<VV> Floor pan tech tip

[Smitty]

Smitty Says;  When replacing floor pans or other large pieces to be butt welded, sometimes as the weld gap closes up it becomes very difficult to keep the edges from overlapping one another.  Big shops use Clecos to hold the two pieces in alignment, but I’m not a big shop.  I only own a half dozen Clecos.  One day while fighting such a situation I thought there has to be a better way.  I bought a box of 100 # 4 steel screws and a box of nuts.  Also bought 200 little flat washers.  Armed with that hardware I drilled an 1/8 inch hole through the abutting crack at 4 inch intervals and using a washer on each side of the gap bolted the metal into alignment.  After tack welding about every inch I either removed the screws or ground the heads off and punched them out.  It worked so slick I just had to share the info with others.
As you welders know when butt welding the gap is always trying to close up.  It will get so tight you can not unscrew some of the screws.  I would estimate that about 25% of the screws were sacrificed, and the others were saved for the next job.  In any event, they didn’t cost much.