1986 Toyota MR2 - an uncontrollable evacuation of the bowels

It's documented on the internet, now.
You'll be reminded.

One day, when this car finally goes through the car shredder that bit'll come flying out and land in the operators sandwich. "Gordon Bennett!" he'll cry, "Some fool has fixed this one with a bit of milk bottle!"

Now I come to think of it, this is massive technological progress. You couldn't have done that bodge in my dad's day. Milk bottles were made of glass.






Let's do something properly for a change. That hole in the bottom.

When I measured the steel it was somewhere around 1.8mm thick. That's thicker than anything I had in stock so I bought a sheet of 2mm for the job. I'm not worried about making the car a bit heavier. I could just eat a few less chips instead. Or take my shoes off and go commando, that'd knock a few grams off.
First we need a template. (For the hole in the car, not for my trollies.)




Fits pretty well. Shame you can't just weld the cardboard in. So long as I remember to add a bit for the flange that connects it to the car it'll be a good day.
I've done enough tin bashing to know that if I try and fold down the flange in one piece I'll distort the bit I want to keep flat. That would be ok if the metal was thinner cos I could use the shrinker to put it all right again. But 2mm is too thick for the shrinker so it's out with the grinder and cut a load of slits instead.




If I may, I'd like to draw your attention to the hole to the right of where it says 'ME!' It's a very important hole in a very specific place. And it's a modification - indeed, an improvement, over the original Toyota design.

Tap a nice curvy thing into it.




Where I'd drilled the hole I took the flange round the back of it. This is now my shiny new water drain. No more mobile swimming pools here.
It's position lines up with an existing seam which you'll see later.




Then it was back and forth between the car and the garage. Tap the next piece of the flange so it meets the curve of the car nicely, weld it and grind it in the garage, then back to the car to correct the fit of the next section.

Where the gap was wide I clamped a bit of flattened copper water pipe across the back to support the weld pool. I like this new fangled plastic water pipe, I've used quite a lot in the house but I strongly suspect it wouldn't work in this application.




After considerable time and patience I wound up with a repair panel.




Which seems to fit in the hole.




Like a bought one!

In the next episode we'll be dressing up in what looks like a straitjacket. Trying not to drop molten metal down my lug 'oles. And having a first ever attempt at upside down or 'Australian' welding.
Yes it's an old joke and it's not even funny. Interestingly, exactly the same criticism has been levelled at me a few times!

James

Really nice looking work!

When I did mine I made the flange as a separate piece and welded it to the main repair piece.that is a lovely job you made of that. My welding was pants. I'm going to have to grind it back and Reweld it. Keep up the great work!

That's some lovely fabrication work.

You really are getting the hang of this now, aren't you?

And visit a couple of YouTube overhead mig tutorials. Well worth spending time with some scrap practicing and playing with power and feed settings. I still think they use some sort of anti_grav wire, At least working with 2mm should make it a little easier.

For the record, I considered a few ways of fixing this before "doing it properly". I use the phrase slightly tongue in cheek 'cos all the ideas would probably have been fine.

Have some sectional drawings...
What I did was this.




The black bits are the existing car, the red bits are my panel.
So I folded down the seam which is plug and seam welded to the car.

Equally reasonable would be to make the seam as a separate piece and weld it on before fitting the repair panel. Like this...




Both of these have one major problem. The seam still exists.
When the car was made it got dipped in a paint tank and so paint would have run into the seam. The repair can't have paint in the seam though. The paint contaminates the plug welds and the seam weld along the bottom. I can (and do) use weld through primer but that's just going to get burned off by the welding. So, no matter what I do I'm going to have unprotected metal down there.
My best bet is to fill it with cavity wax. Which I will do, just as soon as I buy some!


But what's the seam there for anyway? Surely it's just there so the Toyota spot welding robot could join the panels together? In which case I don't need it and could remove it.




Like this!
Now there is no seam to rust. Happy days.
But then I got to wondering how much strength is added by that fold. (Probably quite a lot.) And is that strength is actually needed? (No way of knowing.) Quite apart from which I wouldn't be surprised if the MOT chap objected.
So as much as I'd like to delete the seam I'm not sure I can.

So, if I was smart I'd have done this.




First weld in the red bits. That effectively closes in the top of the seam so water can't get trapped in it. Then add the flange in a separate pass (the blue bits). Now all the strength is there and water can't get in the seam.
The problem is that it means a lot more "Australian" welding and I don't know if I can actually do that yet.

I played it safe and put it back as Toyota designed it.

So, I hear you ask, how did all this tricky welding go?
Start with breakfast.




And then my new wardrobe.




Having read lots of stuff about people having hot sparky bits in their ears and down their shirt I figured this wasn't for me. If you wish to call me a 'big girls blouse' you go right ahead. I have no problem with that. I did know that I stood no chance of doing a decent weld upside down if I was scared so I bought some proper clothing. At least then if I made a balls of it I had only myself to blame.

What we have is a new pair of gloves, my old ones have holes in them. A welders leather shirt with velcro down the front to keep the evil hot bits out. And the red thing is a hood to stop things bouncing off the floor and into my ears.




Tidy!
It is, I think, a particularly sexy look and could be on the cat walks this autumn. Mrs sweetpea, on the other hand couldn't stop laughing and needed a few goes to get a sharp photo.

To work!
I had thrown some POR15 around inside the box while I had a big hole in it. Before welding I cleaned the edges and bottom of the hole but the inside is inaccessible with the powerfile so the paint was up to the edge. I was expecting this to contaminate the weld a bit and it did. So the first pass was ground back and a second pass bridged over the top to get a decent weld.




This is just after the second pass.
I did find that I needed to turn up the wire speed a fair bit to stop the wire melting and dripping back into the torch.

Next was to plug weld where the spot welds were and grind them back.




Lastly I needed to seam weld along the bottom to keep my MOT man happy.




Everything got ground off to tidy it up. Upside down welds don't sit down into the panel like they do if you are working top down so the welds are quite proud. (I assume this is normal.) While I didn't have to grind it back (it's not exactly on show) I felt the need to do it anyway. I want the car to look like it hasn't really been touched. Not to concours standards, I don't have the skill for that, but by taking the top off the welds they will hide behind the underseal.

By the way, you can see the drain hole in that photo.

And lastly some paint.




Right. What's next?

James

i think i have the same welder a clarke 151, i'm trying to weld 1.2mm steel and can lay a nice tidy weld with good penetration on sheet steel but i'm struggling with butt welds can i just ask what settings you are using.
i'm using 0.6 wire and the welder is on min, power level 2 and wire speed 6 and it either looks like bird curse word or i'm burning holes ,maybe i just need to practice more...lol

thanks for the tips, will give it another go in the morning i need to get the hang of it quickly as i've already chopped a whopping big hole in my sill, it did seem to be stop starting a bit so maybe more wire speed like you say.
you shouldn't be surprised that someone has asked your advise, your panel work and welding skills are top notch if i can get anywhere near what you have been doing i will be very happy....keep up the good work.