Is this shell too far gone?

[Justin B]

Sorry but I laughed a little in my head, IMO, major restoration projects haven't widely quite hit e30's yet. That's a fair amount of metal work you have there, but isn't that bad to do. It's just a couple patches in a floor pan :). Good luck with it.

[Brinkley]

lol. i suppose not. no im going to find some new sheet metal and weld in.
took a look at side #2 tonight. what do you think I found? sigh. major restoration project has commenced.

Did some grinding and cutting on pass side

[gstuning]

You will not know unless you go check it out will you?

That doesn´t look that bad,

[Brinkley]

yea ive thought about that, but i bet any junkyard around here would have had the car open to the elements for years now probably worse than mine

[BDSax]

go to a junkyard and cut out a piece from a car that has a good floor, reweld it in.

[Brinkley]

what do you guys think cut out several small patches and weld them or just cut out the pan and replace the whole thing?

[Brinkley]

lol well a lot of that isnt just surface rust there will have to be several patches to properly seal this baby up

[ptownTSI]

that is not bad at all, you just need some sheet metal and shape it the approximate dimensions of that hole. you don't need to grind off surface rust like that either. coat with por15 and be done.

i suggest you go buy a book on metal working for cars.

[Brinkley]

Ok got the carpet peeled back ( dont get me started on the overengineering that went into the carpet ) its looking like it will be ugly and take forever but I think it can be done. Heres some real rust for you guys my car is no slouch it has rusted like a champ!

[Brinkley]

thanks guys for the advice i got to cleaning it up today

[mikeedler]

that is really nothing for a person that can weld--doesnt even have to be a good welder. I have repaired spots 1000000 times worse than that on many cars here in Germany.

looks like some fine U.S. body work. someone just slapped some bondo over a hole at one time.


from this:


to this-- and this is no finishing(grinding) at all on the welding.

[ddavidv]

Auto body supply places carry sheet metal. The nice thing about repairs in that area is they don't have to be pretty. ;) Big ugly welds are easily hidden by a little grinding and liberal use of seam sealer and undercoat. I would not trash the shell for that. A gas shielded MIG welder should do the trick. The hardest part is a) cutting out the rusted crap completely and b) fabbing the pieces to fit in there.

[Bill-B]

what are u a waffleswaffleswaffleswaffleswaffles. my car had way more rust then that

[///meric]

what are u a waffleswaffleswaffleswaffleswaffles. my car had way more rust then that

[Brinkley]

yea i got to angle grinding tonight, looks better than i thought, but cutting the old metal out and welding in new metal are 2 different things.
Where would i get "metal" to weld in, my buddy has some welding experience even into tig but not on anything this thin he's concerned about it.