Happy Thanksgiving everybody.
I know everyone has something to be thankful for, including this site being up (definitely interested in some stickers).
Im thankful this rad support has paint on it. Yes, i'm a student at the Ray Charles School of Welding, and yes, it's still pitted and ugly, but i did go to town with a hammer on this thing and it's solid.
Hope everybody is having a good day.
Another piece saved. Looks good. A few suggestions though..........turn up the heat setting on your welder a bit. The welds look a tad too cold. You need that weld to fuse to the base metal. Secondly, or firstly, actually, before you start welding, hit the area with a grinder as you did after. Getting that rust off will make for a cleaner, less contaminated, and therefore stronger weld. Hope you didn't find my comments offensive.
No offense taken in any way. I am in the learning curve of this stuff, and this is the most ambitious shape so far. Learned a lot in the last week and I think i did end up at where youre talking about being. All that stiching mess seemed to be holding up, but when i got to the plug welds, i couldnt get any of them to take, even with the machine all the way up. After grinding everything down, and some internet searching, i figured out that the extension cord was killing the welder. I drug everything up to the backdoor outlet, skipped the extension cord, and that little welder (eastwood 135) came to life. Plug welds filled up tight. Then since everything was shiney from being ground down, i went ahead and kinda re'hit the edges of all the patches and the beads just sank right in. Beat everything pretty good with the mallet to make sure nothing gave in or i missed any too thin spots. At which point i quit while i was ahead, wire wheeled the whole thing, rust encapsulated it, then rattle canned it. Definitely not the best anyones ever seen, but should be functional, and sure was a dang good time. Almost wish the car was rusty'er, ....but not really.
:occasion14:
Ditto on the extension cord. Went out and got a really heavy duty (12 ga.) to use with the welder. It stays on the welder and does a really good job. Great heat control and the duty cycle hasn't changed.
good efforts and another og part saved in the build !
although most of the frontend rests on the support, it is not a very critical piece and even the rusted out condition still held some structural integrity. I am sure that the repair will be good for another 60 years from now. And it looks nice, finished!
If you haven't done that yet, make sure to open up the lower drain holes and put rust protection paint/grease/wax inside.
Thanks, and yes, when it was open, i wire wheeled as much as i could reach, then drenched the inside with rust encapsulator, then drenched again at every chance after each patch. Also re-drilled the drain hole on the battery side, since that whole bottom piece was gone. I'll let yall know if my fender ever falls off. Haa!
That's what we love to see. Old Ford sheetmetal, repaired and preserved for eternity ! :003: