Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Old-Nail]

I've just been to my local 2cv specialist in order to have a couple of welding jobs done and the bloke has quoted me between £400 and £600 for the work.

The car is my daily driver at the moment and worth less than the estimate for the welding, 2cv's are still (just) plentiful enough to buy another one for a £1000 or so and get three or more years from it.

I wondered if now might be the time to learn welding? The four days work quoted to do the jobs would save me the cost of a MIG welding kit!
.
I don't understand the difference between the various disciplines of welding such as MIG TIG ARC etc but know that the difficulty in welding 2cv's is the thin steel they are built from 'burns through' quite easily.

Pre-made weld in parts are available for these cars so little or no metal fabrication is needed to fix it.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[buzzy bee]

Hi

Mig is the most widely used these days, and I would sugest this to you. Arc is normally used for heavier welding, chassis, but you can get body arc welders, wit very low amperage. Gas welding obviously is where you use oxy acetlyne to make the metal molten, and use a filler wire to add into it. Tig is similar to gas, but instead of gass heat is generated by an electrical arc.

Mig welders, are not cheap, but you can get a decent set for aout £200- 300. If welding inside you can use gas shielded, where gas stps the perosity, sometimes people use a gassless mig, if the wind may blow the gas away, this has a flux in the wire, but I don't like gassless.

I have welded, well filled holes in tin wit mig, the plate was very thin, but have also used a big set with thick wire welding inch thick plate, with some crafty grinding to aid penetration!

Get a night class done, I am thinking of doing some more advanced classes.

Any questions, problems ask me by all means, I will try to help

Oh, get a head auto solar mask, leaves one hand to steady yor welder.

Cheers

Dave

Have a look at this: - http://www.khake.com/page89.html Some is a bit over the top especially for a bigginer!

[Rick]

I've done bits of welding myself, and can weld up solidly which is all I've needed to do so far. The most unpleasant welding job was my first, beefing up the handbrake lever mounting on the inner sill of erindoors' old A30, from underneath. That was decidedly unpleasant, since then any welding thats been needed underneath a vehicle I've farmed out, as being under all that sparky stuff wasn't much fun at all. Not so bad when doing it standing comfortably up top, but grovelling around underneath I didn't much like. But I'm probably just a jessie!!!

R
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[buzzy bee]

Hi

Under a car is no fun, I got real burns doing that once. I then bought myself fireproof overally, a must, still not much fun!

Cheers

Dave

[Old-Nail]

Well, in the past while working as a doorman I have been stabbed (twice), hit with bottles, bitten, kicked, head-butted and shot at (once but he missed)

That I call unpleasant....

Give me a shower of sparks under a car any day!

[ianm]

[buzzy bee]

Hi

Not trying to go off topic, but you can heat and weld just like tig with a stck (arc) welder, using carbon arc sticks, but it takes practice. I am going ot give it a go, when I get chance.

Also with a stick welder you can do electrolysis on a huge scale! hehe

Cheers

Dave

[Old-Nail]

Thanks Ian, the most common for the diy fella's over here seems to be the MIG.

Rather than go out and buy now I'm going to do a little more homework on the subject to see if I think it would be worth my while, but with a habit for messing around with old cars I suppose I'll need to learn at some point.

Never been interested in this side of things before but given the prices being asked by the garages I suppose there's no time like the present to get learning!

[ianm]

G,day Dave, never tried the carbon rods , have done a lot of cutting and gouging and hard facing but you need a big machine for that 300amp does a good job but "B"hot.
Now you've got me going must go out and get some carbon rods and give it a shot.
Tell what is a good bit of kit is a leather apron good for welding and machining you dont get burn holes and just alittle shake and the metal swaf just falls off, stops the wife complaining about little sharp bits in the wash
Ian

[buzzy bee]

Hi

Let me know how you find it, as I am in the same position, wanting to try it. I think you can get the rods off ebay relativeley cheaply, if I remember rightly.

Old Nail, I used to hate welding, when I started, but now enjoy it, having worked basically welding for a couple of years, it is kind of relaxing, and very usefull. Can you weld this up? Yeah no problem! hehe

Cheers

Dave

[Old-Nail]

Hi Buzzy, I think I'd master it eventually motivated big time by the amount charged by garages for the work but also from the knowledge that I could then take on more serious restorations.

Up to now a little mechanical/ re-trimming and cosmetic work has been my limit.

[Kaybee]

Hi Old Nail, it would be worth looking at Oxy-Acetylene welding for the kind of work you want to do. Gas welding is fairly slow when compared to Mig, which is a plus when you're learning, it's also much more controllable and once mastered is neater and more versatile than Mig. A gas weld is less prone to cracking than Mig, and a good Mig weld is dependent on absolute cleanliness of the materials to be welded, so if you're dealing with dirty, rusty or painted items (sound like a car to you? ) then you need to spend a lot of time preparing for a good Mig weld. Gas will lay down a flatter bead that is easily ground or worked with a hammer and dolly, Mig ain't. It's also , as mentioned, able to cut and braze, even use it for lead loading. Gas welds on panel steel can be made to be things of beauty once you're good at it, a Mig always looks "industrial", it's fine for heavy work but less suited for light guage craftsmen style work, cheers, Col.
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[SloResto]

Hi Old-Nail

I have always wanted to weld but never quite got around to learning so have just cultivated friends who can weld who could help out here and there.

There was/is an interesting development occuring in Scandanavian countries primarily - where restorers and panel workers are using super tough glues to "weld" together auto panels.

It was a couple of years back that I did some net searches on the topic but it seemed that the technique was used mainly on non-structural panels.. esp where supported by chassis eg doors. sills etc

Inspired by this, I tried it out using Araldite (not the quick set one but the slow set 72 hour type which is stronger bonding). There were about six rust areas in the Vanguard's sills so I cut them out with a hack-saw, fashioed up some new inserts to suit.. just bending the new sections over the edge of the work-bench and massaging here and there with a hammer.

The repair pieces were only fairly small.. maximum 2 inch by about 3 inch. I made the repair sections a little larger than the hole and sat them in place behind the hole and resting around the perimeter.

Basically they held themselves into position or I just applied some tape to hold them.I then glued them with the Araldite around the perimeter of the overlapping metal..

When the glue set in a couple of days - I used some body filler. primer and top coat acrylic. It worked well and no rust or deformattion has occured to any of the sections.

What appealed to me about it was that you avoided the potential for rusting that welding can show where impurities and oxides in the weld can ofetn rust. Also it is less dangerous than welding and cutting with hacksaws, key hole soles etc can be pretty precise altho primitive.. also the metals don't buckle under the heat of welding as they can tend to do and anyone can master the technique.

Having said all that welding has alot more scope and application.

Apologies for going off topic here.

It would be interesting to see if anyone has come across the technique which has quite a following in Scandanavian countries for some reason.


cheers
Mark

[Old-Nail]

Funny enough (and off topic) I was reading in yesterdays paper about a car that has been made entirely of laminated wood, including many of the suspension components!

Wood lamination technology has reached the stage where it rivals steel or aluminium in certain applications, the car in question could also hit 240mph!

[Job-Rated]

Teak my advice, oak-ay, yew wooden wanna be seen in it...
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