In theory its a nice easily accessible bit to repair, but the rear mudguard needed a little bit longer than I anticipated. Its quite a rust old bit of metal here and in an ideal world I'd have chopped away much more material to ensure I got to 100% solid metal, but if I start going down that line I might as well chop everything off except the ignition barrel and start from there.
So the material I was welding to, was of variable thickness, which meant being ultra sensitive to how the weld pool was running - I didnt blow too many holes through, but I did lay down a weld much thicker than was necessary - i kind of used the filler rod to take much of the heat as I tickled my way along. Penetration was certainly good!
This area is quite flat and although I tacked and filled strategically, a degree of distortion was inevitable. I panel bashed as much as I could to keep the shape, but I am sure it will look a bit rubbish when painted. Fortunately much of this is behind the number plate and rear light cluster
1 comment:
Looking good. Things are really progressing now.
I had to weld a long strip down the edge of my bonnet sections and I was concerned about distortion. Having set up the two pieces I started tacking, spreading them out at first. After each tack I cooled the a weld so that I didn't get the material progressively hotter. It seemed to work and there was very little distortion. I have to say that I didn't attempt to make the weld continuous as you have. I ended up with a lot of tacks very close together. This was MIG and I had the advantage that I could fill the area.
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