<VV> Floor pan tech tip

[Les]

I took an auto restoration course at a museum once. To repair panels they did butt welds with torch and no filler. The guy was a torch artist. He would spiral in, heating the area, then when the gap closed to zero he'd dive in with the torch and just melt a pinhead sized area to weld at the seam. Back off, let it cool, then repeat an inch away. Eventually he'd have the whole seam stitched together, zero gap. Then he could go back and fill in the spaces between the pinheads. After working the weld with a hammer and dolly it was ready for paint prep.

Les
corvair at mts.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "FrankDuVal" <corvairduval at cox.net>
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2018 9:38:50 PM
Subject: Re: <VV> Floor pan tech tip

As in a lap joint? Smitty's method was for a butt weld, eliminates a 
rust prone area.

Frank DuVal


On 5/10/2018 10:29 AM, James Cuneo via VirtualVairs wrote:
> I watch a lot of auto restoration shows on cable, many of them use self tapping sheet metal screws to hold panels together while tacking. That's the technique I used.
>
> Jim C.
>
> Norcal 65 corsa
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Smitty <vairologist at cox.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 12:17 PM
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Subject: <VV> Floor pan tech tip
>
> 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.