project 1980 Austin Princess

[HillmanImp]

 

I am sure you are getting penetration here. What sort of mask are you using? I like to be able to see where the last weld was and pretty much try to place the new weld on top of the last one, holding it until I get the 'sizzling bacon' sound.  

 

[vulgalour]

I have a choice of two masks, one's an old fashioned flip visor and the other is an auto-dim.  The flip visor is better for protecting my eyes but the auto-dim allows me to get the weld where I want it better.  I was switching between the two on the sample scrap, I was using the flip visor when I burned that great big hole.

 

Shakey hands and poor mental focus were not my friend today, maybe tomorrow will be better?

[HillmanImp]

I have a choice of two masks, one's an old fashioned flip visor and the other is an auto-dim.  The flip visor is better for protecting my eyes but the auto-dim allows me to get the weld where I want it better.  I was switching between the two on the sample scrap, I was using the flip visor when I burned that great big hole.

 

Shakey hands and poor mental focus were not my friend today, maybe tomorrow will be better?

 

Hey, its practice makes perfect. I would not be able to do anything like the neat welding above at the mo as I am well out of practice.

 

I can't speak for others, I was just saying what I do as I pretty much made it up as I went along. I just aim to hit the side of the weld I just did. Even with a non reactive visor the heat of the weld can still show through so I aim for that. You just need to watch for the metal buckling on loads of successive welds but if you have a few spot welds holding it in place every couple of inches, its not much to worry about. Just keep hammering the metal close together every now and then if it moves apart. 

 

Sorry if I am teaching you to suck eggs here, just trying to help as I do often do welding to old shizzle and know the frustration.

 

Like I said above its the sizzling bacon sound you want. No matter what you can see, its what you hear that lets you know you have a good weld. 

[vulgalour]

I don't mind any wisdom on this topic being shared.  The fact I didn't think to go back to basics and set up the welder properly just shows that even the most basic advice is of use.  I reckon practice and a clear head will do more wonders than anything as the welder is, if anything, welding even better than the first time I used it.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I could not agree more about the old sizzling bacon sound. The mask allows you to be sure you're welding in the right place, but its the sound that tells you about the quality of the weld. It should almost be a hiss rather than a crackle. Obviously cleanliness if the metal is mega critical as well. When you're practising, turn the wire speed down and slowly increase it to suit, rather than the other way round. Plus I'm sure the welder will need to be at its lowest or possibly second lowest setting.

[vulgalour]

Now I want bacon but the shops are shut.

[Geep]

Vulg, have a look at the second video down on this link. It cover wire speed and shows/sounds what too low and too high is like.

 

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/wire-speed.htm

 

It's a bit cack handed to do, but try altering the wire speed with one hand whilst welding on some scrap. Wire speed is often the most overlooked, untweaked area but can yield tremendous results when you get it right. Bigger industrial welders are more forgiving of wire speed than smaller welders. Give it a try and see what difference there is maintaining the same power settings.

[Geep]

Oh and clean, clean, clean. Metal needs to be flap disc clean. Just lightly run an 80 grit over it. Wire brush can end up burnishing rusted old metal, probably ok though on new steel. Remove grey coating in immediate area of welding on new metal and same the other side. Make sure earth point is gone over with a flap disc as well. Remember, it's all *electricity based, ie conductivity. Bright shiny clean = good, dubious or dirty = not good.

 

*probably why lucas didn't make welders.

[Noel Tidybeard]

experiment with the gas as well- friend on mine couldnt get a decent weld once, so i have a play after years of watching my bro-in-law welding and find he had way too much gas coming out of the gun

to say he was gobsmacked when he got a nice weld going after i cranked it right down to almost nowt was a slight understatement lol

plus it saved him a shit load of dollars on gas

[vulgalour]

From the information and advice given I can say now with certainty that most of the time I'm moving the torch too fast.  I also probably have the power and wire feed up a little too high so I'll give those a tweak.  Have to admit to doing no welding at all today, I'm burned out from working all day at the unit and then all night at my desk on artwork, neither of which I'm getting as far with as I'd like.  So, because I was so utterly exhausted today I called it quits at about 2pm and decided to let myself recover rather than risk injuring myself with power tools.

