car door repair

[optima21]

Ive got 4 car doors that are suffering from tinworm, and earlier this year I got round to repairing the bottom of the worst of them. on this one the inner and outer skins had separated and they were held togther with duck tape, With my cars, its easy to see the work thats been done on them as I dont fill or finish the repairs, I just paint them. With my cars the bottom of the doors isn't just outer skin folded over the inner skin, its got some complex shaping. there is no way I would try and copy that, so I though if I built the frame and then just mig weld the bottom of the outer skin to it it would be fine.

when I did this door I dis post this thread about how I try and keep distortion to a minimum

minimising distortion when mig welding thin steel

here's my way of doing this, on a doorskin and welding in a new bottom edge from 0.9mm zintec. When Mig welding thin sections I prefer not to have a gap between the sections and to get them touching if possible. I'll start off by welding a few tacks along the length. the tacks will shrink when...

www.mig-welding.co.uk

as you can see there it wasn't too healthy

so bits were cut out and a few sections were formed to start rebuilding the frame

a new bottom edge held with intergrips before welding

and then tacked in place

and using some square tube to try and keep the frame flat

most of it was fine but this bet ended up being as bent as a £9 note. I think this was due to the heat from the welding releasing the stressed that where locked into the panel there when it was pressed due to the complex shaping, it was easily sorted by slitting it with an angle grinder and then welding it up again.

penetration in the inside looks good to me.

 

[optima21]

getting there now, at least there is now some metal to weld skin to (when I've made a few more bits)

a few bits tacked in place

when that was welded up the outside edge was trimmed to shape using a paper mask taken off a new door ( Ive got a brand new spare one, but didnt want to use it for this )

and the skin was then welded to the frame

an the finished door,

not too pretty, but it'll last a bit longer and if I wanted it to look decent, you'd never know with a coat of filler.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Impressive work.

 

[GSR]

Nice job

 

[Shedendman]

@optima21
Nice work fella
PS,forget me if i'm wrong,but i swear the saying went "bent as a nine bob note",

 

[Morrisman]

Tidy job, came out pretty good.

I did very similar type repairs on my old four door Morris Eight. But then I went and two-doored it after, and then I chopped the top 3".

I really found it quite enjoyable back then, working with sheet metal, but it's not something I'd want to do to earn a crust, on modern MOT failure rust boxes.

 

[BarrieJ]

Fair do's that's a decent job, better than I could have done. Hats off to you sir.

 

[SierraV6]

Good effort - I enjoyed your previous write up too.

I have a pair of 3dr Sierra doors that someone gave me a few years ago to deal with at some point. They’re pretty rotten, but as they’re relatively rare they need saving.