Alfa 156 sportwagon - Broken already ALFISTI PLS HALP

[320touring]

I can buy you a commiseration pint tonight if needed?

[Dave_Q]

Might try to skive off work and show up if you're not already oversubscribed? Could even bring some tools...

 

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Not at all, send me a PM I will send you my number and some details, thanks. Am vaguely OK for tools but the more the merrier.

 

 

I can buy you a commiseration pint tonight if needed?

 

I'll take the pint but commiserations not required, I'd rather have a rusty Alfa than a Skoda of any description.

[Dave_Q]

Some progress did occur today, but the retest tomorrow is looking unlikely.

 

Here is the final amount cut out, note approx 1 sq.ft floor missing in background.

 

 

 

Shortly after this the excellent Mr Chodweaver came along, provided moral and technical support on the welding, and even said reassuring things about the sanity of spending hours welding up a pretty worthless car.

 

 

Welding looks rubbish but is strong, obviously still not finished but well on the way.

 

MOT ETA about May.

[chodweaver]

My absolute pleasure to meet you and be able to provide a little assistance, Mr Q. Let me know when you will be attacking it again and I'll try to arrive earlier and stay longer, not to mention be more organised with what tool I put down where....

 

I meant to ask - how did you form the patch to the shape required to fit round the sill? It looked much better than my attempts at a nice, uniform curve but then I haven't advanced beyond the use of hammers, plumbers pliers and a vise. Did you enlist a lamppost?

 

NB I am not to be relied upon for balanced, objective advice where shite and its salvageability is concerned. If it looks less rusty and more likely to pass an MOT than what I'm driving, then of course it's worth doing. Plus, Alfa. I wish my heaps were as clearly so far from the bridge.

[Dave_Q]

I formed the lip by hammering it over the edge of a square piece of wood and just bent the top edge with mole grips.

 

It's not quite* factory shape but as discussed it's getting wobbed over with an inch of underseal then covered by a plastic sill, so hopefully the concours judges won't notice.

 

For the next section I will make sure the patch overlaps all the way round (as mentioned upthread by a man who clearly knows more about welding than me) and actually remove all the paint beforehand - hopefully this will bring an improvement in results.

[chodweaver]

^ That it turn reminds me of two further tips that I picked up:

 

1 Immediately after applying a tack, tap the area tacked with a hammer - this helps to reduce stresses arising from the heat of the tack, and lessen distortion as the weld and surround cools

 

2 Cut your holes and your patches with curves at the corners, rather than sharp 90deg (so, like a bike puncture repair patch). Again, this reduces a localised build up of heat at each corner and lessens distortion in the patch.

 

And, my crappy welder has the OE torch on it with such a crude trigger action that the gas comes on a good few mm in the trigger movement before the wire feed and current. This means I can flood the area with weld gas before the arc starts and I've found this helps me get a cleaner weld. Your mig does seem to perform rather better than mine anyway, but if there is a way of getting the gas to flow sooner, I would make use of it.

[Guest Hooli]

 

 

1 Immediately after applying a tack, tap the area tacked with a hammer - this helps to reduce stresses arising from the heat of the tack, and lessen distortion as the weld and surround cools

 

 

Why does that work?

[chodweaver]

I don't know! But the guy who told me is a professional welder - not just of cars, that has just been a hobby of his for many years - but of proper big scale stuff. I believe he worked on the chassis of the Millenium dome/O2 arena. So I tend to think he knows what he's talking about.

[Dave_Q]

I'm still plugging away at welding this up, a couple of hours a week.

 

In the process I feel my welding has progressed from appalling to slightly less appalling.

 

 

 

I'm quite enjoying making up repair panels, I'm fairly proud of this sill end I made with cardboard templates and hammers.

 

 

 

Have also discovered some crust in the bottom of the front wing on the same side.

I could weld it up but I'm probably going to go for tactical gaffer tape.

 

[chodweaver]

That sill is coming together nicely! Good stuff.