 

I did get some progress done.  Drilled out the spotwelds holding the strengthening bar on and the couple of tack welds on one edge of it, I'm wondering if the floor has been done before, but if it has I can't easily find the patches, bit of an odd one that.

 

Lifted it out to get better access to the hole floor pan underneath it and chopped that out.  Also found a little bit more on the other side of the jacking point that needed chopping out.  Got a bit brutal with the flapwheel and grinder disc to get rid of as much rust as possible before giving it all a blitz with the weld-through primer.  I'm happy that this is all back to the best metal it can be and is ready to take some new metal, I'm even going to try and copy the original floor pressing shapes.

 

I got as far as cutting out a panel for the inner sill repair from the old bonnet I've got and putting it in place with magnets.  Then I realised it'd be easier to weld from outside the car so I need to go over this side of the original inner sill to make sure it's properly weld friendly before starting on that.

 

 

The other thing I achieved was making the hole for the new telltale in the purple dash insert so that's now ready for filling, sanding and painting. The black plastics for the dash have received a little bit of chrome too, but there's more to complete there so I'll share pictures of that when I get the dash back in one piece and ready to go in the car.

[Bren]

The n/ s sill on my Sd1 had been bodged - 18" of new sill had been tacked onto the existing one, overlapping by 1" and held on with a tack. It was then covered with filler, but you could see the step.

[vulgalour]

After looking at the passenger side I can see the same has been done on that side.  That means this car has had two new sills, probably when it was restored* in the mid-nineties.  It also means that when I cut out the relatively small bit on the passenger side it's going to end up with me removing big chunks of sill to try and sort it properly.  That I'm not really looking forward to at this point in time.

 

I don't mind ugly repairs, but I do mind shitty repairs, just a shame the two seem to go hand in hand, I can see this car becoming a proper weldathon on the arse now.

[Geep]

One other thought on the welding; I'm not entirely convinced weld through primer helps with maintaining a good weld. Bright shiny metal is good, painted metal, not so good. In it's use between overlapping panels where plug welds are made, it's better to offer the piece up then use a small rotary wire brush in a drill to clean 'through the hole'. That means a circle of bright metal for welding. Using it along seam welded area, my results have always improved by cleaning the edges back to bright metal giving a clean area to weld.

 

You can get copper based weld through primer which may well be better than zinc based. Different brands also may work better or worse than each other. It might be worth while just spraying a spot on scrap metal then trying to weld first on decent clean metal next to it, then try striking up on the weld through. See for yourself if there's any difference.

[vulgalour]

There's definitely a difference between the two.  I'm being over-cautious, but the primer does at least help me see what I'm working with better and does seem to really keep any sort of flash rusting at bay, especially important as I'm not chopping, cleaning and welding all in one go at the moment.

 

What I have done is spray the primer on to keep everything tidy and then blitz the edges to bare metal before welding, this seems to give me the best result and the primer seems to help a bit with heat dissipation (though I could be imagining that).

 

I'm doing a half-day at the unit tomorrow so I'm hoping to get the patches tacked in place.  The Princess has to go back outside no later than Sunday night so I've really got to get this sorted before then.

[Geep]

Primer over the bare metal and area in general is good, it's just the small area where the weld takes place that is best if bright and shiny. Seems like you're on to that though Vulg so it's probably just a case of fine tuning the welder and a bit of confidence.

 

The welding is really the easy/quick bit. It's the hours it takes to get to the welding stage that matter. Cleaning back, cutting out, making patterns, cutting and shaping new metal, trimming it bit by bit to get a good tight fit, drilling holes for plug welding and numerous pauses to just look and think. Once it's all clamped in place, then the welding is fairly straight forward. Not easy as such but the home straight so to speak.

