we're restoring an old vehicle you're just doing a repaint you can't always
trust the paint that you see on the outside of the body panels
especially a vehicle that has had an obvious paint job that's old
this door is a perfect example in beginning it looked like it had half
decent body work on it and not too much damage
when I started stripping the paint down to bare metal this is what I found some
previous old repair with someone just caved and paved right over the old rust
and rod the correct way to repair this is to cut out the old damaged area and
well in new fresh metal the going the end is to leave you with a finish that's
going to require little to no body filler so let's dive right in
you can really see what we're working with I want to start by using some
painters tape as a guide for the area i'm cutting out the idea is to get
outside of any damage to pitted metal so we are welding or repair into a clean
metal i use the angle grinder to cut out the perimeter of the metal then use a
flat disk on the angle grinder to sand away the top layer of the metal on the
edges of the door
with the old metal removed we can make a template for a new metal using some
chipboard or construction paper
remember to add the extra for the edges that are fold over the edges of the door
that we ground off
in fact it doesn't hurt the way more than we need to assure we don't have too
little to cover the edges of the door
here's a tip when you want to recreate the defined broken edge on the bottom of
the door when doing a repair like this is the Versa been break
it's as simple as this take your flat piece of metal stick it in the metal
break like this you tighten your knobs down
you pull up on the lever like so what you're gonna be left with a nice clean
broken edge
it's going to look exactly like the original when you're done the repair the
best part about this tool is going to find countless uses as your metal
fabrication skills progress
now back to the action when using a TIG welder
we want a very tight fitting gap to keep the heat and the weld seam size down use
aviation snips a file and a small sanding discs to get the panel to fit as
tight as possible with their patch panel fitting pretty good
we can now tack welded in place when take welding sheet metal it's very
important that you use filler rod that matches the metal you're working with
then fill rod can be very difficult to find in anything that large quantities
and when you do find it
often times it's very expensive here's a simple solution run some excess McGuire
off your spool and straighten it out what you're left with is the thin filler
either you're looking for all along
when butt welding sheet metal the heat affected zone shrinks as it cools and it
pulls the metal in this is what causes a glow spot or oil canning around the weld
joint a hammering on dolly on the weld seam you are stretching the weld seam
back out and relaxing the metal to where it needs to be with the main weld seam
completely welded we can now drill holes in the bottom of the patch panel and
replicate the original spot welds to help the bottom of the panel to the
inner door structure
finally we can grind away any excess metal on the bottom of the door and
knock down any proud welds on the main world scene
we can then blend of repaired area into the original man
this method of rust repair can be slower than using a MIG welder but it's much
more controlled and requires very little grinding in the end i did use a couple
small dabs of silicon bronze filler rod to fill some imperfections from cutting
and readjusting the panel but otherwise all used was the mini torch with the
take 200 DC and o3o filler wire to complete this repair for more videos on
welding and fabrication be sure to subscribe to the eastwood channel and
visit eastwood.com to get everything you need to do the job right
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