Today was a Welding day! and i have done the small section at the back of the sill shown on the previous post with the last photo.
A Fabricated a new Lip for the little box section where the trailing arm bolts into and got it welded up.
Next up was the little piece that is welded from the Reinforcing plate inside the box section to the lip.
Once that was alll welded and ground flat, i then worked on getting the inner sill panel that goes over this box section. I did a few modifications to the panel i made to make it fit right adding some release cuts at the top so i can bend it into the shape it needs to be.
I got that all welded in and flattened the welds down. I also did the plug welds around the lip of the box section.
Another Update on the Civic!!
With this little dry warm spell of weather that is happening i decided to get a move on and use it to my advantage. The Drivers side was desperate to be repaired and i finally took the angle grinder to the rust and started cutting.
Heres a Before photo just to give you an idea on the rust situation:
With this being the worst side, the whole sill needs to be replaced. which seems rather daunting as ive never done something like this before. Although using the skills ive picked up from the previous side it should be a challenge which will be worth well doing for the final outcome. Im probably going to have to Brace the car as im unsure if im going to have to cut out the area where the floor is spot welded to the bottom edge of the inner sill. If so ill weld in some pieces from the floor to the upper portion of the inner sill to give the floor some strength and if needed a bar will be welded across the pillars just in case.
But for now im currently just focusing on the rear section of the sill. I Ideally want to get the rear of the car welded first, then progress to the front of the car where the rest of the sill and jacking point need doing. The Rover 200 and 400 Owners Club are reproducing the Front Jacking point panels which will come in handy as the Civic and 400 are the same car. Saves me making it all myself.
Like the otherside the backside of the sill was covered in that black underseal which i rubbed off using thinners and it came up pretty well again which is great!
Unfortunately the rust on this side goes from the rear arch to the front jacking point. So i intend on getting the Rear Arch done once the rear sill section is complete. thankfully i have a rear inner closing panel and some metal left over from the other sides closing panel which i can modify and fabricate in order to fill in the rest of the inner arch as it will have the same profile.
Thankfully it doesn't look like it has gone too far up into the inner wheel arch. the worst of it is probably where the bumper bolts up into the arch.
So i got an area cut open to inspect the rust, and thankfully the upper part of the inner sill isn't as bad as i thought after a good clean up with some thinners to reveal the original Coating of Primer.
I opened it up a bit more to reveal more rust. and as you can see the sill gets worse as you work your way to the front, and Rust has crept up between the Rear and Middle section join. Which resulted in me drilling the spotwelds out and peeling back that skin of metal to see how far it had spread in that join. If im going full on with this i may as well get rid of all the rust or it will just come back resulting in more repairs years on down the line.
So i cut a bit more out to reveal the panel behind and thankfully the rust hadn't spread too far up that seam. As you can see this is where the floor starts to be spot welded to the sill.
This seam will be all cleaned up and treated or replaced if needs be. it was also nice to see that the Floor Lip isnt rusty.
The idea will be to get all the area prepared and cleaned up ready for welding. I still need to cut out the bit of rot on the inner arch where its welded to the back of the sill, Which can be shown on the photo below.
Once thats all cut out i will then Trim up the repair panel i have made for it. This side i messed up a bit with the measurements and its about 0.5mm too big so im going to have to cut it and trim it down so that the inner sill will sit flush with the inner sill not much of an issue but still kind of annoying.
Here is the Panel i have trimmed up to put in Still needs some fettling and cutting down in some places with the finger sander so that its perfect. But i aim to get this all welded up in one piece rather than tonnes of little bits. I had to cut the lower bit of the inner sill due to my measurement cock up, 0.5mm will then be trimmed off the other piece to get the profile right.
But for now that is where i am up to, hopefully tomorrow i can get some more progress done and perhaps even some welding if all is good!
