Todays welding shite

[PhillipM]

Yep, it's one of those them there Jaguar X-types, you know, the ones that can't be bad for rust because the MOT men always* spot it...
 Problem with these is they rust from the inside out, on account of the Jag outer sills being manually fitted and welded over the Ford body in white, meaning the coatings aren't up to par internally and there's some massive moisture traps at the front where the panels overlap - plus the transmission ECU in the front left A-pillar is stuck in with open cell foam (b pillar too) which holds water against the skin. Usually by the time you can tell from the outside (unless you're checking in the right spots) all the internal panels resemble soggy cornflakes.

On this one it was a touch worse than usual in that the the entire sills - not just at the front where they usually go, or under the B-pillar - but the entire skins front to rear, inner sills, corner of the floorpan, jacking sheet, up the a-pillar, etc, have gone.......my f**king angle grinder is overheating...the other sill is even worse!


Well, it looked fine from the outside, apart from marking it's territory when I went to jack it up:







The inner that looks half decent on the right (I hit it with scotchbrite and acid a couple of times compared the the previous photo, as the facing is solid enough to reuse) has dissolved by the seam and isn't actually physically connected at any point along the bottom edge any more. In fact when I put it on the axle stands the doors no longer shut properly. I've had to make some bars to go from the catch to the hinges to keep it straight!
Poor welder is going to be a bit toasty tommorow...
 

 

*Which going by the other 20 of these fuckers I've looked at, all with the same sills you can stick your thumb through, means we need to have a whip round to send about a dozen MOT testers to specsavers.

[PhillipM]

Bit late but been busy with other work and coughing up blood from a chest infection the past 2 days hasn't helped, but finally chopped out enough on the Jag to start putting metal back in, welded up all the edge of the floorpan and then put the inner sill patches in and built the corner back up (still needs a new bit adding that comes forward to the wing yet but almost done with this section) along with sorting the outer sill sections further down.
 Not my finest welding in terms of looks but it's not been great weather and the gas kept blowing away even shielding it with my hand, but then again it's gone in hot, it's nice and flat and is structurally sound so it'll do fine:



 

[dieselassist]

that looks like a nice repair- 'starting point' looked a bit 'sphincter clenching' - "...WTF am going to do to wade myself back from all that rust 'bran flakes' discharge/am I ever goin to find anything solid to weld to....Im going to give up all this car welding lark n get a few lagers in me n think about it later or fook it off"  (when its your own car)- stage has been well overcome - inner sill is always a hinge point like that - fair play... looks all very neat; onto the next stage of welding it up all nice n solid....

[They_all_do_that_sir]

I knew these rusted but that's pretty bad! Worse than the mondeo Its based on?

 

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

[Angrydicky]

SCRAP IT.

 

Welding looks very neat, nice job.

[PhillipM]

I knew these rusted but that's pretty bad! Worse than the mondeo Its based on?

 

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

They're a lot worse, there's a structural outer sill (from the mondeo floorpan) and then the Jaguar outer skin is spot welded manually over the top (and quite often Dave and Jim at Jaguar have managed to put a spot weld where the sill drain point is supposed to be, because frankly they don't give a fuck), the trouble is the way they've styled it the two skins are in contact or very close together at the front, so when water drains through them it just stays damp between the two skins and rusts from the inside out. They're terrible for it, I haven't seen one yet that didn't need repairing.

 

The only good thing from here on is that inner panel and the next bit is 1.6mm sheet so it's a bit of a twat to shape just with the vice outside, whereas the top skin is 0.9mm which you can shape with your hands and then just tickle with a chisel to put swage lines and stretch/shrink where needed, so should be a bit tidier on the bit that matters.

[PhillipM]

that looks like a nice repair- 'starting point' looked a bit 'sphincter clenching' - "...WTF am going to do to wade myself back from all that rust 'bran flakes' discharge/am I ever goin to find anything solid to weld to....Im going to give up all this car welding lark n get a few lagers in me n think about it later or fook it off"  (when its your own car)- stage has been well overcome - inner sill is always a hinge point like that - fair play... looks all very neat; onto the next stage of welding it up all nice n solid....

Yeah, most of the work was just getting the knackered crap out - I had to cut and fit two panels behind that as I had to grind the edge of the floorpan out with a die grinder (only thing I could get in) to make sure I got everything, then anything that had any light surface rust got either a buzz over or some rust remover on it and the lot slathered in chromate conversion primer or rust converter for any light surface rust I couldn't reach.

 

Now the rust is gone most of the work is done. Until I cut it a bit further down

[cort16]

Wow that is rotten! What year is it?

I take it you can get outer sills for them?

[PhillipM]

51 I think, but I've seen almost as bad on an '07 a few years back.

You can get the outer cosmetic skin but not the structural outer, inner, etc. The skins are silly money though - about 230 per side.

[tooSavvy]

I hear (on here) Ka is a rusty turd.. Cos a chopped up Fiesta floor (rusty turd!)

 

I'm aware the Jag has Mundy origins.... Tell me more of how $hitey a lash-up this car is [/gobsmack]

 

TS

[Ben_O]

Just recently done one of these at work.

