Hi, I have an '85 Buick T-type has some areas on the lower doors and near quarter panel that need to be patched. They make a patch panel to fix the quarter panel, but the bottom of the doors I have the proper gauge sheet metal (I think it’s 18 gauge). I have a Hobart 140 MIG welder, just don’t have the gas setup. I also have an 80 Gallon air compressor with some cheap harbor freight air tools.
What I’m looking for is someone I can pay to either bring their welder and come weld my patch panels, or if they want to just bring their gas and wire/tips they can use my welder.
I’m willing to pick them up and bring them and their welder to my house, I have 230volts in my garage for my air compressor or 115v if thats needed as well. Or if someone just want to come over with their stuff.
I’m willing to pay person with $ or whatever.
I planned to do this all myself, but I don’t have the time, and I’m losing interest. I also want it to come out very good, so I don’t know if I have the skill. I plan to paint it myself still, the car is all apart so thats why I can’t bring it to someone. I have one of the doors off already to go, I started working on it, but without the gas setup I’m having issues welding the patch panel, so I stopped.
you can weld them with flux core wire. just take some scrap metal and play around with it untill you know the heat and wire speed settings that work. Just tack it and stagger the welds so you don’t warp the panel.
I already tried that but the flux core wire produces a lot of splatter and then my wire get stuck in the gun tip and then the spool gets messed up inside the welder.
did you check to see if the polarity is correct for flux core. I know my welder you have to reverse it to use flux core. or you have the heat way to low or a bad ground. It should weld just fine with either wire. I used flux core for years to weld patch panels and never had any problems.
you seem to have 90% of the tools needed to do this, just pick up a bottle and regulator from your local welding store and go to town. It will be cheaper than paying someone. Plus, if you don’t have the motivation to do this job, what makes you think you’ll have the motivation to do all the prep and bodywork for paint?
Loss of motivation was from trying for like 4hrs and constantly havin to re-feed the wire from the spool in the welder through to the gun tip, like I said the splatter will plug my tip and then the wire will kink inside the welder and then I basically have to cut it and pull it out of the gun and re feed it.
Im also willing to pay someone to try to get the project moving quicker I guess.
maybe I will just pick up the tank. I just figure maybe someone can help me out with this, kinda like how people come and give people a hand on their project. Maybe my project isn’t cool enough lol
Something seems really screwy with your welder, either the settings are wrong, the wrong tip/rollers, or your cutting the wire way to short before you start welding.
I kid you not, with my Lincoln 180, I took it out of the box, installed the flux core with the right tip/rollers, plugged it in, pulled the trigger and was laying beads no problem; lots of spatter, but that’s typical. Never once had a clog or any issues with the wire feeding. You sure the tips are correct? Polarity? Feed Rollers? I know I have to change all that when I switch between Flux wire and regular gas wire.
larger items I can lay a beed on but for patch panels I have to tac them in and keep moving around.
i welded thicker metal with no problems, but tacking the patch panels it just sucks. On an automotive body forum people have said the same thing I’m saying when it comes to flux core.
i just need to buy the tank tips and spool, then give it another try
I bought the gas but I’m waiting on everyone’s response first.
I decided to start over and I cut out the patch I first attempted to weld in using the flux core wire.
I decided to cut another patch panel in hoping it will come out straighter, last time I cut it out with Tin snips but I think it warped the metal slightly and made it hard to line up.
So this time I cut it out with a cut off wheel. It came out straighter but it still doesn’t line up that perfect. How do people do it!
I’m not going to weld it yet but here’s some pictures.
Don’t worry to much about the gap inbetween just worry about them being level , the gap can get filled with weld and ground later,being unlevel will cause you problems when you try to level it out with body filler.
Updated - - -
Also the door isn’t flat it has a curve, you have to shape the panel to match the door. And if you cut the door edge off you need to at least make the 90 degree bend on both door edges to dolly and hammer the edge over after welding. It would be really hard to do the bend straight on the car. You Have to try to make your replacement piece exactly like the original would of looked before you weld it on… If the door edge was cut off I would recommend buying a door bottom and using what you need or replace the whole bottom.
So I need to buy (not sure if its caled this) a brake? To bend the panel ?
looking at the picture it looks like the door skin has a small dent right at the cut since where it’s folded over the frame it looks higher then where the patch and door skin line up. My path panel is fairly straight still, I was goin to try to form some bends by hand, it’s a very slight bend in this area of the door.
You can use a bench top and some carefull hammering to form the edge or 2 2x4s screwed together with the panel inbetween where you want it to bend. but yes a brake is the correct way to bend metal. but almost nobody buys one for home use, they are expensive.
