Jump to content

Peugeot 309 rescue thread. Moving on.


DoctorRetro

Recommended Posts

Great thread, reminds me of when I used to sell these new at my first selling job at Peugeot.

Here's my first company Peugeot, a Wedgewood Blue 309 GE too!

One thing I remember about the GE trim was its lovely spindly steering wheel which was actually really nice and grippy to hold (better than the chunky GL one).  They drove ever so well.

U444A.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, DoctorRetro said:

If gasless MIGs are so bad, why do they exist? 

For the same reason that £2.99 socket sets that are clearly made from cheese exist.

They all have their purpose though.  £2.99 socket sets are ideal for grinding the living fuck out of a socket so you can make a special tool.  50p spanners similarly are ideal for bending into a shape needed to gain access to certain nuts.  A £50 gassless mig welder is ideal for putting shit welds on a rotten garden gate or a bit of farm machinery without needing to faff about with gas.   Plug it in,  melt steel, move on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, cobblers said:

answer phone call from the farmer "the gate has fallen off again mate"

Surely an arc welder would be better for that sort of work. They used to be very cheap. Think Aldi/Lidl still have them sometimes. Must say I've been using my 1989 BOC Migmaster with disposable bottles of Argoshield from Machine Mart, along with one of their shitty regulator/on off taps, and not noticed much difference to theBOC Argoshield I used for many years. If money and space are tight, certainly worth considering.The regulator is 17 quid and the 110 litre bottle 18,so for 35 plus whatever a welder costs,you're gluing metal. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harrumph.  That looks a bit more Donald Ducked than I first feared.  That said, as someone who has zero interest in learning to weld (I have a list of ambitions and mastering the harpsichord rates higher) I'd just throw it at my tamed welder man and pay once he's finished.  It doesn't LOOK like an easy thing to learn on, so just make sure you don't try - get fucked off - get down about it all and beat yourself up.  As my dear mother says - "He who doesn't aim, doesn't miss".

My favoured method, which doesn't find much favour here sometimes, is to just stick it in for an MOT.  Yes - you get a fucking long list and have to pay them £50 for the privilege - but then you know exactly where you are.  The tester can't disagree with what he himself said earlier, so sometimes it's easier to do that and take the guessing out.  There's an awful lot to do to make it lovely, but nowhere near as much to make it a going concern.  

Don't let your head drop.😉

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So... to weld a few holes up you should be going out and buying a top end Gas MIG. Only £3-400. 

Or you could just pick up a cheap gas less, couple of hours practice and make a workable job of it. I’m sure these £400 machines are very good but it’s not a practical suggestion for someone that wants to stick 2-3 patches on a car worth a couple hundred quid tops.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That car looks way beyond a beginners first job, I do think the juice isn't worth the squeeze on this one, others may disagree but I can see several hundred quid being wasted on tools and materials and the car will end up scrapped leaving nothing but a bitter taste in the mouth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My words of encouragement are everything you do to this car will only improve it! 

My words of advice tho would be do not do the welding yourself!  im 100% certain you have the ability in you to do such a repair given the right circumstances. But your first time welding being an inner sill , out doors on your back on a cold and damp floor with a gasless mig will be awful and frustrating resulting in a size 12 kick in the old mojo plums,  I can patch up an old crock to an okay standard and even id be inclined to say fuck that!  

If you'd ever like to have a go at a bit of sparkle stick action , im a fair trek from you over in Dunstable . But you would be more than welcome to have a crack at it at the workshop. 

You have an AX so i would bet that needs a plate or two behind the headlights!  

Please Keep up the good work!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suppose money spent on tools at least, is rarely wasted. My Mig cost a lot in 1989,more than weeks gross wages. I'm still using it now, must have kept well over a dozen cars on the road with it. To me, the 309 would have to have some sentimental value to make me want to get it back on the road. A red D reg 309 1100 GE was my dads last car. Bought new in 1986 and kept till 2002 when he gave up driving at 83 years old. He gave it to me to do what I wanted with. It was in a bit of a state. Don't think it had ever been washed, mushroom growing on back seat. Loads of little parking dents and scuffs. Rust starting on sills, engine breathing heavily despite, or because of the low mileage. A friends daughter bought it to go back and forth to university before passing it to her brother.Their Dad has a farm nearby and think it might have been eventually parked up and might even still be there (sound familiar?). Hope it works out for the good Doctor one way or another, met him a few weeks ago at the last FoD. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going to clean up and cut back the two sill rears to clean metal, then we can at least see what we're up against. I already have a grinder and flap wheel, so that's no expense. 

