Chevelle de-rusting update

[MM54]

It's coming along. Since I last posted here (I think), I've made and installed the two remaining patches for inside the wheel well, removed the rear seat/trim/folded back the carpet to stop setting it on fire by welding the other side of the metal it's against, finished welding in the replacement inner structure, and today welded in the upper opening patch.

I don't have any pictures of the inner stuff since it's inside and hard enough to see/weld, let alone photograph. You can kind of see the one patch towards the front/bottom. I did paint the back of the welds of the inner structure before installing the skin to prevent excess future rusting. It felt weird putting a tube nozzle thing on a paint can.

Here's a question for those of you who know what you're doing in terms of (mig) welding - why sometimes when tacking this, maybe 5% at most, do I get a blob on the wire and tiny spot of weld instead of an actual puddle?

Next up will be final fitment of the lower rear patch section and cleaning up the welds, then making a new dogleg from scratch (then installing that and all the other cleanup, etc).

[WhoIsTheLeader]

@mm54 Perhaps your welding machine occasionally has a voltage drop? I'm not familiar with the process so I'm likely wrong.

[ClassicDatsunDebate]

@mm54 that’s coming along very nicely!

[sony1492]

@mm54 Cant speak on the weld bit because idk what I'm doing either, your weld looks good. How did you go about doing it? (Long stitch welds, short?)

[MM54]

@sony1492 Death by a million tacks, starting with the first picture, and going along adding one to the left of the existing "string" and repeating. Every two or three, waiting for it all to cool before continuing. Keeps warpage down.

[sony1492]

@mm54 I'll be curious to see the bodywork when you get to that stage. Its nice to see how others go about this sort of thing sense everyone's learned a different way.

[MM54]

@sony1492 Me too. Once I finish all the metal work on this side and do the same on the other side, there's a little bit of surface rust and such to clean up behind the rear bumper / on the valance, then similar on the floor under the rear seat (might as well clean and paint it while the seat's out). At that point I'll move on with bodywork stripping/repair-wise, can't spray primer until it's warmer out so when spring rolls around I'll get a coat of primer on and be able to start filler primer / blocking / more primer / etc.

At a minimum I want to do below the main bodyline on both sides' quarters, but hopefully get a lot more of it prepped. I wouldn't mind getting to the point of painting it this year, but that's a lot of work away. The rust repair is just the big stuff, stripping/prepping/blocking as you know is another big time sink yet to come.