newby, bog, glass or weld

[robertbruce]

here's a pic of my beast, it loves mud and 4 wheeling...





Originally i was just going to patch it with glass, but then i got to the bit below. The piece under the skin isnt channel TG, it's an L section. Behind the L and into the hole one can see the forward section of the upper floor.
I realised how much damage bog or glass would cause here so "Project, I say, weld" was born. I need the skill with a vehicle like this...
The tiny bit on the left going into the door jamb seal is the main worry.



Today i am off to get the new mig.... I've tried to buy some second hand. Oone was on ebay and two on gumtree but the owners wern't that negotiable... A second hand one would have only saved me about $100 but at least with a new one I dont have to fix the machine first...

The biggest problem now is finding some panel for the patch.. That lower sill you see on the drivers (your passenger side). Because there is no passenger door on my passenger there is no channel or sill there, it is just a piece of panel... so im going to cut my patch from there and replace it with a plastic grill or make an airintake out of the space...

The ultimate job for this welder will be fixing long narrow windows in the upper roof section... I recon this bus with side windows in the sides of the roof will look fantastic...

There is no doubt I will be using the mig for dry welding... Yep, check my tip, read the manual throughly, learn my guages, steels and have a through understanding of the controll on the mig - yep, a shedload of stuff to do but it will me worth it...

Thanks for the tip on the flanging pliers, i only discovered the "flanging" aspect last night... found out about dremmells too

many thanks for the support of these posts, jumping off a cliff is always hard the first time...

[robertbruce]

Is there a common houshold product i can clean steel sufficiently for some practice welding? none of the stores close have any sort of metal cleaner...
OK, i bought the SuperCheap MIG this morning, $499 down to $299, a massive $200 saving...yep, cheap unit, but just have to treat it delicately
i even got them to throw in one of those fat poly style sanding pads, 5 .6 flux tips and some little shaping stones that i am going to try to use with my drill rather than a tremmel....

I am feeling very satisfied that I have choosen to weld over bog or glass
I have a huge amount of work ahead of me and are revvelling to get started..

[robertbruce]

just a quick question about loading wire...
the instructions say lead the wire from the bottom of the spool to the feed rollers. It says it twice.
But the picture in the intrructions has the roll of wire above the feed rollers so leading the wire from the bottom of the roll is correct...

However in the machine the spool is below the rollers and leading it from the bottom curves it up pretty dramatically to the feed rollers...

Should i try swinging it around the other way??

[1970 Hi-Boy]

The ones in America feed off of the bottom of the roll, so would it be off the top in Australia?(bit of humor) Seriously though, it should be feeding in fairly straight path to the rollers and into the gun, barring slight discrepancy for the amount of wire left on the spool, so a large spool may take a while to get straight as it is used up.

[robertbruce]

bloomin' chinese....

i had a lot of fun yesterday mangling a piece of 1mm plate steel and playing with the thing...

today ill find a bit of steel more like car panel. imm plated steel gasless is messy, but i did manage to cut a corner off and weld it back on, well, more like mess it back on....

later in the week ill get some gas, am hanging for a fluxless puddle

[robertbruce]

heya' HB'

im a good ten days away from patching this and it has been 10 days exposed,

it started raining again...

what can i cover it with to slow down any rust, in particular the internal?

[1970 Hi-Boy]

Not sure what rust products ya have down there, keep it dry best ya can.

[robertbruce]

yeeeEHaaa... got some gas today

what a huge difference it makes...

with flux, try as i might, i could not a decent pool, bead or penetration on 1mm steel...

with gas, by the fouth short weld i was piling it in there, had beautiful penetration and wanna' work allnight now...

& now i am starting to feel the shortcoming of a cheapie machine...

[Ranchero50]

Patience and preparation are the key to good welding. Miller's site has a lot of excellent info on welding techniques.

What kind of machine did you end up with?

[robertbruce]

heya' Rancho,

the welder i got from a chain of stores here in Australia called SuperCheap. They have there own homebrand called SCA.... It's a 140AMP G/NG MIG...

