I'm seaming the fenders on my '51 Ford. I have the heat on my mig welder (Lincoln 175P) turned all the way down, but it is still frying through the fender and trunk panels (on each side of the seam which I am trying to seal). I've joined the two panels pretty good, but I am having trouble filling the "fry" holes. Am I doing something wrong here? Should I try to back-fill the holes by adding a sheet metal strip on the inside, or just smooth it out with body filler and call it a day?
Lay the torch over on an angle,and back up the holes with a piece of Copper.or aluminum. Don't hold the trigger down,just on and off quickly.
Yup what unk said. get a piece of brass or aluminum flat bar around 6mm/1/4" thick about a foot long,you can bend it to the shape that suits the panel best and hold it under the area to be filled,this will help with the heat and stop the hole getting bigger as you fill em up. john
So does a nice piece of 1" copper pipe smahed flat at one end. The hollow handle helps it stay pretty cool also. And you can comb through any build site and find the shit...FREE!
me too. just buy a small tube from home depot (.30), cut it open, flatten out a little and use vice grips. if you having that much trouble welding it don't try to weld a bead, just do tacks. go from one side of the panel to the other, just keep doing it until all the tacks are connected or just on, off the trigger for about an inch.
Get some wire called "Twenty Gauge" By JW Harris it weld thin panels better than anything I've used before. Its a cored wire not a flux core wire. http://www.jwharris.com/images/pdf3/twentygauge.pdf I use it in my 175p, its really good at vertical down
.023 wire, use gas, decrease the ground wire diameter it's a 220V machine with plenty of power try a jumper cable made out of 16 ga. it may burn up and melt but, it's not the part you are trying to fix.
Too bad we cant turn back time..... The cause of this situation is preventable. On the 49-51 Ford cars the quarters bolt to the Rear trunk panel with T shaped crown molding in between the two panels...resulting in three strips of steel [resulting in TWO seams]. The actual TROUBLE comes from the Cosmolene or cloth soaked in the like ,that Henry installed to prevent corrosion there..... You shear off the moulding with a flat air chisel bit and then you should take your Acetylene torch and heat the seam red hot. till all that stuff is burned out. Then wire brush it clean. Then you will be able to weld it with almost no problems at all.
Thanks for the tip! Gotta get some of that stuff. Have been a welder for 30+ years and have always found Harris products to be excellent. Ted