I need some advice from those who are good at welding, preferably wirefeed welding. I have a '65 Skylark 4 door that I am rebuilding (low buck) into a driver. After looking for about 3 years, I finally found one that didn't have rusty quarters, trunk floor or floors. It had been smacked hard in the right front and bent the frame. I had 2 - 4 doors to make into one, the damaged one and a rusty one that had almost all the pieces to make the other whole. I have performed the framectomy and now I am turning to the bodywork. Unfortunately, it has the typical rust around the rear windshield. Pretty much the entire lip on the bottom is rusted out and there are a couple of small holes in the metal on top of the quarter between the window and the trunklid. Unbelievably this did not damage the trunk floor or the quarters!! Also, miracles of miracles, this area on my rusty parts car is almost perfect. I have some minor experience with my wirefeed. It has an argon bottle. I did weld up a floorpan for a VW project and I also welded on the last crossmember on the frame under this car, but I have little to no experience with sheetmetal welding. I would like to use the wirefeed to weld in the repair. Enough background, here are my questions. Should I weld in the entire valance panel from my parts car, or just the area the window sits in? If I do the latter, should I butt weld the repair or lapweld (with a flange)? I intend to practice before actually welding on the car but how high should I set the heat and how fast should the wire speed be? I think the wirespeed is determined by the sound the welder makes, a humming crackle, but I would like something more tangible. I know about doing tack welds and then going back and filling paying attention to not overheating the piece. Any help or advice would be appreciated. I will try to post some pictures tonight or tomorrow, depending upon when I have time. I know this is a lot of work for a four door driver but I have plenty of time and so far not very much money into this fun project. Thanks in advance. Greg
"Enough background, here are my questions. Should I weld in the entire valance panel from my parts car, or just the area the window sits in? If I do the latter, should I butt weld the repair or lapweld (with a flange)?" I say cut out a little extra from the parts car, and flange weld. The for the best results, invest in a flange/ punch tool. This way, you flange the lower panel, and punch holes in the top panel where it overlaps the flange. Then you fill the punched holes and grind them smooth. "I intend to practice before actually welding on the car but how high should I set the heat and how fast should the wire speed be? I think the wirespeed is determined by the sound the welder makes, a humming crackle, but I would like something more tangible." Since sheet metal is thin, start at the lowest setting and work up from there. The rule of thumb I was told for wire speed is approximately 1 and a half times the heat setting. or example, if your heat setting is on #2, then your wire speed should be about 3 and 1/2. It really depends on how you weld, but it was told to me as a guideline. "I know about doing tack welds and then going back and filling paying attention to not overheating the piece. Any help or advice would be appreciated." A helpful tip to reduce metal warping is to have a wet rag handy. When you tack the sheetmetal together, soak it with the wet rag for a second. The wet rag will cool the metal quickly, reducing heat warp. -Josh Looking forward to seeing you pictures, and good luck
OK, I'm going to try to attach a couple of pictures. It says they are too big! The XP program to resize won't load. I'm hoping they will print. Any help? Thanks. Greg
Let's try that again. The Brown part is the replacement part, the blue/green is the car. The brown part looks worse than it is in the picture as it is mostly surface rust. Greg
I do have a hand flanger that I bought years ago from Eastwood. It looks like a vicegrip that steps in approximately a 3/4" flange. It doesn't punch the panel. If I do punch a panel and weld through the hole, don't I have to still weld up the seam? If that is the case, my uneducated opinion is that leaving a gap under filler leaves a path for rust and cracking in the future. This is going to be a driver (low buck) but wouldn't a better repair be to weld the seam completely, grind down the weld, and then finish with filler? Thanks for the help! Greg
"If I do punch a panel and weld through the hole, don't I have to still weld up the seam? If that is the case, my uneducated opinion is that leaving a gap under filler leaves a path for rust and cracking in the future. This is going to be a driver (low buck) but wouldn't a better repair be to weld the seam completely, grind down the weld, and then finish with filler? Thanks for the help!" That's why they make "Seam Sealer" You punch the holes, fill them with the welder, grind everything smooth, apply filler as needed, and seam seal the underside. Moisture can't get through the paint on top, and can't get through the seam sealer on the bottom. You can also tack weld along the seam to give the panels extra strength, just be careful not to warp the panels as previously mentioned. -Josh