 

Shout if you need some more well intentioned bodging from me

 

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[PiperCub]

I don't know! But the guy who told me is a professional welder - not just of cars, that has just been a hobby of his for many years - but of proper big scale stuff. I believe he worked on the chassis of the Millenium dome/O2 arena. So I tend to think he knows what he's talking about.

 

I've been told this too, likewise, I don't know the physics as such but can guess it's to do with reforming (or 'massaging the metal' as my mate referred to it as) the heated and therefore expanded metal  back into it's previous structure at a (probably) molecular level, hence returning the metal to it's original more neutral state. (Yes, I am guessing somewhat here!!). Having said that, I usually forget to do it anyway so not sure how effective it is. 

 

 

 

Boring factiod No.118: I used to work at the Millenium Dome too! Given the structure is still up, I can assume your friend wasn't one of the many builders smoking weed all day that I encountered!

[Dave_Q]

Sill pretty much done, I ran out of gas at the end.

 

 

Definitely starting to get the hang of this welding lark, so much so I feel I can share my TOP TIPS for beginners trying to MIG their heaps through an MOT.

 

 

1. Clean the metal you are welding to - you can't weld to paint.

 

2. Spend longer making patches and make sure the surfaces you are welding are touching all the way round - you can't weld to air.

 

3. Overlap your patches - that TonyBMW guy on the blue forum can butt weld 0.8mm italian gauge steel - you can't.

[Dave_Q]

My god, did I really buy this thing in February? I suppose at least that's 3 months road tax I've not paid for.

 

Anyway since the last report 2 flipping months ago, I spent a good few weeks ignoring it while I painted and slightly fixed my Vespa, and I've been on it a couple of nights over the last couple of weeks.

 

Soz no pics but all the welding is done, and I've lashed a load of that aerosol underseal all over the shop so hopefully it will last a few years before the rest of the floors flake off.

 

 

Observations:

I've used a full (small) reel of welding wire so far and had to get another - much of this was going back and redoing some of my initial shoddy work.

 

Spraying underseal on the bottom of a car on axle stands 12 inch off the floor leaves your head looking like you work in a coal mine.

 

 

Still got to paint the sill and the crispy bits of arch, sort out the wheels, and do the CV boot and the front spring. Might be on the road for mid June.

[chaseracer]

Impressive work, Mr Q.

 

I must learn to weld.  I have Dyane door bottoms to repair.

[Dave_Q]

Cheers, it's not pretty welding close up, but I've twatted it extensively with a hammer and it's not fallen off

 

To be honest the best way to weld is to get on with it, my first patch was pretty poor and I was blowing holes etc. 

 

Now I've developed sufficient finesse with the trigger that I've been back and filled in some of the holes.

 

I've put some tips in a post back up there but another is to splash out for Argon mix over CO2.

 

I had a big bottle of pub CO2 which ran out towards the end of the sill, after some deliberation I splashed out on Argon mix from a local gas supplier (J&R gases, recommended if you're in Yorkshire or Lancashire) and the weld seems easier to control with better penetration.

 

 

And as any welder can tell you, it's all about penetration.

[chodweaver]

That sill repair is looking pretty tidy. Good job Dave!

Regarding working on the underside, I've been toying with the idea of a car roller (as opposed to a tilter/rotisserie, most of which look barely strong enough to hold a stripped body shell) - I've only found out about them recently and they vary a bit in design. In its simplest form, you just put some tyres on the ground next to your, ahem, project, and jack it up on the other side with a very tall jack, till it rests on its doors on the tyres. Then brace it with some long battens underneath the floor to keep it at about 60° - well, that's what I've seen in the pics of Russian blokes fixing the undersides of their Ladas...

 

http://www.lada.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10125

 

The modern* tech* equivalent is a pair of curved bars with fittings that you bolt to the hubs after removing the wheels on one side. The curves extend up the same side of the car, and keep it off the ground when tipped up. Two things remain to make it safe and convenient - drain the fluids before tilting, and brace the car very firmly once up. Then weld and underseal to your heart's content while stood or sat down.