[vulgalour]

Today has been a day of obstacles.

 

Yes, I did get some welding done and yes, I got a couple of patches cut out and mostly put in place.  But I also found out that the Princess is evicted from the unit tomorrow rather than Sunday for reasons I don't really understand so my time to work on her was shortened rather a lot.

 

For the inner sill I needed the power at 4 and the wire speed at 3 but for the floor pan I had to turn it down to 2 for power and nearly 2 for wire speed.  Seemed a bit counter intuitive as the floor pan metal both for the patch and the original material is a good bit more solid and not-rusty than the inner sill I was sorting out.

 

After a very shaky start where nothing I achieved on the scrap could be achieved on the car, I worked my way through the pigeon poo and started to get some reasonable welds.  I kept going with a bit of zigzagging and did some pretty ugly welding, but it wouldn't come off with hammer, hands or pliers so I deemed it solid enough and it was making that lovely sizzle as I got the settings right and did some work from the inside.

 

I tried to grind it back a bit but then realised it was pretty pointless as this bit just isn't visible at all.  The cabin side is much tidier anyway.  So because she's going to have to head outside I blatted some primer and then some top coat (not shown) on to keep the weather out.

 

Didn't take very long to do the welding bit so I had enough time to make a patch for the floor, shaped to match the pressing of the floor pan as much as possible.  I wanted to use the tin snips to cut this patch out, it would've been easier, but they had been borrowed so I had to use the air-nibbler which I'm not getting on with particularly well and had to have someone else help cut out that last bit of the panel.  Reasonable fit, but not perfect, happily a good enough match for me to at least fill most of the hole in the floor.

 

Started welding this in and it went LOVELY and then, for no obvious reason, the welding all went to shit.  Took me a while to realise the gas bottle was empty.  That put paid to any further progress and now I'm in the uncomfortable position of having to put an unfinished car outside until we can get the gas bottle recharged.  All I could do was slap some primer on and hope it'll be okay for a bit, there's nothing else I can do.  There may be a cover I can borrow, but that's about it.

 

Still, it felt like progress and I was enjoying it, particularly when I was managing to lay some neat and tidy welds.  The floor is far easier to work on than that inner sill, I can actually see what I'm doing.  To the left of this image is some of the first welds I was laying down, to the right the ones that were all bacon-sizzle and quick.  The nicer welds also didn't have any of that nasty looking burn.

 

And this is the floor repair just about when the gas ran out.

 

[Forty-two]

Good effort there sir. Quite like reading your updates.

[brickwall]

Try stitching. It takes a long time, but gives good results. Giving in a good scuff with a flap discs always turns it to good welds

[Geep]

This may help Vulg.

 

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/thin-metal.htm

 

Has a video on there of the technique for thin metal.

 

 

Shows a series of overlapping spots which is actually quite quick when you get going. Trying to seam weld thin metal means the further you go, the more heat builds up until it blows holes. As brickwall says, stitching is just short runs of continuous weld, stopping before too much heat build up and blowing through. Watch the weld pool and strike up on the good side just playing it over to the car metal to fuse together. You can momentarily release trigger to cool weld pool before squeezing it again to carry on.

 

It's a bit of a juggling act which really only hands on practice can help. I always push the torch as well, was taught that way even when i learnt on oxy acetylene. You've done stick welding so understand the weld pool and welding in general. It's just transferring that knowledge to mig. One suggestion to get some confidence and feel for it, when you've got some more gas, is to get a thick piece of metal, say 3mm angle iron, then crank up the power and wire feed and fire off a few runs without fear of blowing through. You can fine tune power and wire feed to see what type of runs you can produce, then look and see if they are too cold or ok. Too cold is when the weld just sits on the top of the metal rather than fusing to it at the sides. Too hot will produce flat looking runs and large protrusions showing on the back side. Google for each to see pics if necessary.

