Some Very Amateur Panelwork

[smurf182]

I've had my mid 70's Cruiser with the usual factory optioned rust for about 4 years and neglected the body almost that whole time. Now the fun of crossing all fingers and toes at the annual WOF test has diminished, I figured it was time for a little cosmetic surgery on old yella.

At this point I thought rather than throwing money at a panel beater, a cheap welder, some scrap panel steel and some rattle cans should have her all patched up and that magic sticker on my windscreen. Little did I know, the mess hiding beneath the bog would put paying someone way out of my reach anyway.

Here it is before the grinder came out. You can just see the 50cent piece size paint bubble under the vent next to the door hinge. That is what prompted this project... my finger went right through it.



This is the aforementioned area after a bit of wire wheel action. Sweet mother of body filler, what have I gotten myself into. Strangely, the area covered by the diamond plate is mostly sound.



Some champion has just bogged straight over gaping rust wounds at some point in the past. And as I would slowly find out, this awesome handiwork was repeated right around the rest of the tub.

This is the same area, but driver's side



The bog was 6-8mm thick in some places.. the old 3M dust masks were worth their weight in gold.

Bottom of the drivers side B pillar after a bit of cutting, where the main hoop of the cage mounts to the floor. This was nothing short of shagged. None of this was visible beneath the filler.



The underside of the main spar behind that previous photo



All this led to some extra ventilation being installed courtesy of the cut off wheel.



The grinder had developed a mind of it's own by this time, and
'a couple of patches, nothing major' turned into bare metal for most of the tub.

Tread plate, off with ye!



Yep, that's FUBAR.

'

Surprise.. the other sides just the same.

[klompy]

Its really not to bad for a vehicle of that age,seen a lot worse than that.

[juz]

Yup have to agree with klompy, seen and fixed alot worse. Part of owning an old 4wd unfortunetly.

[DieselBoy]

That's part of the reason we cut nearly 200mm out of Wopass's truck and put it in the scrap bin

You gotta big job there

[smurf182]

Its really not to bad for a vehicle of that age,seen a lot worse than that.

Yeah, you do see some real basket cases around. But for a guy who's never picked up a welder before, it's enough of a project for me!

Anyhow, most of the rot was uncovered, I grabbed one of these



from Tradezone, when they were running a special, it came with a auto dark helmet, some wire, basically a starter pack for DIY cowboys like myself. Had a go with the flux core wire, yeah NAH what a mess that makes! Threw that in the bin and grabbed myself a D size bottle of Argoshield.

So with that and a sheet of 1.2mm cold rolled steel I set about laying down some ugly ass welds. 40grit flap discs are the best!

Cut, weld, grind, weld, burn holes, cut, weld grind.... etc



At least most of the panels on a 40 are flat or simple curves



But due to may lack of skills and tools, some stuff took forever, this is 5 different patch panels welded together



Ugly but the penetration is good. It sure is a lot easier to lay down weld than to grind it back.



Similar method at the rear



Oh well, at least this time it'll be body filler covering crap panelwork, better than body filler covering thin air!

[snotgoblin]

Looking good so far. I gave up on my 1980 40, the young guy I sold it to gave up on it too.

I spent some money getting some patches in the floor done, but every time I looked at it just was demoralising. Anyhow the doors were held together with bog, a strip of 4x2 and 4 wood screws to hold the two skins together. Awesome!

[smurf182]

Heres a bit of previous owner 'kiwi ingenuity' - no seal for the top of the windscreen.. no problem! Just throw a couple tubes of sillyc*nt at it. Shame it didn't work, it was still drafty as hell.

I spent some money getting some patches in the floor done, but every time I looked at it just was demoralising. Anyhow the doors were held together with bog, a strip of 4x2 and 4 wood screws to hold the two skins together. Awesome!

Which reminds me, the most ghetto part of this truck got removed not long after I bought it. It had house carpet (some cheesy 1950s axminster, with underlay no less!) secured to the floor with roofing screws. No kidding.

Anyway heres how it sits as of yesterday

[Kampfer]

Looking good, I'm a qualified engineer and my rust repairs weren't that pretty. Gets really dis-heartening doing rust repairs you start off there's a little bit to do, and by the end half your trucks on the floor as scrap. Next time I do mine the whole body tubs coming off.

If you need a hand or anything let me know I'm usually free after work.

[smurf182]

Looking good, I'm a qualified engineer and my rust repairs weren't that pretty. Gets really dis-heartening doing rust repairs you start off there's a little bit to do, and by the end half your trucks on the floor as scrap. Next time I do mine the whole body tubs coming off.

If you need a hand or anything let me know I'm usually free after work.

Yeah cheers for that mate, I'm keen to add a bit of bar work at some stage so will be a good idea to have someone glue it together who actually knows what they are doing.

It'd be good to actually drive it for a bit though

[aroma]

your doing a very neat and tidy job

[shortylux]

Looks goods bro. You have bitten off a big chunk but looks like you are winning.

Just start on the "not crucial" bar work and by the time you have gotten to the important stuff you will hopefully be happy enough with your welding. Besides if you can weld shitty panel steel then clean new heavy wall tube is easy enough.

Also do some test/practice pieces and then try breaking them and cutting through them to check out penetration etc.

Maybe that sounds a little cowboy, but you gotta learn some how.

[catalystracing]

That's part of the reason we cut nearly 200mm out of Wopass's truck and put it in the scrap bin

So you kept the 200mm and put the truck in the scrap

[bang-thud-thump]

Im doing some simple rust work in a Navarra so much easier than yours and panel steel still sucks. You are doing well.