Here's one of them. Prices ain't too scary neither.

 

http://www.cjautos.eu/mobile/Product.aspx?id=37427

 

The posh model boasts wheels so you can roll your shite onto its side outside the garage then push it back inside for the cosy* winter evenings.

 

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[320touring]

Good efforts!

[Dave_Q]

Inching slowly closer to an MOT.

 

Have put the suspension back together at the front, and thrown about some seam sealer, underseal and paint to cover my shame.

 

 

 

 

Just need to go over all this with body colour, paint the wheels and get the new tyres fitted.

[strangeangel]

NEEDS MOAR WOB

[Dave_Q]

STEP TO THE LYRICS OF MY CAR RELATED CONTENT

 

 

So, I took the wheels of this thing, maybe 6-8 weeks ago, and left them in my back garden whilst I occasionally sanded them a bit.

 

I was intending to paint them eventually, but last weekend a local scrap gatherer decided I probably wanted to scrap them and removed them from my garden overnight.

 

 

I was pretty pissed off about this as you can imagine. Luckily the tyres they cut off were the bald, mismatched old ones and the new 205/55 16s I purchased were in the garage.

 

Enter ebay and these delightfully, creatively decorated items.

 

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5x98-alfa-romeo-16-034-alloy-wheels-drift-JDM-DUB-slammed-rat-look-refurb-project-/272701993891?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=5e0EBW8eXlLOCwK4z4e6OTnMTVw%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

 

For reasons I can't fathom, nobody bid the opening bid of £45 so the seller accepted my even lower offer. 

 

Once upon a time I would have driven a car with wheels that looked like that - not so much now.

 

Rattle cans on standby.

 

First I gave them a too quick whizz over with a palm sander.

 

 

Some etch primer.

 

 

Already you can see the poor prep, runs etc. If I cared more I would have stopped here, sanded back down and started again.

 

 

 

I do not care, so I continued with silver:

 

 

Carrying through the scratches and runs.

 

 

 

Clear on

 

 

 

That was last night, and today at dinner I got the tyres fitted. 

 

As such I was fairly confident I would be able to get it boxed off and out of the garage tonight.

 

 

I celebrated by cleaning up the contacts in the key to make the central locking work.

 

 

The central locking still does not work.

 

Out of the garage

 

 

Chucked through the jetwash

 

 

 

Ready for MOT tomorrow. 

 

Check out the view from my front door - his 'n hers executive Italian motoring circa 2005.

 

 

Tomorrow is the 114th day of my 14 day retest period, I suspect I'll probably have to pay a full test fee.

 

Cross things for me.

[Tickman]

Things crossed, good luck

[320touring]

Bonne chance

[Burnside]

Fingers Crossed here ! 

 

Nice one on getting stuck in with the welding, it something I should really learn myself.

 

Always liked the 156 even though my brother had a V6 for 45 minutes once before the engine overheated. He had to sell it on to lad at a local Fiat dealer who was going to do the work himself, for half what he paid for it as he couldn't afford the repairs.  

 

Still like us to have another at some point. 

[mk2_craig]

Hope it flies through this time! Nice job de-monging those alloys.

[Jim Bell]

Smash it in the back of the mot.

[The Moog]

Are 156 becoming the new trendy motors?

 

Good luck Mister Q

[Dave_Q]

Are 156 becoming the new trendy motors?

 

Good luck Mister Q

 

My analysis indicates they're definitely on the up.

 

[The Moog]

That all seems statically significant.

 

Especially Goona 2 not even having a line

[320touring]

156s are too exclusive to be a Laguna 2 type trend on here.

 

They're also over 2x as good as a rover 75- and thats a mathematical fact*!

[Dave_Q]

Our statisticians use cutting edge algorithms to make shit up as they go along.