OK, I'm with you now, The punched hole is on the bottom panel. I weld up through the punched hole like a spot weld. That is how I restored the VW floor pan and it looked great. The top seam is welded up completely and the bottom seam is sealed up with seam sealer. Makes perfect sense. I do have another question. The underside of these panels have a lot of surface rust. On the new part I have access to clean it up. On the car access is difficult but possible with something I can spray on. I have used Rust Mort which does a good job catlyzing the rust but rinsing may be difficult. Any suggestions on how to clean this area up? Thanks. Greg
Done yet? If not, read on... Ive done a major rear window channel repair twice on 66's. First time when I was a teenager. I cut the 'V' channel from a parts car, including an extra 1" wide strip that would go under the existing panel between the window and trunk. I did not flange either, but just overlappd them. I still dont feel flanging is necessary, as you are only looking at a very slight height difference when pieces are overlapped.....20 guage sheet is only 0.036" thick..... So if one piece is 0.036" higher, that is nearly insignificant. I drilled 1/4" holes in the top panel every few inches. This overlapped the extra strip from the newer V channel. Also drilled holes in the V where it sat on the underlying support....these will actually be under the window sealing strip. Believe the method is called 'button holeing' I then brazed each hole, fusing the new to the old. I then cooled each spot with a wet rag....which was a mistake....quenching a hot spot with water causes the metal to shrink. I ended up with a warped panel which took many hours to straighten. Lesson learned...the hard way! I finished by brazing the whole joint from end to end. It's still holding up well 25 years later:TU: Next 66 I did was only a few weeks ago. I used a repo rear panel....so glad they are now available! Old panel was removed by cutting out the bulk of it with a cut-off tool, then carefully drilling out ALL the spot welds...there must have been over 50 of them! ou: New panel was attached in a similar method....1/4 holes drilled in the original spot weld locations....sometimes in the old panel, sometimes the new....it just depended on which is easier to access for welding. Then each hole was mig-welded, jumping around to keep heat buildup minimized. I don't feel you need to cool anything, if you just jump from side to side and give things time to cool. Results were great, with no noticable warpage. On your channel, there is a row of spot welds in the V under where the window seal was. Clean up the strip with a wire wheel, and you should be able to see where the original spot welds are. Center punch and drill partway thru each spot weld. Often, you only need to weaken the weld enough so it may be pried apart with a thin chisel. Corners on mine were originally brazed, so they were either ground down, or 'unbrazed'. Not sure where you mant to make your other cut. Removing the whole replacement panel is difficult as there are alot of spot welds. The ones holding the window-to-trunk panel to the 1/4 panel may be impossible to get to with a drill. I would just cut your old channel at the rear edge of the V, and your repl one an inch wider. Another option to welding would be one of the modern panel adhesives. This would be just as strong, and be watertight as well.
Here is a complete walk through on a 70 gs, with pix http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=90010&highlight=rusty
Great post. It couldn't be more clearly explained. I don't have a gas torch so brazing isn't an option. At this point, I plan to cut off the extra sheet metal on my donor part to get the knowledge of how it all goes together. Then I'll make the decision on whether to replace the entire valance panel or just the channel that the window sets in, using my argon wirefeed welder. It appears that replacing the entire panel is a much better repair and also would reduce the wapage problem as most of the welding would be out of sight. If I were to just cut out the rusted channel and step in a flange an inch or so behind the rear window, the repair would be quicker but a much higher chance of heat warpage along the welded seam. As stated earlier, I don't have a lot of experience with my welder so I want to try and avoid beginner mistakes. This is a low buck four door driver project but either route won't cost me much, just take time. Being semi retired, I have time. This will not be a show car but if I am going to a lot of work, I want to do it right. Thanks for the help! Any further suggestions would be appreciated. Greg
