Failed MoT :( - Now passed! :)

[Telly Addict]

Dagg nabit.

Guess why? Rust. Seems a previous repair to the OSF chassis rail was...not very good.

Well at least I invested in a mig welder recently. Looks like I will be brushing up my welding skills a little quicker than I intended...

I shall take pics as I go to make it slightly more interesting.

[IanH]

Not so great, pics of the previous repair would be of interest to understand what has been attempted and why it has failed.

Hope your own repairs are reasonably straightforward.

[drumtochty Eddie Cairns]

Hope your own repairs are reasonably straightforward.

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[Telly Addict]

Hope your own repairs are reasonably straightforward.

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Yeah cheers Ian, but now I know what Eddie means ^

What's the term...'opening Pandora's box', yeah that about sums it up. I've taken some pics and I'm uploading them as I type, so will add them once they're done.

[Telly Addict]

This is what greeted the MOT mechanic.

Outer...




and inner...







So stripping the front of the car down tonight I get to this point.









So lets have a closer look at the damage...















Well then. Not so straightforward it would seem. I've ordered the replacement chassis frame parts from The mx5restorer. I'll get the rotten stuff cut out while I wait for the panels, but I expect it will take some time to complete this...



Hey ho.

[zebedee]

Very clear pictures of not a very nice subject, hope the replacement goes well, looking forward to seeing pics of the progress.

[Macscorcher]

Ouch ! Not good news ! Glad to see your getting stuck in !


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[OldSpice]

Been there (twice) wrote the Tshirt, paid the bills.
Here's a little well intentioned incentive to keep you going.











These repair panels you have were not mainstream at my time unfortunately, so I went the whole hog with complete sections.
My concern by your photos is how much sound steel actually remains to insert the panels.
I've a feeling some "bespoke" additional fabrication will be needed, but of course you won't really know till all the cancerous stuff is cut out..preferably behind and past what you might think is sufficient.
Good luck!

[Telly Addict]

Yeah my concern too.

Well after I got home from work I attacked it for a while and got a lot out. Still some to go, but I reckon I have the majority cut out.
















After a liberal application of rust eater...

[OldSpice]

You'll get there.
The vital thing is to be brave & keep cutting back to sound steel.
After the welding is over, go utterly bonkers with aggressive rot treatments.
I like Bilt Hamber "stuffs". They have excellent "creep" qualities.
Expensive, but in the scheme of things as a percentage of the whole exercise, so what?
You cannot have too much of it.
Otherwise in 2/3 years max...guess what?

[Telly Addict]

Ok, so time has been limited the past week or so, making progress slow.

However, I managed to crack it over the last couple of days (despite working yesterday ).

First, as recommended, I cut back a bit more until I found good solid metal. Then after the plates arrived from mx5 restorer, matched them up and did a bit more cutting for a good fit.


Tacked the inner panel on first...






Cut out a small bit of steel to fit the large gap between the panel and the bulkhead and welded in.

Then seam welded the panel both sides; this was necessary as the original skin is thicker and was proud of the new panel on the inside of the engine bay.







The next step was to make the outer panel fit, so after some more cutting it was tacked in place. There were some pretty big gaps after all the rot had been cut out, so I plug-welded it. Not pretty, but does the job.











After grinding down some of the atrocious welding, I re-welded the arb bracket back in place. This took a bit of time; measuring up the position and getting the distances right before welding the bracket back together.







Applied a quick couple of coats of anti-rust primer...







Then waxoiled the area...








While everything was off, I stripped down the arb and supporting brackets, primed them and gave them a couple coats of enamel black. When putting back together, I took the opportunity to replace the drop links.







All done. Just need to tighten up the handbrake cable now and re-submit for MOT.

[Telly Addict]

I should point out that this is the first welding I've done in 20 years, so I'm a little 'rusty' - before the comments start about the standard of my welds...

[OldSpice]

Ruddy solid looking now.
Good, determined job.
As for Waxoil...just "salt" it away ( do you see what I did there? ) in the back of your mind it will shrink & crack eventually & is best "topped up" from time to time.

[Telly Addict]

Cheers fella, I'm quite happy with my first 'stab' at chassis repair.

Oh and today she passed! The chap was most impressed and offered me a job lol.

[IanH]

Excellent, you could get a bit of a sideline going doing that....

[71NotOut Steven Hedley]

Great stuff mate

[Telly Addict]

Excellent, you could get a bit of a sideline going doing that....

Funny you should say that Ian...a friend of mine who owns a 2nd hand car dealership brought a car round tonight that needs sills welding for MOT...

[kpdornan]

Hi,

very impressed.
Would love to have a garage etc to be able to learn to do something like that as I'm sure rust will be in my car in one form or another.

Is there anywhere around Dundee that anyone would recommend to use as and when I need to have large chunks of my car cut away.

thanks

Kevin

[drumtochty Eddie Cairns]

Well impressed with the job.

What make and model of welder do you have as I think I will buy one and have a go.

As you say not magic welds but good strength as you do a round bead every few inches to prevent distortion and slowley fill in the gaps to get a continious weld.

Good work.

[Telly Addict]

Cheers Eddie.

It's a Migatronic Automig 180 MXE. It was a really lucky find; someone up in Invergordon was selling it - it belonged to his late Dad and he had no idea what it was worth, so put it on Gumtree for a song. It's a great bit of kit, lowest power setting is just 20A so it's quite friendly with really thin (rusty) metal. As I've just discovered doing the sills on an 02 Micra...