 2" of metal out above where the patch will go as it's too rusty to weld to. Then I'm trying to figure out how/where to cut to lay in the new piece, plus I think I'm going to have to remove the A panel as the door step fits behind it - maybe I can just cut the weld at the bottom and slip it in behind the A panel.....these things are never straightforward!

Next I cut a patch and formed the edge using my flange tool, this way the patch sits flush with the panel it adjoins and I don't have to butt weld the two together.

I was hoping to use the spot welder but I can't get the tongs inside this area square to the metal.....so I'll have to do as I have on the other panels and plug weld it. To that end I punched a bunch of holes in the outer panel and will weld thru to the patch.

Before I weld anything I need to make sure I've done everything that's inside of this area as I won't be able to reach it once things are welded up.

So I cut out the door step and now I'm trying to figure out what sequence to do the repairs.....I'm also trying to decide if it's a better strategy to remove the entire floor panel or only the parts towards the outside that are really rusted. It would be nice to have complete clean non rusty floors but I can't decide if the outcome is worth the extra effort as the panels I have won't do the entire floor, I will have to patch in a few of the missing pieces. 

When I did the back panel, it was only after I had removed the old one that I found I could have bought a repair panel for just the bottom couple of inches - that would have been FAR less work than changing the whole panel and I'm pretty sure the results would have been just as good, maybe better.

Like Binky, I could have bought an entire new floor and welded it all in one piece, but when the car was sold to me I was told the floors and sills were ok......and they might have been when he first started on the car 8 years before I bought it, who knows (but I doubt it!)

My project is continuing, slowly......in the meantime my buddy Don and I trekked south about an hour from KC to the private Hedge Hollow race track to watch some friends run their vintage American cars. My buddy says this track is one of the fastest he's ever raced on but it's completely miserable for spectating. The track was never intended to be open to the public, so there are no access roads or spectator areas.....he may add those as he's now running NASA race weekends as well as lot of club dates for the Mustang, Corvette, BMW and Porsche club events. Right now the only place you can watch from is on the balcony in front of the garages, and all you can see from there is the banked turn one and the short front straightaway. Too many trees in the way for the rest of the track.

We also had a huge storm blow thru which did some major damage to the trees in my neighborhood. Spent a day helping neighbors clean up the mess.....most all the trees in my 'hood are 50-60 years old or more and are pretty huge - even the branches are a foot or more in diameter. Gave me a chance to fire up the chainsaw which hadn't been used in several years. Some fresh gas, a quick sharpen of the chain and some bar oil and it was good to go.

I've also been helping a couple of guys with their new classics. One fellow has now rebuilt his engine, transmichigan, whole front end and brakes all around. He also added a Weber carb and has been trying to get it tuned out properly. He's almost there with the carb and we have an appointment in 10 days to go to the dyno to get it finally sorted, in the meantime he's been adding break in miles as quickly as he can. The second car is a recent BaT pruchase and it's a really nice car with just a few needs.....it's a Canadian 998 with drum brakes, some terrible oil leaks and a non op clutch. He's ordered a 4 pot brake kit and we'll see about the rest when it gets here.

On my hot rod, I've added a 1/4" spacer at the front attachment point of the rear subframe, to move the wheels back into the centers of the wheel openings, they were a bit too far forward to my taste. That required redoing all the other attachment points and remeasuring for length the replacement floor parts.

I've also been practicing with my bender tool, and made a filler panel for the floor where the companion bins sit - the new floors had a cutout in the shape of the companion bins.....next up  - more welding!

More work on the Mini Hot rod, I needed to remove the sound deadening (like dynamat) that was really stuck down on the floor. I had tried to use my heat gun and that did work, but it left a layer of black bitumin that was difficult to scrape off. I need to get it off so I can see what the floor looks like especially next to the tunnel - whether there are any spots rusted thru, and sure enough there was one on the passenger side. I'm trying to decide whether to replace the entire floor pan or just patch the bad spots.....I'm leaning towards replacing the whole panel as I don't think it will be any more welding involved than in replacing the long edge by the sills and the same on the inside near the tunnel.

So, today I tried ye olde dry ice trick and I have to say it worked pretty well. It evaporated before I got all of it off, so I will have to go buy another bag - another $12 worth. The stuff I got from our local grocery store was in small bits, rather than the one big chunk like I used to buy, so that def made it easier, however I haven't figured out how to do the tunnel as it won't stay in place. I thought of using a thin grocery store plastic bag and just do a small section at a time....we'll see whether that will transfer enough cold to get it to break loose or not. But.....in one hour's work I got 2/3 of it off, where with the heat gun it would have taken many hours of heating and scraping and it would have left a residue to clean off .

For those who haven't tried this before you simply spread out the dry ice, let it sit a bit, then smack the panel with a dead blow or hard plastic hammer. It pops off, sometimes in pretty good sized chunks. Bottom left section in the first pic shows what I have left to do.

So in order to remove the floor pans and sills, I needed to get the weight off of them first....as it is I had a 2X6 across under the floor and resting on the lift pads. To do that first I needed to remove the subframe, which is now a lot more difficult as I welded in the rear valance....so the subby has to come back to clear the lip of the floor, then it has to go forward to clear the rear brackets thru the notch in the wheel wells, then down and forward till it clears the rear valance then once it's down all the way either raise the lift or take the 4X4's under the back of the subframe off so it will drop low enough to clear - it's a process!

Once the sub was out I needed to figure out a way to lift the body up off of the scissor lift, I built a small bracket that I bolted onto the end of the engine hoist lift arm, the screwed that to a 2X6. The board rests against the double seam at the top of the rear windows and I'm confident it will support the weight of the body. So the next step is to start removing the floors and shore up the ends where the subby attaches and measure thoroughly to make sure it's all square.

I still have a board resting under the floor and on the lift arms just in case the engine hoist decides to come down......more as it happens!

In reply to MiniDave :

On the tunnel, could you build up a wall with modeling clay?  Then pour a thin layer of pellets in.  Move the clay to the next spot.  Could be worth a try.

Could do, I don't have any of that tho. What I do have is plenty of ceral boxes and duct tape!  

You can see in those two pics I've already started creating a sort of wall to keep the pellets in place....just need to round the top over a bit and pour them in. They don't have to sit there long before you can hear the insulation popping off the floor.

So with the car no longer resting on the lift in the back, I can now get on with cutting out the floors and seeing about replacing them.

At Dan's recommendation rather than using the dry ice to get the rest of the insulation off the floors I used my zip gun, it definitely did the job tho loud as hell bouncing off those tin floors! The remaining glue will come up with acetone according to Dan, so I'll pick some up tomorrow and get the rest cleaned up, then I need to mark things out and get cutting.

I'm not going to clean off all the residue, just on the areas that I won't be replacing.

I need to do some careful measuring before I cut anything more, since there's so little metal left holding this thing together I need to make sure it all winds up back where it belongs. I've already identified one place I tacked together that isn't quite right, fortunately it's easy enough to cut thru tacks and reweld it.

It's easy to get discouraged in a big project like this, and I did not anticipate this one would be as big as it is, I was told before I bought the car that the floors and sills were already done. I've found that if you just do one thing every day - even a small thing - eventually it will be done......so I'm trying to foster that attitude.

More as it happens.....

I made a bracket to hold the dimensions and to support the right side, since there's so little metal there now, and will be even less when I cut out the floors. I think before I do that I'll see about designing some reinforcements for that right side to stiffen it up, then when I weld in the step and sill it should be in the right place.