Cuttin' and Grindin'

The 'fit' in the back corner

Although hopes and dreams are the point of this journal, I am sometimes guilty of thinking ahead to the next task even before the one at hand is complete.  Such is the case with welding in the floor pans, a job which I somehow thought would be relatively easy and yes, complete by now.  Of course, it is neither.

First of all, I rather casually underestimated the time it would take to cut the floor pans to fit.  Because I went slowly, cutting at most an sixteenth of an inch at a time, I not only took longer than I expected, I also made about ten times more toxic metal shavings that I had to contain and dispose of, and I doubtless irritated my neighbors more than the guy down the street who uses two chainsaws at once to clear brush behind his house.

Cutting off 1/8" at a time

I don't know how he does that, but I do know that I made a hell of a lot of noise ripping up sheet metal in the past two weeks.  The reason I went so slowly is because I didn't want to make a mistake.  The raw shape of the pans is just that, a bit raw, so I had to carefully measure, cut and measure again.  I did this by eye, using masking tape to mark off the strips that needed to be cut off.  Then it was fit, measure and cut again.

And that was for just one side.  It took another week to finish the passenger side.

The old welds have to be ground down

The corner needs to be cleaned

Another part of this process is preparing the frame where the pans will be welded in.  I have roughly ground down the rust and old welds, but I still have some buildup in the corners that I can't seem to get out.  I bought a set of 'carbon steel' grinding bits for my drill which were useless, reduced to smooth steel in about 10 seconds.  The grinding wheel from my angle grinder won't reach in there, so I have to find some other way to carve out steel from a ninety-degree angle.

Some over-zealous cutting on the frame

The rest of the receiving surfaces for the pan are in pretty good shape, except for the places where I sliced through the frame in my over-eager efforts to cut out the old pans.  Had I observed more closely, I might have noticed that the old pans were barely welded in place, and I would not have cut so deeply or nearly so long.  This means that before I can weld in the pans, I'll have to make a few repairs on the frame.

Finally it fits in the back...

...and up front as well!

Before I can even think of welding, I have to get the pans to fit neatly, and after only a few dozen excruciatingly loud cuts, I have both sides fitting pretty neatly.

Next step:  I have to get a welder.

First try with the welder

It welds but crudely

The welder I bought from Harbor Freight proved to be too small and inadequate for the task, even of welding the body pans to the frame.  I did some test welds, and even considering the fact that I had literally not touched a welding machine.  I made some tests, trying both lap and butt welds, and although I was able to make one, very tiny but good lap weld, I was not able to get good results with butt welding the thin body steel. For body work with thin sheet metal, it would have been completely unusable, so I returned it.

Two thin pieces welded

That weld after grinding

I thought perhaps I would just go buy the next model up and from a more reliable U.S. manufacturer, but the choices at the hardware stores also seemed limited to hobby-style welders.  I decided it was time to go talk to a person, and went over to a small locally owned welding supply shop on the East side.  I learned a lot and ended up putting a down payment on a TIG welder.  This type of welder is more powerful and actually easier to use than the little wire-fed model I bought, but it's also a lot more expensive.

Like $1500 expensive.  That's more than I paid for the car itself!

So, I put a down payment on it, thinking that if I pay off a little bit a month, in about a year's time, I can have the welder I want to work on the body.  In the meantime, I only need to rent a welder to put in the body pans.  So now that I've got the pans cut to size, as soon as I have finished grinding down the frame surfaces, it'll be time to weld.