10/25/11 - Patchwork

Last night I went to the shop with the intention of just putting another coat of resin on my gas tank. Fortunately, this only took about 20 minutes to trim the excess carbon and recoat the tank. It's looking pretty good so far, and I'll start to sand and polish it soon.

Done wit this so early,  I found myself with an evening to work on something else. The tiny rust spot on my new 240z chassis has been eating at me for a little while, so I decided it was time to fix it. For those who don't know what the process is for fixing rust, this is a good outline.

Here is the spot in question. (that circular hole is a factory drainage hole, there's a plug that goes in there)

First I took a wire wheel to the area, removing both the undercoating and the loose, thin rusty metal.

The area you see through the hole is the underside of the rear seat bracket. it just has flash surface rust on it, and is very solid. Next, I removed the thinner areas of metal, and made a shape that I could replicate with new metal.

Next, I cut out a piece of cardboard to approximately the shape I need to patch.

Then I traced the outline of the cardboard on some new metal.

Cut out the desired shape and wire wheeled the metal clean.

Fit the new metal in place.

Welded it in place. (this was difficult, as the metal I was patching with was substantially thicker than the existing floorboards.)

Then I started to grind the welds smooth. I ran out of time, so it isn't quite done.

Once I have it all ground flat, I can see where I may have missed some spots welding and can make another pass. It is VERY nice to only have to do this once or twice, rather than ALL OVER THE PLACE on my old car. 

-W.W. SBSS