Nonsense Thread

[mrsleeve]

Roses?

Shit I thought I multi quoted that last.


YES Roses

Untitled by mrsleeve, on Flickr

[2mAn]

Shit I thought I multi quoted that last.

YES Roses

Thats dope. PM me details if you still make em

[MrBurgundy]

That's so cool!

Def stealing that idea

[MR E30 325is]

That is really cool Sleeve!

On V-Day I officially started dating this girl I have been spending time with for the past few months. Didn't get her any gifts, other than some time together, if you know what I mean.

[2mAn]

So back to work after a long weekend. Celebrated my daughters 1st birthday which was fun. Failed at welding up the Alfas inner panel on my second attempt and .... had a fun run with the i3. Now Im back to work where I have an idiot co-worker who is really bad at updating his notes and causes chaos for everyone around him, especially me.

[MrBurgundy]

What's going on w the welding?

[2mAn]

Long story... rookie mistakes Im sure. Im prepping for my 3rd attempt. Talking to a few Alfa guys right now to see if what I think Im doing wrong is what is actually preventing it from properly welding the two panels. Basically I dont have a spot welder so Im trying to weld through small drilled holes to mimic spot welds

[MrBurgundy]

pics

[Northern]

How small of a hole are we talking?
Best luck I've had is with 3/16-1/4" holes and started the weld from the center and worked my way out to the outer layer

[2mAn]

It appears there will be a great solution coming soon. Basically someone with proper welding experience will push me aside and show me how its done lol

[MrBurgundy]

that's no fun

[roguetoaster]

It appears there will be a great solution coming soon. Basically someone with proper welding experience will push me aside and show me how its done lol

That is no fun. You could be pop rivet guy 2.0.

[2mAn]

That is no fun. You could be pop rivet guy 2.0.

no no no...

EDIT: Looks like I'm on my own... all good.

So there are no pics, maybe I will take some tonight, but here's the long version of what's going on and the panel Im trying to weld in:



Its a series of mistakes that I'm making as a novice welder. I might have ironed them all out for my 3rd attempt, but its quite frustrating and my confidence that it will work has shrunk with each failed attempt. The replacement panel itself has accepted the welding just fine, which has been a pain to grind and redrill, but its my low confidence that's been the big problem. I keep thinking I'm prepped and it will work, but then it doesn't.

1st attempt there was a lot of bare metal and I painted everything with a Rust Reformer to protect any bare metal from rusting going forward. Then I painted a weld-thru primer over the spots of the body that were getting welded. My brain didn't think about the fact that the first layer of paint was going to stop any welding to properly work... fail

2nd attempt took those areas that were to to be welded back down to bare metal and only using weld thru primer on them, but it still didn't take. Then to make matters worse, the horizontal section had too much of a gap that I clamped down and figured the weld would hold it together and again nothing. fail...

At this point I think the panel is ready to accept the weld, but I'm thinking on this 3rd attempt I'm going to just leave it as bare metal, but I also think I will change my grounding point. I've been using the new panel as the grounding and am also trying to weld thru the new panel to the car, but my thinking is that the welding path doesn't feel that the car itself is part of the process and just merely a bystander. So in addition to bare metal, the plan is to use the body as the grounding point so the weld must pass through the new panel and weld to the body. Also going to be much more aware of the gap on the horizontal panel. That one sucks too because I'm laying down trying to weld up, going against gravity,

Hope that clears up my struggle. It sucks that I'm in LA and do this completely solo as I feel there is a huge amount of people who could quickly have come and smacked me upside my head for making my rookie mistakes

[twright]

I'm sure there are people like that. The only problem is that they want to be paid fair wages for that knowledge and that prices me out of the market.

Stay at it. You'll figure it out.


"It sucks that I'm in LA and do this completely solo as I feel there is a huge amount of people who could quickly have come and smacked me upside my head for making my rookie mistakes["

[2mAn]

I'm sure there are people like that. The only problem is that they want to be paid fair wages for that knowledge and that prices me out of the market.

Stay at it. You'll figure it out.

There is a small pool of people willing to do rust repair on an old Alfa and those that do will hold the car hostage for months. There is plenty of people who are good at welding and can chime in to help a DIY guy