TIG welding rust holes

If you are just in a hurry, just goo it up with a gallon or two of Bondo. Otherwise, cut the rust out and do it right the first time.

 

Welding rusted areas is not the place to learn TIG, especially sheet metal rust. Cut the whole mess out and do it proper, it'll be a lot more fun.

 

......Ditto.......pinholes can turn into hours and hours of work........When your done its still not right.........your time save by doing right...can be used somewhere else....

 

If you choose to tig weld the holes use a 1/16" tungsten, with a sharp tip , and use the silicon bronze rod,( it is also called everdure) in 1/16" dia. place the end of thefiller rod in the hole, and start the arc on the rod, it takes practice but it can be done,,,,good luck

 

We will see. I am headed over to the body shop tomorrow to try it out.

 

Be sure to post the before and after shots if you decide to weld the pin holes.

 

Silicon bronze is not the answer. it is similar to brazing,, hmmm braze,, bronze,, I wonder....

Nothing will stick to it but lead, and if you use regular fillers and such eventually your gonna have problems with seperation.

it is also very brittle so if used in an area with a lot of flex its likely to fail.

 

X2 on the cut it out to thicker metal !! You are going to spend MORE time chasing holes in the thin metal - I've been there !!

And if you braze - remember nothing sticks too well to brass - or more correctly, the flux you are going to use. Been there too!

 

Put a mark on the calendar at todays date. It will be a reminder that today you were given a lot of bad advice and a consistant theme of good advice. If you choose anything but cuting it out and doing a proper job you'll only be creating a bigger job when you finally do it right. In the meantime if the right way is not possible I'd just use the round end of a ball pein hammer, lightly ding a crater on the affected holes and bondo it up. This way you won't be warping the door with too much heat and when you get to do it right you'll be no further behind than you are now.

Frank

 

I've done it with a TIG. Like BPmetalcrafts said; small tungsten w/ sharp point, small rod and low amperage. Just make sure to treat the backside with some rust preventative or those small holes with turn into big ones quickly.

 

I do understand the risks of not fixing it the right way. It was something I was toying with. I am not sure what I am going to do at this point because I thought the shop had a bottle of Argon, but its mix, so I prolly won't be using the TIG, I need to get a bottle for it.

I also thought about dimpling each hole and filling it with lead, that would last longer that plastic filler and it would not absorb water.

 

i don't agree about nothing sticking to silicon bronze...i've seen and done it a bunch.

but i wouldn't use it here unless it was a kind of crazy location like by glass and under trim.....

for this,just cut it out and replace.

 

Good advice can be given, (as I and many others have said cut it all out and replace it) but you know what they say, you can lead the horse to the water, but you can't make him take a drink.

 

absoulutly correct

 

Nothing is as permanent as a temporary repair.

 

Give the car to someone that will fix it correctly!

 

I can't, but I have worked with several guys who probably could.

 

If the rust holes are up to 1/4" in diameter I would just cut it out and weld in new metal and be done with it.

 

Like I said, it has to be finished by the 16th, and there is not time. If it were on one door, then sure, but I have 4 doors, one lower fender and one rear quarter with pin holes. The hood will require patching, because the rust on the hood is too bad. It had just been taped over by the last owner.

 

I don't want to gloss over it, but I don't have a lot of choice right now.

 

Possibly we don't understand the not having a choice part. Explain further this hurry you are in.

Selling the car ? Hope not. Wanting to make it look better than it really is for some event ?

Or did you watch far too many episodes of American hotrod or American choppers and the deadline thing got to you ?

Seems strange to me.

 

This makes no sense at all, you can't do it right, because you don't have the time, but you want to try and tig weld holes in paper thin metal....which in all likelyhood will make an even larger (and warped) problem.

If there's some sort of deadline for the car to be looking good, dimple the rust, and fill it with filler. You "don't have the time" to do it right, so why bother with a welder at all....

"if you can't find the time to fix it right the first time, then you'll never find the time to repair your mistakes..."

 

I worked on the car all day today, and I had only seen the rust once, right after we blasted the car. I decided not to attempt the TIG job, I really just wanted an excuse to try out the new machine. The plan is to spray primer on the car for the deadline and then cut the rust out later and fix it right.

As for why I need to get it done- this is a magazine project car, and we have a story that got bumped up from a March deadline to December. The car doesn't have to have paint, but it needed to have one color on it. We were going to go full-bore, but at the last minute, my painter said he couldn't do it. I was looking at not meeting my deadline, which is a bad thing. In the end, I decided to simplify and just prime the car with tinted primer, which is closer to my original plan anyway, I let myself get talked into the flashy paint job that almost derailed the entire project. I don't want this car to be too flashy, it is supposed to be more modest.

 

slap on the bondo , pics hid everything.

what a great way to build a car to represent your magazine.

 

I should clarify- the TIG idea came up AFTER I decided to just primer the car, I was not going to try the TIG thing and then shoot actual paint over it.

 

Which is exactly why I wasn't more specific, I knew somebody would get the wrong idea. How many times do I have to say I don't want to slap bondo on it? I am not trying to hide anything, I was looking for a slighlty longer-term fix that would not make things worse like bondo would. Sheesh. There is only one permanent fix- replace the entire panel. Even cutting out the rust can result is paint bubbles. I had a shop do a $10,000 paint job, they cut out a spot of rust on the deck lid and welded in fresh metal. This is high-dollar shop, they did it right. 6 months later, a bubble showed up at the edge of the repair, rust never sleeps.

 

no offense Dude, but if it popped in 6 months,,,,, they didnt do it right.

 

Give the tig a go, if it doesn't work out, cut it out and patch it. Check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X6RgJoXfZQ too easy

 

That's actually not true. It happens to the best of them. You ask any professional body man/painter, rust can come back and bit you at any time. The inside of the deck lid was really rusty, but only had a few pinholes. They cut out a large section, but what likely happened was a small spot was lurking deep in the corner of the deck, where you can see or reach, then it managed to come through. It happens, even on 100k builds. It doesn't take much. and its not like they refused to fix it. I am replacing the deck lid altogether, this one has some issue you can't reach, I don't want it to happen again.

 

X2....
Metal has to be really clean for TIG work.