My restoration begins!, Or, what am I doing working on a parts car? Options

[Cevan]

So I picked this thing up for $150:



I've spent the last 3 weeks getting it running ( it does ). Then I stripped most of the parts off the car. Here's what I've got:

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)

[SGB]

I surprised myself at being able to make strong (but UGLY) welds. Go to a body shop or metal recycler and get some scrap. I think body panals are 10 guage mostly. Cut out pieces and start trying to reattach somewhere. I'm just usig a cheap harbor frieght flux core welder. Here are the real BASICS- about as far as I've gotten so far.
When you first strick the arc, sparks and slag fly everywhere, but if you feed for a second into that initial spot, more of the wire starts melting onto the molten blob.
The magic is in getting the wire to feed out and melt at a rate that corresponds to the rate the base metal is melting and re-solidifying.
I've had some success "placing" little globs of welding material to build in missing metal, then melting that into the base byapplying the welder to the base metal a few mm away from the built up part so that the heat to melt the globs comes up from the good metal I want to fuse to.

Get one of those auto-darkening helmets from China frieght. Take some scrap, weld some pieces on, then beat the whee out of the weld with a hammer to see if it really penetrated. The metal should bend . The weld should stay strong.

edit- well, in the time it took me to write this, you got good. ALRIGHT!

[Cevan]

I surprised myself at being able to make strong (but UGLY) welds. Go to a body shop or metal recycler and get some scrap. I think body panals are 10 guage mostly. Cut out pieces and start trying to reattach somewhere. I'm just usig a cheap harbor frieght flux core welder. Here are the real BASICS- about as far as I've gotten so far.
When you first strick the arc, sparks and slag fly everywhere, but if you feed for a second into that initial spot, more of the wire starts melting onto the molten blob.
The magic is in getting the wire to feed out and melt at a rate that corresponds to the rate the base metal is melting and re-solidifying.
I've had some success "placing" little globs of welding material to build in missing metal, then melting that into the base byapplying the welder to the base metal a few mm away from the built up part so that the heat to melt the globs comes up from the good metal I want to fuse to.

Get one of those auto-darkening helmets from China frieght. Take some scrap, weld some pieces on, then beat the whee out of the weld with a hammer to see if it really penetrated. The metal should bend . The weld should stay strong.

edit- well, in the time it took me to write this, you got good. ALRIGHT!

The link in Bartlett 914's post above is pretty good, worth reading. I tried welding the end of 1 inch strips onto a bigger piece and then pulled them off to see where the metal would bend/break.

I think body panels are less than 18 gauge (the stuff I'm using). I'd guess they're 20 or 22 ga.