It does kinda feel like a car that's sat in a scrapyard for 14 years rather than a garage tbf.

But if I can get it going relatively reliably, the clutch and brakes work, the electrics work and if the welding can be done to MOT standard at very least, I reckon it's saveable. 

If for some reason I can't continue, someone else can take it on, at cost, because I never intended to make any money on it, just to save it. 

If anyone who has put money in the pot wanted their donation back, that would be fine too, no questions or bad feeling. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Talbot said:

I've often wondered about getting a very early 309 and then re-badging the entire car as the Talbot Arizona it was intended to be.  Would confuse a few people at car shows that's for sure, especially if I tell them it's a pre-production model.

Well, the logical thing to do would be to get this one roadworthy, sell the plate and get a cheap 'early' private plate for this. 😁

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, sierraman said:

You could always prep it and make the repair patches, that’s 75% of the work done then. Just get someone to weld it on then you pick it back up. 

That's kinda what I'm think of doing. I have a small 600x600* piece of steel I can practice making the patch out of. 

* Optimistic I know 😂

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, DoctorRetro said:

That's kinda what I'm think of doing. I have a small 600x600* piece of steel I can practice making the patch out of. 

* Optimistic I know 😂

 

If you can find a Pug in a breaker, or any car with a similar / same sill profile, you can maybe chop bits off it and clean them up. It saves having to bend sheet metal which, for a curved sill profile, can be frustrating.

It's also a good way of finding bits to practise on when you start welding . Getting an old knackered door, cutting bits and gluing them back on is a good way of getting used to doing bodywork.  Doing first welds straight onto a car is a guaranteed enthusiasm killer as all the mistakes learning blemishes become permanent features of the car. There's no shame in that, I think many of us have probably done it and wished we hadn't.

And just to add to the consensus, it's better to avoid gasless for bodywork. Blasting a patch onto a chassis rail? It'll be fine for that, but on thin French tin it will just blow more holes than it fixes until you get a very finely honed sense for how it welds, and it still won't be as good as a shielded weld.  Gas welding by comparison is quite straightforward so if you can borrow a welder and blag a bottle of pub CO2 that would be ideal. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's worth noting that cheap welders can be a bit, well, shit. I've never welded on a car, but with a decent welder I can lay a good quality* bead and join two bits of metal together. With my cheap Cosmo welder I really struggle, the main problem being a really inconsistent wire feed. I don't know what price point you need to reach to avoid stuff like that, but it's probably a bit more than £50 off Facebook marketplace.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, reb said:

It's worth noting that cheap welders can be a bit, well, shit. I've never welded on a car, but with a decent welder I can lay a good quality* bead and join two bits of metal together. With my cheap Cosmo welder I really struggle, the main problem being a really inconsistent wire feed. I don't know what price point you need to reach to avoid stuff like that, but it's probably a bit more than £50 off Facebook marketplace.

This.

Smooth wire feed control is a significant percentage of the quality of a weld.  I'd much rather have a rather choppy small shit transformer with a quality wire feed than the other way around.

A clarke 150TE welder is about £200, and is pretty much the lowest specification machine I'd use for bodywork welding.  I used one for many years.  It's was like night-and-day compared to the shitty SIP gasless welder I had used before.
But then when I upgraded to a workshop Cebora welder that is 854kg of transformer, with a good quality wire feed and a euro torch (rather than a hobby one) that was like night-and-day again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DoctorRetro said:

That's kinda what I'm think of doing. I have a small 600x600* piece of steel I can practice making the patch out of. 

* Optimistic I know 😂

 

If you've got a grinder and don't mind using it you are half way there. Start collecting cereal boxes as they or artists paper are what you need for templates. Whatever you do don't try using corrugated cardboard even if it is the only stuff you have to hand, it is totally unsuitable for the job.

I'm with everyone else on the gasless welder, forget it, that goes with buying a cheap as chips welder too, a mistake others on here have made already. Buy right, buy once, look after it and you'll probably sell the welder for what you bought it for, maybe even a profit if you are lucky. Personally I use pure CO2 from an old fire extinguisher setup as re-fills are stupidly cheap and there is zero rental but I seem to be in the minority on here. Don't believe the internet rhetoric that it's no good for welding, it's complete bollox. (Depending on application)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...