'51 Lanchester LD10, '80 Austin Princess, '88 Austin Maestro

Write up time for part 2 of repairing the rear wheel arch on the passenger side of the Maestro.


If there was a mistake you could make on a job, and a thing that could go wrong, it did. In the previous episode you saw that the welder shat the bed so to resolve this after asking about on the forums it was determined the quickest and easiest solution would be to install a Euro torch. Because I'd got a universal kit, it required a little bit of modification and that's totally to be expected, universal kits are always going to be a compromise and this one came with decent instructions. Had to trim a bit of the screw thread off so it would fit, and trim down the brass wire guide insert first.


Also installed the bicycle brake cable sheath to serve as a replacement wire guide for the one that had melted.


Made sure to install the washers for the torch as instructed and hadn't realised at this point that I'd trimmed the brass guide tube too short. I'd misunderstood the instructions for where the tip of the brass tube would fit and had trimmed it far too short, the main reason for this is that it was thicker than the original guide tube so wouldn't sit nicely in the groove on the clamp next to the wire feed wheel and I second guessed myself.


Unaware of that problem, I carried on and encountered my first proper issue which is that the plastic brace piece doesn't actually fit the front of this welder since it requires a vertical face for the mount and this one doesn't have that. The original brace didn't fit over the Euro torch so I couldn't use that either. I would have to figure something out to pack it with and I did try various options though none really satisfied.


Reassembly was a bit of a pain. I'd had the front panel off the welder to clean it and knock out a puncture wound since it felt the right thing to do given I was installing new parts. Unfortunately that's when I learned there was only just enough wire to reach these switch clamps and every time anything moved a little bit, they pulled out. I got there in the end but it was a... job.


All back together and ready to test. Initially it seemed to work pretty good and then I found out why the length of that brass guide tube was so important. I realigned it so it didn't birds nest inside the welder and gave myself a new problem...


The brass tube was just a tiny bit too short leaving a little gap between the Euro torch and the socket. This meant any time the wire feed wasn't perfect, like when you get a blob of weld on the end of the tip because you're welding in awkward places, the wire just backed up inside the torch. This was very frustrating. To the credit of the welding torch supplier they sent out a new brass tube free of charge which I then trimmed and fitted correctly, resolving this issue.


Now I had a fully working welder again, it was time to remove my composite wheel arch that I definitely hadn't been driving around with or had cleverly hidden in the editing and recording of the Double Trouble video where I compared this Maestro to my friend Pete's far nicer red Maestro.


Experience has taught me to do the least fun looking bit of welding first, so that meant the disappeared bit where the arch joins the sill. The welder was terrible. The trigger kept sticking and the more I welded the worse it got. This meant that it just wouldn't stop feeding wire or gas and trying to control that in a tight space where you want to weld a very specific area meant this was a frustrating lesson in anger management. The welds also ended up looking like absolute poop.


I did dismantle the torch handle to see if it was just a plastic flashing or mould issue, sometimes you can just scrap a mould line off and things are fine. The odd thing was that everything moved perfectly fine, the switch was good and even though I did trim a little off some edges that looked to be chafing the problem persisted. The more you welded the worse it got and I never figured out why.


Oh well, seam sealer to rescue.


Then I found out my next mistake. I'd followed the shape of the filler and rot that was the former inner arch. Rookie error. I had offered the outer arch up at some point in the process and totally missed that it didn't actually line up properly at all, probably because there wasn't really much of anything for reference points. I edited out my reaction to this discovery.


Of course, I'd also cut out the original outer wing to the shape of the repair panel that I'd aligned to the incorrect inner arch. There's another problem because now the hole is bigger than my repair panel. I tacked the repair panel in place to show just how far out I was. More editing required to keep things family friendly.


On the bright side, I hadn't cut through the wiring that goes behind here or set any interior trim on fire or got welder splatter on the glass. You've got to look at the mistakes you didn't make on a day like this. I could have gone out and bought another replacement torch in the original style for the welder or I could use my savings and invest in a really good welder instead. In a rare moment of spending money, I went with the latter.


The next episode goes live tomorrow at 3pm, so watch this space and the Youtube channel for that. I do all this nonsense so you don't have to.