1986 Toyota MR2 - We’ve got a damn great hump...

i don't even grind my welds, anarchist

Hmmm HoTWire has been playing with the swearword filter it seems

curse word

Bah, only some of them. I should send him a list of Scottish greetings and see what he can do with them...

So whats missing on the template then?

I need to show you my new tool. You aren’t going to believe this, it’s just so cool!

Anyway… The template is missing the bit that curves round to form the seam of spot welds in the wheel arch.

Here’s a drawing of a section through the inner and outer arch as it should be…





So why is it built like that? Well as far as I can work out it’s just to create a seam to run the spot weld machine around. It probably adds a little stiffness too. The down side is that it creates a double skin that lets water in and rusts, blowing the arch apart.

For a portion of my arch the inner is missing anyway. So why put it back and create myself the problems that caused it to rust away in the first place? Why not just seam weld it to the outer arch where the two meet up?





Like so.
Ok so it’ll burn the paint on the face of the panel when I weld it but, so what?
We’ll I think it’s a good idea so here goes!





Before we move on, here’s another photo showing the overlapping pile of ironmongery behind the rear wheel.





The new bit got trimmed so it meets the outer wing and is a slight overlap on the existing inner wing.






Now, that new tool. You’re not going to believe this, it’s so brilliant.

You know how it is when you are welding… You need to push the panels together while you tack them together. Even if they were perfect before, the heat moves them occasionally.
So you hold them together with a screwdriver. Then, in your other hand you have the welding torch. But now you have run out of hands… How are you going to rub your chin in a contemplative manner? Or scratch your bum. Or, most importantly, extinguish the fizzing ear wax when a bit of splatter drops down your lug ‘ole.
It’s a serious problem. What you really need is some sort of tool where you push the panels together and then let go of it and it all stays exactly where you positioned it. No messing about. You press with the tool and let go and the tool and everything stays where it should be.

Well I have one.

No really.

Here it is in this photo…





It just looks like an ordinary screwdriver with a red handle except, look, I’m not having to hold it. It’s just sitting in free space holding the panels exactly where I want them.
Astonishing isn’t it!? And what do you think I paid for this minor miracle of automotive engineering?


Eh, what?
You don’t believe me?
Why ever not? Would I tell you fibs?

Oh fair enough. You are right to be doubtful. I accidentally welded the screwdriver to the car. Hmmph.





Probably ruined a good screwdriver…

James

Many years ago, I was buying an old stick set off a mate of mine. I knew it worked, but he insisted on demonstrating it to me. Piece of scrap in the vice, sizzle, sizzle and produced a lovely weld.

Unfortunately, he hadn't put his specs on first, so welded diagonally across one jaw, over the scrap and neatly over the other jaw, thus beautifully making it all of a piece.

"Fancy a straight swap for a grinder?"

Having cut my good screwdriver off the car I welded the patch to the inner arch. No problems there apart from setting fire to the gloop on the inside of the arch (in the boot) a few times.

Then it started to go properly wrong…
I had a lovely view of where the patch butted up against the outer arch. That is until I put my welding helmet on and found I couldn’t get my head into the arch quite as far. There were parts of the weld path that I couldn’t see at all.

So the only thing I could do was to gaffer tape a small mirror to my work light and weld using that. Ever tried welding in a mirror? Don’t. It’s more or less impossible. Well I can’t do it anyway.





Still had to have my head stuffed in the arch to see what I was doing and had to try and reverse my hand gestures. Which were mostly obscene.

What was moderately obvious, even in the mirror, is that I was getting massive contamination of the weld from somewhere. I assumed it was from stuff running down on the boot side, but I’d cleaned that back, so surely it couldn’t be?

So I backed my head out of the wheel arch to consider the problem. And saw the problem…
There were several strands of welding wire sticking out through the filler on the outside of the wing! Zarking Fardwarks! Sadly I was so taken aback that I forgot to take a snap.


Remember this…



I wasn’t serious but it seems that’s what I was trying to do.

So I took the finger sander to the filler to see what was going on. The wing is a teabag. There were actually little holes under the filler.





I think where I was trying to weld to there was still a wafer thin skin of steel (it cleaned up ok) but as soon as the welder hit it the metal just evaporated leaving the filler to weld to.

Yes, I know. I need to cut it out and do it properly. But I also need to chose my battles and this isn’t one I have time to do just now. I can chase rust around the car until the moo cows come home. I just have to stop somewhere.
Another reason for doing it another day is this. The shape of that part of the car is, essentially, what somebody invented using filler. I’ve no idea how accurate it is. However I have a replacement wing for the other side which has the correct shape. When I get that on the car I can use it as a pattern.

So I apologise unreservedly, but it’s staying for the moment. I welded in the holes from the outside to patch it up.





What of the weld between inner and outer wing? Well, again I didn’t get a photo. Sorry. I think I’d gone from blogging mode to WTF mode and stopped thinking about writing it up. The weld looks awful. Truly horrible. But at least the inner and outer wings are now connected together which is a significant improvement on before.

Lastly I chucked some POR15 on the bits I’d finished with for a bit of protection.





James

And knowing people admit to less than perfect jobs (That'll do - for now) is cathartic for those of us who have OD'ed on perfect threads and have growing insecurity about what they have done !

James

That's a fairly rational solution to the problem given the circumstances.

Somewhere I have one of those hand held mask things which I thought might do the job. And given that I never chuck anything away...
I just can't remember where I stored it.