Peugeot 106 floorpan fuckstix - fixed!

[M'coli]

From Muffy the Citroen thread:

It's not really available until the Piglet 106 has a fresh MOT, too.

So, Piglet passed its MOT back in late February, & the big BX went properly on sale. Then an odd sort of "thud" started from the rear of the 106 every time I hit a sharp bump in the road last week, on the way to work.  Last Thursday, the BX sold, and I breathed a sigh of relief and stopped looking for cars to buy for a bit.

 

However, that thud wasn't getting any less, even after rearranging my shit in the boot, so had a look last night on first break at work, and having acertained that there appeared to be spotwelds pulling through the boot floor and a 1cm-long crack  in the floorpan, drove home very, very carefully...

Oops

 

 

Ah.

 

 

Oh.  Guess who's got 3 job interviews and needs a car next week?  I'll be welding this bugger up for the rest of the day...

[KruJoe]

Oof. [unlike]

I wouldn't expect that to be making the noise (unless the rear beam mounts have rotted loose). While you're there, check the bushes in each end of the damper, I'd suspect those.

 

Is the other side still ok, or has it been welded already? I normally expect the passenger side to be worse for rot.

[M'coli]

It's not so much a thud as a crack, previous experience of a cracking bodyshell made me investigate.  The strengthening plate's finally cracked and this is what's causing the noises, either through movement of itself or through the stress-cracks appearing in the floorpan.

 

Left-hand-side is on its way out, but not critical at this stage - a little bit of reinforcement will see it ok for the next week or so.

[overrun]

They all do that, sir.

Literally.

 

I had a 1.5 diesel that required welding in the exact same areas.

The boot floor is made of the most annoying shite. It's like compressed swarf, or some shit.

 

Whatever it is, it doesn't weld, ime.

[M'coli]

Well, it welds, ime.  It bloody needed to.  I hacked it back and found the thick, probably 16-guage reinforcing plate was gubbed, so hacked the shonky bit out with the plasma disc.  Also hacked out was a patch to match from the ex-welding gas bottle that I've used before.

 

This is is prior to the patch, but cleaned up.

 

 

[M'coli]

This was welded in with a combination of MIG and arc welding, depending on how shit I was wiith the arc welder and how little the wind was blowing - the metal's thick enough to weld with the stick welder, but I'm not used to it - I'll have to practice more.

The welds were dressed back, and then dinner and time stopped play on the powertools.  I've now templated up for tomorrow's 20-gauge zintec extravaganva, and primed it with zinc weld-through.

[M'coli]

It's done.  Having seen the weather fivecast for today, I thought I'd get a bit done in the morning and some later on this evening, but the rain held off for long enough.

 

First job was to cut steel patches from the templates, but I felt a spot of rain as I stepped outside after walking the dog and thought, "Bollocks!" - but just got on with it, then trimmed them down to size, sometimes millimetre by millimetre.  Next, I used the holepunch on the joddler to put the plug-weld holes in the outer patch, line this up with the inner patch, mark it up and punch through.  Then I marked the outer for the intermediate holes - the ones that plug-weld into the 16-guage chassis-member - so placed the inner patch in the right position, popped both into the vice with a wooden bolster to stop the plates moving around and drilled through both to make sure the holes lined up.  I wish I'd done this for the ones I used the punch on...

 

Angle grinder/linishing disc next: take the burr off the holes of each plate, then use the wire brush to clean the rust off (this is Zintec, remember?  It's meant to be zinc coated and so rust resistant? No? Oh, well, never mind), degrease with panel wipe then weld-through primered.

 

While these dried, I remembered that I hadn't removed the paint from the inner bracing panel, so off it came.

 

The inner patch was tacked in first as it had dried more, then the outer.  After the first big tack, the wire melted itself to the inside of the copper tip  so with time running out before a late breakfast at about 11:30, I tried the arc welder.  Results?  1.6mm rods are too small and slaggy for the job.  Eat food then back out, seeing as the rain hasn't started properly.

 

MIG fixed up, gas turned up to the max, and it got welded into place.  At one point, I placed a loose fence panel in front of the car to act as a windbreak, and luckily a rainbreak when that shit started in earnest.  The outer went on, the inner was finished just about as the puddle of rainwater dripping off the car made it round to the bit of ground that the MIG welder was on - the (luckily, unplugged) LIDL arc welder wasn't so lucky, and is now being dried out.

 

A quick run-over with linishing disc and wire-brush, then I realised that I hadn't welded up the hole I'd slit in the boot floor nor the cracks where the welds had pulled through, so the MIG came out again, and I used a flattened bit of copper pipe (you can see it on the suspension arm in the final photo) as a heat-soak and "catch-tank" for the weld bead as I did this bit, it worked a bloody treat.

 

Last bit was to pop the seam-sealer on.  It's the supposedly brushable type, but it's so old it's a bit too thick for that so I smeared it on with my hands!  Lovely.  I should really do a picture of the car back on its wheels and that, but I can't be arsed - a bit like this presentation on "motivation" that I'm supposed to be writing for a deputy manager job interview tomorrow morning at half 10.

'What's my "Motivation"? Fear of public transport...'

[vulgalour]

I see from this that you've already written your presentation on motivation and the results achieved.  Just give them a link to this page, you'll definitely get the job.

[tooSavvy]

I just love 'job done!' posts....

 

Totally demotivating to 99% of 'couch welders'

 

 

TS

[M'coli]

So, that's the "leading by example" bit sussed then, huh? I still need to demonstrate the "getting the 'couch welders' (^TM  Too Savvy)  out of the sofa" bit...

[KruJoe]

Great work Cameron. I do love a good plug weld.

 

I don't know about your old seam sealer, but I revive my dried up underseal with half an hour on top of the wood-burning stove. It smells lovely and goes on a treat after that!

[M'coli]

I ache just about everywhere! I've used muscles and wrought my torso into positions that've not been used for many moons!

 

The seam sealer is xylene-based, I could add some cheap thinners but wouldn't try putting it on a stove, to explosive and sticky.