 

*I'm not pretending to be some welding god myself nor have all the answers, just that I was taught it many years ago and have used mig quite a bit. I've also read a lot and researched a lot having been made to use a sip once for a while! I try to help if i can because some welding I see on car sites is shocking. Cold welds where it's little more than molten metal stuck to the patch and no structural integrity. Mini forums and 'darker coloured' forums may be guilty of this.

[vulgalour]

Pushing is a bit easier than pulling, but I'm finding the stitch technique difficult to master.  On the inner sill I tacked it to get it in place, then tacked it again between those tacks and did short runs of about an inch in a do-a-gap, miss-a-gap method to try and keep the heat down.  Didn't get any noticeable warp to the repair section or the original metal and towards the end of the welding I was getting a weld that looked like decent cake icing which is the way I sort of gauge it.

 

The info and advice is going in, but applying the theory to practice isn't always straightforward and my photographs are showing a mosh of good and bad weld together.  I'm sure someone with more experience could say whether or not my welds are strong, they're certainly not pro-level, but they do seem strong enough to need removing with power tools and the weld is hard enough that it takes forever to grind it back with a flapwheel unlike some of the first stuff I was doing which you could wire brush off the steel.

 

There's plenty to practice on at least too and when CS is up here again he can show me how he welds so I can get some pointers.  I learn much better when I'm shown in person, I can only learn so much from videos and text.

[Geep]

It is a case of doing being the only real way of learning. You're on the right tracks though, integrity is better than neatness and yours is far from the worst out there. Some I've seen could be pulled off with bare hands, being no more than metal glue in effect. Practice, practice, practice is what everyone says and it's true. Even people used to welding can take a bit to get back in the swing of things on thin metal. You're doing fine mate and flap discs make us all great.  

[plasticvandan]

I've done little welding,but when teaching myself just thought of it as hardcore soldering,that helped

[brickwall]

I understand Vulg. I'm self taught and still learning. Some days I was almost in tears as it seemed my skills had just disappeared and everything went wrong.

 

I just keep at it and then sometimes I'm beaming 'cos I did some amazing stuff.

[vulgalour]

If I get good enough it means I get to save JMP FAAAASANDS because I can do the fab work in house.  Finding training courses up here is apparently very difficult though, I've not looked yet as I haven't had the time.

[Danblez]

Keep at it. I am pretty much at the same stage although every now and then pull off a a decent run. I reckon its to do with the alignment of the sun, wind direction and the way you hold your tongue.

 

Seriously though if this welder is anything like my Clarke I don't understand how you can weld anything on such a low wire speed setting?!

[Rusty_Rocket]

It's a shame to say it, but budget welders really make welding difficult! If you can master a Clarke or SIP you'll be proud of your efforts with a £1k+ machine! Wire feed and low amps need to be spot on for car bodywork, something the cheapies just can't muster 

My next machine will be a Portamig at around £650. These buggers are stable down to 20amps, which is just what you need for hopeless 70s steel! 

[michael1703]

Pushing is a bit easier than pulling, but I'm finding the stitch technique difficult to master.  On the inner sill I tacked it to get it in place, then tacked it again between those tacks and did short runs of about an inch in a do-a-gap, miss-a-gap method to try and keep the heat down.

I keep an airline with a blow gun close by to keep welds cool

 

Handy tip: don't blast a very hot weld straight after as it becomes a plasma cutter !

[derskine]

The stitch technique isn't so bad once you get the hang of it.

Pull trigger for a second until you've got a reasonable tack, release trigger, watch weld pool, and when it stops glowing bright red and dulls down a tiny bit, tack again.

You can use a higher power than you think to do it.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Must admit I always do stitching. Don't think I ever keep the button squeezed for more than a second or so, off then straight back on again, I find if I don't do that I burn through loads.

[cort16]

It's hard enough not blowing through when using this stitch technique never mind other wise. I do enjoy welding thick bits of metal together as you can get a nice solid weld seam done. Yummy.