For a cheapie It performs ok i guess. its got a lousy earth clamp, non-interchangeable handle, handle activated air line, a plastic roller wheel retaining clip, the carry handle is very weak and it makes funny noises...oh, it took me an hour to fit the tiny tiny C clips that hold the weak plastic wheels on...
For $299 i suppose it isnt tooo bad, the next price up was 570 and a brand-name doenst make the cut untill the 600's... i've really only got it to do this job then i will be selling it...
The problem buying a device like this is you have to go to the top brand-name, top dollar to get quality and i gues that would be around 2K... I went through the same process buying a generator. I was traveling full time for two years. I bought 2 cheapies then splurged $1500 for a EF100is Yamaha. The first batch's of these into Aus wernt predelivered properly. Some wax meant to clog the fuel lines for shipping wasn't cleared and this created all sorts of problems with thier carby.
After the carby issue that quality generator gave me no problems for almost the equivalent of 700000 Kilometers. I did do a complete strip down to the crank at 300K's to decoke it..

this welder wont punch thru 2mm plate quick without flux but it does lay a bead on a coke can nicely...
Today was my forth session welding, the first two where flux....I think i coming along OK....

Went out today to scavenge some panel ... i didnt think of finding pieces with the same curves i need untill i got home, but i was lucky and got one by chance that has some of the nice curves i need

So tommorrow i start the panel-beating part of this project, arnt the 34 people that live in the units around me going to love that....worse thing is the easist job is going to take the longest time to do...
yep, it's all about preparation and not rushing...

[Ranchero50]

Well, remember that it's easier to beat the inside of a curve vs. the outside. Pound into a stack of shop towels or a tight leather beanbag and be patient while doig the work.

[WoodhouseTruckShop]

I didnt read the whole thread like all of the posts. I did seee one however that said something about piling up the weld in the hole. what hole is pretty big to be doing that and I have tried it before and when I go to grind down the weld to make it look pretty it usually doesnt penetrate that hard to the other metal (the rustypart where the hole was). With that said I would reccomend patching in new metal and doing it that way. Hope it works for ya!

[robertbruce]

28 days after opening this thread I welded my first patch. It took a little longer than expected. The result on the patch wasn't too bad, much easier than glass or bog.


Not every day was welding. Many days were spent setting up and modding a workshop on my verandah. I had to build a workbench and shelf but i didnt use any welding on these items - it would have taken longer.

I tried flux wire for 14days. Not that I regret my efforts with the flux, it has a much easier entry level and many other advantages but it is totally unsuitable for thin steel.

The patch worked out well. It was the inner side of my side door. Penetration was good 95% the way round', copped one burn-thru and a tiny amount of haz which nicely compliments the dent higher up. The whole door could do a refurbish later down the track. The work is good enough for the area at this time.

I also learnt there is a big difference between welding two beautifully prepared pieces of modern steel on the workbench and the old steel panel on my old vehicle.

The floor has some glass or POR treatment in it. It peeled away, splitting in a layer of some sort of rot or rust. I notice the areas 20mm out from the glass also corroding at a greater rate than another 20mm out, it's like there is some sort of inductive reaction near the glass patch roting the steel...

All in all welding is much easier and more permanent than other forms of repair. It rains a lot where i live, there isnt any way glass or POR would correctly cure.

ill post some pics after i sort my routers
much thanks to all for help

[robertbruce]

Penetration side - 1 from 3 :ashamed:




what a difference 0.3 of a gap makes.... i like my penetrations here





messy fat runs with gummy arm and fckd neck

[robertbruce]

54 days after thread open i;ve welded, prepped and painted the front left door, door-jamb and one side of the nose - and i had never welded nor painted before.

Inspite of using a tiny tiny amount of bog to skim a straight surface and I say inspite because I had a some fatansy about been able to paint straight over the steel but it's just too thin to fully work, I am very pleased with myself, i have learnt heaps...

many thanks to forum for encouragement to continue....

plus.... after those paint repairs, it now goes faster...hehehe