 

It was a pig of a job as the rot had spread into the floors.

 

Good luck with yours

 

Ben

[PhillipM]

I hear (on here) Ka is a rusty turd.. Cos a chopped up Fiesta floor (rusty turd!)

 

I'm aware the Jag has Mundy origins.... Tell me more of how $hitey a lash-up this car is [/gobsmack]

 

TS

The rust is nothing compared to the lashed-up wiring job they made to try and use the Ford gear with the Jag lights/clocks, etc.

[PhillipM]

Managed to get an afternoon on it today, fixed it perfectly, just needs some silver paint...

[fordperv]

i do love a bit of c.a.d

[PhillipM]

More seriously now have enough strength in the front to chop the rest of the sill out right to the back, means things can go a lot faster - another spare evening or two at some point this week and this side'll be sorted I imagine:

More ropey welding - put a bit too much zinc paint on the backside, kept bubbling through, doh, but it went in hot anyway (120-130 amps tends to penetrate pretty well on 14g ) so doesn't really matter:



Thank god for flap discs...



 

[drum]

Tidy.

[Split_Pin]

Smashing job, very satisfying to see lots of before, during and after pictures on welding jobs like these. Cleanses the soul!

[matty879]

its nice to see a repair where sombodys taken the time to do it properly,that could be why nobodys ever seen photos of my attempts.can i book the ldv in ?

[PiperCub]

51 I think, but I've seen almost as bad on an '07 a few years back.

 

You can get the outer cosmetic skin but not the structural outer, inner, etc. The skins are silly money though - about 230 per side.

 

How many more times do I have to hear the hard-of-thinking chirping up with "Oh, you should buy a modern car, they don't rust"  -  mmm, you reckon?

 

Nice work BTW. 

[PhillipM]

Ah, this isn't even a quarter of the job, wait 'till you see the rest

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Surely this is economically unviable? Can I ask what it will cost the owner of this car to get it through the test?

[PhillipM]

It's my fathers, so if I'm lucky, a couple of cups of tea while I'm welding.

[PhillipM]

 Stop, what are you doing, there's nothing wrong with that sill, it'll go through the MOT fine!

 

 

 

...

Oh.

 

 

If you drill the spot welds out in the top of the sills the outer structural bit comes out from the front, the centre one is welded in behind the seatbelt inside, if you need to take that out, there's a plastic seal full of foam halfway up that holds the water under it though which seems to stop that bit rotting any further up than I've cut, so I just slit through that and took it off (see later pictures) and I'll make a new bottom half and weld it to the sound top.
 The front one (can't see it here but you can in the original pictures) comes out with the spot welds drilled out in the door so I'll make a new one of those.

 

 

Knocked and scraped all the loose rust out - the bottom of the centre sill is fucked the whole length of the car, you can stick your finger through it it's that thin -as is that rear reinforcement bit in the corner of the arch, which should end about 2 inches lower than that originally...
 

[brickwall]

Jeez, that sill was working as a water tank.

[chodweaver]

Loving the quality of work there. I hope you're proud - I'd be made up to have turned out something that tidy.

 

MOAR

 

(Note to self to buy better tin snips, because a new tool is bound* to improve my skills in this regard more than getting stuck in and practicing...)

 

Sent from my GT-S5830i using Tapatalk 2

[PhillipM]

Spent an hour or two with the Angry Grinder and one of those bastard rotating fucking wazzokin' hellspawn pieces of shite they call wire wheels, cutting the rot out and tidying the main bit up - I'm going to make and weld a replacement in here before I touch the rear corner because frankly it looks like this:



Which means I'm going to have to cut the rear arch tub out to fix it properly - I could just knock a bit in the seam there but it'd come back through eventually from behind so fuck it. Anyway, I'll weld the middle in first so it doesn't do an impression of a chocolate fireguard. Angry Grinder at work:



Plus some time with the Hellspawn spinny thing of doom and some carbide burrs sorted the rest of the steelwork out, so I fixed it quick with the Yellow-Paint-Of-Strutural-Integrity:
 

The missing bits are, errr, go-faster holes.

[oldcars]

Went to look at one of these once and put my hand through the sill, walked away. I knew they rotted but not just how much they rotted   Great work on this, what year is the car?

[Richard]

I think he said it was a 51 plate but he'd seen an 07 that was just as bad.

[PhillipM]

Yeah, this is a 51, but I sorted my aunts 2007 one out a couple of years ago so age is no barrier to being a piece 'o shit!
 To be honest every single one I've seen has needed repairs when you start looking in the right places.

[PhillipM]

Shit pictures but as you can see was rather late when I got on with it tonight - welding by torchlight!

Middle inner sill in - I just knocked the stiffening windows in with a hammer + chisel and didn't bother making the little rounded edges in them so they don't quite match the top halves but so long as they give the strength it's not exactly the worst issue. Speed over finesse for this panel, I'll worry about looks on the outer!





Off the yellow chromate and onto grey zinc....mainly because I've run out of chromate and I'm not buying more for this POS....
 Tab hanging off the bottom is where I repaired one of those cutouts - I just left the plate in there instead of chopping it flush so I can use it as a handy earth for the welder.