I have welded a fair bit of thicker stuff (did a lot of fabrication/maintenance is a prev job) and its much easier.

It doesnt vanish nearly as easily! You may find the bar work a breeze after all this.
My mate learned to weld doing chassis/bar work on his off road race car and he is doing fine.

Well he was till I pinched his mig!

[smurf182]

Have been chipping away at it over the last couple weeks, my 1 December deadline flew right by, now aiming to have it on the road for Xmas



Shot some epoxy primer ($$$$ sorry how much??) over all the bare metal, which made it immediately obvious how scarred the panels are



So reunited the truck with old mate body filler. It would take a couple buckets of bog to get it completely straight, so I have basically taken the worst of it out. If I ever do something like this again, I would invest some money and time into the black art of panelbeating.



A couple dozen late nights later



Sprayed the whole thing in high build primer, which my el-cheapo compressor was less than impressed with, was like painting with a super thickshake. Blocked it back with 400grit (as much as you can block sand panels as wavy as Cook Straight anyway) and here it sits ready for the main event this weekend



Which I'm pretty amped for, Sun Fusion 5A3, the yellow from the late model FJ Cruiser.

[DieselBoy]

Awesome

[Im a Tumor]

Awesome work man looks like u have the hang of it!.
I found that welding exhaust tubing etc was a lot easier than panel steel. thankfully iv only had to do a small section on the wellside deck of my Hilux sofar.

[shortylux]

Nice work. Wana do mine next?

[wopass]

That's part of the reason we cut nearly 200mm out of Wopass's truck and put it in the scrap bin

You gotta big job there

hahhaha yea man, it was Rotten as fowk!!

[3VILC]

Agreed you've done a good job there mate, welding thin steel sux arse compared to heavier stuff so you should be fine, might have to do a few passes for really thick stuff depending how good your mig is, but I'm far from an expert and would have given up long before you I think a lot of us backyard welders use the grind, weld, burn holes, weld up holes method
I've only got an old weldwell stick welder so panel is far beyond my skills, but great for making up barwork and the like, made up my own winch mount out of bits of scrap steel, and no signs of it cracking yet

[ChurchurDan]

That is some decent work for your first time doing it. It would probably put some panel beaters to shame.

[smurf182]

That is some decent work for your first time doing it. It would probably put some panel beaters to shame.

Cars always look better in photos, this one's no exception Up close some of the bodywork looks pretty average, trust me

Which fits well with the colour coat I did over the weekend, where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Some savage runs and sags (this is the worst aspect), overspray, dust and bugs, pinholes in the filler, some massive droplets of water and I even managed to drag the air hose along one of the still drying fenders.

I even broke the windscreen when I flipped it forward to paint the top.



Briefly thought about colour sanding it.. for all of 2 seconds, then I put it back together and went for a fang down the road for the first time in too long.



It looks shit hot from a couple metres back, and for a project that was only meant to be patching up a couple little rust holes, is good enough for me.

For now

[smurf182]

For some reasons I can't explain, I bought another rustbucket. This time a 1985 Landcruiser BJ61. Probably the slowest vehicle I have ever owned. Rusty in all the usual places for these wagons.

Here is the passenger side roof. The double skin section near the gutter collects moisture over the years and where the metal is in close contact, rusts away



Here you can see the situation underneath, after some POR15.



Now we can make this disappear for another 10 years hopefully



And somehow managed to weld this all up without setting the roof lining alight and burning the whole lot to the ground



Drivers side was the same story, with some added rust above the drivers door. Here it is mid grinding down



Now I'm just hoping to find some front doors, as they are more rust than steel. Anyone out there wrecking a 60?

[3VILC]

Smurf you must be a sucker for punishment haha. Should see my zook, the roof skins were so rusty around the gutters it looked like perforations, mind you it had sat upside down on a farm for some time haha. Mister grinder quickly decided the roof looked better on the floor. The rest of the body gets scary when you get a speedstrip wheel near the rust holes, but its only a bush basher so some bog, chequerplate, and a quick spray with whatever paint is laying around will do for mine.
Is flux cored migreally just messy full stop? I foolishly brought one on special with no gas option and it makes a ridiculous mess.. I'm sure I could do nicer panel welds using 2.5mm rods on my ancient stick welder

[smurf182]

Smurf you must be a sucker for punishment haha. Should see my zook, the roof skins were so rusty around the gutters it looked like perforations, mind you it had sat upside down on a farm for some time haha. Mister grinder quickly decided the roof looked better on the floor. The rest of the body gets scary when you get a speedstrip wheel near the rust holes, but its only a bush basher so some bog, chequerplate, and a quick spray with whatever paint is laying around will do for mine.
Is flux cored migreally just messy full stop? I foolishly brought one on special with no gas option and it makes a ridiculous mess.. I'm sure I could do nicer panel welds using 2.5mm rods on my ancient stick welder

Yeah sucker for punishment about sums it up. But these are the things we do when we are too tinny to pay someone to do it.

I didn't spend much time with the flux core. Apparently it burns hotter than regular wire which is not ideal for sheet metal. But if you keep to the method of just stacking spot welds up along a join you might have some success?

I have now gone down to 0.6mm with Argoshield Light and find it a bit easier than the 0.8mm wire.

Got some filler on last weekend, hopefully paint sometime this weekend. Gutted I didn't take any pics of the back corner in progress, what a huckery bit of Heath Robinson shit that was!