Projects More unibody A coupe progress - welding up the seams.

For those who do not know my A coupe is built from at least four different cars with some '36 Ford and 50's Cadillac thrown in. Seams everywhere. Between that and the chop I have left myself with a lot of work getting everything ready for paint. So I made a deal with myself a few nights ago. Average a foot of welding and finishing each night. So far I am ahead of the curve.

This thread is just going to show how I welded up a long seam right through the middle of the quarter and dealt with the problems along the way.

First is just a shot of the starting point. The fit between the panels is pretty good.

 

First pass of tack welds. Plenty of room to skip around.

 

Second pass.

 

Third.

 

Can't win 'em all.

 

This is a big brass brake fitting I came across a while back. I use it to back a weld like this sometimes.

 

Fixed.

 

Filled in the gaps. Everything was looking pretty good,

 

This is what I used to dress the welds down. Big rough stone to take off as much as possible without generating a crazy about of heat, and a flap wheel to take off the last of the bead and blend.

 

This is the first pass with the stone. Here is where you can really start to see how much the weld sunk when it cooled. If you look closely you can see where the wheel kissed the sheet metal around the weld a few times.

 

I forgot to take a picture before, so this is during. Before I started there was a solid 1/8" of light showing between the dolly and the seam.

I'd like to tell you how I finessed the metal back into shape and got rid of the low spots. But the truth is something more like, "I held the dolly on the outside and beat the hell out of the seam from the inside with one of my body hammers. It worked well.

 

So now you can see how much better everything follows the normal contour. I was really happy about how well the hammer and dolly work went. Flap wheel is next.

 

Sorry about the poor focus. The flap wheel gives pretty good control. Easy to see the progression as you work and bring the weld down to the level of the sheet metal. I used it to shape the bead at the wheel well too.

 

next the 3M "sandblaster". These seem to work really well for burning through everything but the metal. I just wanted to give everything an even finish so I could get a better idea of where I was.

 

And here is a close up shot of one of the welds. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. If I wanted to get crazy I could fill in the low spots with weld, dress it back down, and refinish. But I have to be realistic. It will get filler and paint and be just fine.

 

And a wider shot. Looking at it now I might have a little bit more work to do towards the door. But I'm still really happy with the turnout.

 

Door back in place, I'm shutting it down for the night. Not bad to get that much work done in a couple of hours.