The lower corner of my right hand front wing had rusted away. The bolt that goes into the centre front (radiator support) panel was rusted solid so I just ripped it out when I pulled the car to bits.
[Take no prisoners]
Now it is time to fix the rust and the additional damage I made.
The direction I chose today isn't a particularly easy route. I decided to weld on the corner of a bend that was partly there. This can go seriously wrong - so I thought I'd show the method I used to keep everything together.
Please note - an excessive amount of filler rod was used in this repair! An excessive amount of filler rod in structural welding is, more often than not, considered to be an undesirable form of welding. Filling in holes with shed loads of filler material on structural parts is not a good plan. This is just a corner of a thin metal body panel. In this case I'm not especially worried about the properties of the steel I add to the mix.
(You should bear this in mind if you are welding pressure containers or box sections of steel or nuclear reactors but in this case flouncing about wasting gas and adding in blobs of filler isn't going to be a problem - other than the self inflicted cost and time spent in said flouncing about)
[OK lecture over-ish]
In the picture below I've already marked out the rough shape of the metal I need to add and figured out where the fixing hole goes
Note I'm using a hole punch to make the ends of the oval fixing hole - nice clean edges - and round ones too instead of an oval edge that it more likely to happen with a drill bit (although I can post a link to a chap called AvE on youtoob who shows a method of drilling round holes in sheet metal if you like)
The next picture shows the new metal lying in its new position. The masking tape is important! It gives the correct angle for the repair patch - it shows the original position. Cutting this straight is important as the rest of the metal along the bend in the panel needs to be cut away - there's a chance that the bend will bend during cutting as you are removing the rigidity of the edge...
...so you need to keep the reference point on the new bit of metal so that the carefully cut shape of the original curved edge helps you make sure that it all lines up.
That explanation might be as clear as mud - so in the following picture you can see what's been cut =>
1) The straight edge where the masking tape in the previous picture was helps orientate the new metal.
2) The curved part of the original panel has been trimmed to the corner / edge and no longer has much rigidity - this is a potential disaster waiting to happen!
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My method from here on is to tack in blobs of filler metal holding the repair patch in place.
I'm working from the reference point - the straight edge where the masking tape once was
In principle it is possible to blob your way all the way along the joint. In a way that is what I did but you have to remember that just because you add a new blob next to an old blob (and that blob glows red) it does not mean the blobs are joined up.
You must - even though there's a chance you'll blow a hole in the metal in doing so - join up the blobs properly by welding through.
You need to make continuous welds through your tacks!
If you don't you have left lots of designer cracks all along your joint.
After some considerable messing about you can eventually reach the stage where you can grind away the excessive filler material you've pain stakingly added to the joint. Finishing off with a scrubbing disc =>
Today I've gotten as far as this =>
It isn't 100% beautiful.
It isn't in the same class as the work done by the good people on
www.metalmeet.com but it is strong and functional. If I wanted a perfect finish I'd probably have to spend the same amount of time again filling in the holes with weld - grinding away the underside of the repair and panel beating the shape the fraction of millimeters needed to make it an invisible repair.
I'm of the opinion that there's an occasion for very very thinly applied body filler and this could be one of them! The thickness of the filler over this repair would be way less than 1mm - I'm calling that good enough.
I finished off the oval slot for the attachment bolt by breaking out the Dremel and a thin cutting disc
