Welding the left pan half

Today was spent welding in the second pan half.

As before this was plug welded and the edge of the pan dressed as I went along.

Just have a few holes left to weld where the Cleco pins went in. I'll probably take these out slightly and plug weld again. Also need to flip the pan over and weld the rear where the pan meets the torsion bar housing.

Back to it

Got a gas bottle refill yesterday so back to work...

After making sure I had both front and rear axles completely level I started plug welding the right side pan half in place.

For each weld I made sure I had good contact between the panel and the lip of the chassis spine to ensure a good weld. This was done by dressing the panel a little.

Here we have the pan half with all plug welds done. A quick clean up with a wire bush on an angle grinder and a coat of primer should keep the surface rust at bay. I'll clean up the welds after welding the left pan half.

Rain stops play

Well,  not rain really but lack of welding gas. I'd been getting low for a while and hoped to go get a refill Yesterday. Unfortunately, it's been that long since I last got a new bottle, that my supplier closed their outlet where I used to go! I've found a few others but most aren't open on a weekend.

Hopefully I'll be able to get a refill either in the week or next Saturday and will be then welding the pans in place.

Preparing the second pan half

With the first pan half located and ready for welding it was time to fit the second. With it roughly laid in place it was clear that it needed moving to the front for a correct fit and to be aligned with the right hand pan half. 

The problem was found to be this tag on the rear torsion bar housing, so out with the grinder to take a thin slice off.

Pan back in place and the fit was fine.

 The pan was one again positioned and then drilled as before for the Cleco pins (6" apart). Some adjustment of the panel was needed to get it to sit neatly on the chassis spine lip. Once done the pan was cleaned on top and bottom edges then punched for plug welding at 1" intervals.

Primed with weld through primer on the bottom edge.

Held in it's final position and ready for welding. This is the first time I've had a full floorpan for around 5 years!

Having positioned the panel I found a couple of dents that must have happened during delivery. These were knocked out using a hammer and dolly.

Finishing up the chassis spine and starting the pan halves

Quite a bit done today...

First up was finishing off cleaning and priming the underside of the frame horns and rear torsion bar housing.

Wire brush on aa angle grinder was used as before. For areas that couldn't be done this was I resorted to a small wire brush on an air drill.

Once done the bare metal was treated with Metal Ready.

Then it was given a coat of primer to keep surface rust at bay. I have one job left on the spine which is to weld up a small drilled hole in the underside. I'll tackle this at a later date as I'm in need of a tool to do the job that I don't yet have.

With the spine virtually complete it was time to make a start on fitting the new pan halves. I went for heavy duty panels from Heritage. Here the first panel is roughly aligned to gauge general fit.

This area needed slight adjustment to fit correctly.

As did the corner in this picture where a very small slither of the pan was trimmed off.

Needing to hold the pan half in place for welding and not having any clamps long enough, I bought some of these. They are Cleco panel pins. The idea is you drill both panels to be welded together then use the pin to temporarily hold them. The pliers are used to fit the pins.

ONce I was happy with the general fit of the pan I started drilling holes and fitting the Cleco pins.

Pan half in place and held with a number of pins fitted at six inch intervals.

Next job was to mark the pan half at one inch intervals where it would be punched for plug welding. This spacing matches the spacing of the spot welds originally used by VW.

Pan half removed, holes punched and underside cleaned from paint.

The lip area was then primed with weld through primer.

Next it was fitted back into place wth the Cleco pins, ready for welding.

Welding in the cover tabs

Well, over the week I managed to get a new supply of mig wire, although my gas bottle is now running very low! Despite this I thought I'd try and get the cover tabs welded in place. As I'd already started with the first one I just continued plug welding it.

Then on to all the rest, one by one. They were each carefully positioned and clamped in place before being welded.

The welds were then cleaned up...

...and a coat of primer sprayed on.

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Small step backwards and a slight hiatus

After cleaning up the inside of the chassis spine I was ready to plug weld the cover tabs in place.

First job was to coat the tabs with weld through primer on the side that faces the chassis spine in order to avoid corrosion at a later date.

Then the first tab was positioned and plug welded in place. Unfortunately this led to a rethink. Where I had pre-drilled the tabs for the Camloc fasteners, this made it very difficult to position the tabs, to the extent that the second tab I tried would have been completely out of alignment. The only thing to do was to start again and leave the drilling of the tabs until they were in position.

Having also seen the tabs in place I decided I didn't like the look of them either so took the opportunity to re-design them. Below, the new tabs are marked out.

Then rougly cut to shape. You can see that this time I opted to make pairs of tabs together. This should resolve any aligning issues.

Here they are trimmed to the final shape. I also chose to round off all the corners.

Masked up ready to prime the inside face.

The rear-most tab clamped in place and plug welding started. Unfortunately at this point I ran out of mig wire so all stop whilst I order up some more! Even at this stage though I much prefer the look of the new tabs so am kind of happy I had the earlier problem.