1986 Toyota MR2 - an uncontrollable evacuation of the bowels

I shall have to ask either Snap-On or the Mac man next week if they do drill bits for square holes

Nice looking bit of progress tho sweetpea

(And I'm helping add to your 2M views )

Try Googling 'QMax cutter' for square holes, like in the pic above.

Thats how mine were done when my sills were replaced, the old inserts were reused as they were OK. Your method should work just as well (use stainless bolts)

Galling can be a problem, but use of a proper stainless thread lubricant should prevent it.
If you use mild steel bolts with stainless nuts, you won't get them off in a year or so's time, you'll get galvanic corrosion and the bolts will come of worst. Had deal with these kind of things many times offshore, water/humidity makes it worse, the side skirts are a good place for moisture.

I agree completely! Although I'm not totally sure who I'm agreeing with or on what topics.

Anyway, yes, galling is a problem. I usually have a problem if I use a stainless bolt to hold the stainless nut to the panel while I weld it on. That appears to be a bad plan so I generally use a mild bolt these days. Another reason for that is that I recovered some mild bolts from something or another that have a slight taper on the seat side (like a wheel nut but not as sharp an angle) that centralises the nut in the hole which is dead handy.

On assembly I use a stainless bolt but use a load of grease on the threads. So far it's worked ok. Oh and I'm only using them for holding trim and stuff on 'cos I understand stainless bolts are more brittle. So nothing structural. I probably should look that up though.

I did wonder for a long time if welding stainless fasteners to the car was a good idea. It's kind of like using zinc anodes on your boat but the other way round so I promote rust in the car. I could come back in 5 years and find all the stainless nuts are welded to nothing. But then I thought that it's an 80's Toyota so it's probably going to do that anyway.

PS, when I say 'bolt' I probably mean 'set screw' if I'm being picky.

James

Probably a two-fold effect.

The weld bead shrinks the nut out of round meaning thread force goes up. Contact force is a key factor of galling.

The weld heat Probably affects the temper on the bolt softening it. Assuming bolts will be harder than the nut normally.

If you don't have enough difference in hardness between sliding pieces of stainless they gall.

In terms of will welding a stainless nut onto mild steel cause it to corrode at the join yes, if it gets wet. It's not likely to be a significant issue if its suitably painted. Although if they do get wet it'll likely corrode in the crevis between the nut and panel. But so will mild on mild.

Mr2 is looking great.

No. Because…

The B pillar doesn’t fit either. But this is a bit more complicated so pay attention, I’ll be asking questions later. Probably along the lines of “What was I thinking?”

The B pillar in this area is made of an inner and outer skin (green arrows) and a centre strengthening piece (blue arrow). As I write this I’m not actually sure how far up the b pillar the strengthener goes but given the top seatbelt mount is in there somewhere it’s likely to be a fair way.





The centre strengthener is the problem. It runs down to the floor doubling up the door striker plate so probably adds a fair bit of strength to the B post.
It’s this bottom of it - green arrow in the photo below.





Just at the moment the strengthener on the car is too long and lying over the bit on the new wing.

An original replacement wing panel goes all the way to the roof on the B and C pillars (including this strengthener). If you bent the wing they’d normally cut it at the bottom of the glass and join it there. You wouldn’t bother unpicking the B and C pillars if you didn’t have to. The other advantage is that you can hide the joins behind trim panels. On the B pillar the weld is hidden behind the door rubbers and glass trim and on the C pillar it’s behind a plastic vent panel so you wouldn’t even have to fill it if you didn’t want to.

But that leaves a problem reconnecting the inner strengthener which is not accessible from either side. So what did they do?
Looking at the old photos I have of the replacement wing I strongly suspect that they didn’t bother. They just seam welded the outer and used a few handy spot welds but, largely, I suspect the inner strengthener wasn’t reconnected.

Well that’s no good. And I have two problems. Firstly that I want it connected and there is no access and secondly that the old and new bits are interfering with each other and stopping the panel sitting flat.
What to do???


Well, after a bit of careful measuring I chopped the protruding bit off the car so that it can be welded to the wing roughly here.





Notice how it protrudes above the top of the wing a little? Well, cleverly (See note 1), I’ve cut the door pillar too high (the red line in that first picture shows roughly where the top of the new wing is) leaving me a 15 to 20mm gap in the panel to weld the inner structure together. I’ve also kept the bit I need to fill the outer panel.
There is no real way to clamp this bit to the wing in the right place so there was just some careful measurement and weld it in.





Too late now. Let’s hope it’s in the right place.



Note 1…
It’ll be a clever plans if -

1, I’ve welded that bit in exactly the right place so it exactly meets where I cut it off the car.
2, The bit of outer skin I kept actually fits in the hole and seamlessly bridges the wing to the car.
3, The God of car bodgery is smiling upon my pathetic soul.

Otherwise it’ll be a dumb plan.



As normal I ran out of weather and didn’t have enough time to make it worth putting the tent up. So I sorted out another little problem.

The spray gun can’t be put down. You have to hang it from somewhere. In my tent or outdoors there isn’t a somewhere to hang it from. I have the wreckage of an old metal bed though. I can make something.





There, I’ve made a somewhere.
Better yet, when I don’t need it I can take it to pieces.





Or I could make a different top and use it as a stand for something else.

The world is your shellfish when you can just about use a welder and don’t throw things away.

James

There speaks the voice of experience! You are not wrong. It's made worse but the fact that the hose is heavy. Flexible but heavy. It's also the one that comes from the garage so moving the bits to the other end isn't really an option.

I have a lightweight coiled hose I could use as a fly pipe but they are really annoying on the air tools so no doubt it would also be annoying on the gun. And I also have a lighter length of hose which I'll likely use in future. The only problem is that it's knackered and keeps leaking. Need a new light weight hose.

A nice flexible air hose that is ultra soft and not too heavy is the Sealey Hybrid range.

www.sealey.co.uk/product/5637174687/10m-x-o10mm-high-visibility-hybrid-air-hose-with-14bsp-unions
www.sealey.co.uk/product/5637174686/10m-x-o8mm-high-visibility-hybrid-air-hose-with-14bsp-unions