so,

I am replacing an area around the door handle and lower targa bar.
The original area, and the part I am using were filled with a ton of seam sealer, then undercoating.
No spray foam in that area...but it was all around the vent tube...

Its all cleaned out of both the car and the new piece.

What would you suggest I use in place of that solution...

No foam here...

Once I get it welded in place, I will not be able to get in there to well, and I dont wnat anything on there while welding...it will just contaminate what I am doing..

I need all my magic welding mojo for this one..door pillar, handle area...its gonna take some grinding when I get done...lots of nooks and crannies to deal with...yippee.

I will post a few pics when I get everything prepped, then welded, the ground down...


Rich

I was thinking of making my on thread to ask this very question.
The gap between that lip all the way along the bottom of the sail panel seems to be about 5/8". There is more foam-ish tape(?) on the fender that I pulled off there.

I was thinking maybe some kind of double-sided adhesive, but something more gumpy than the stock which seems rather spongy and absorbent, like dried up air conditioner weather strip. It would have to be a lot more heavy duty than that. I considered butyl also?

With the way the fender is attached, there are no welds there, only spot welds at the seam inside the door jam and then the back of the roll bar where the trim would be covering. I don't think the foam tape comes right up to the seams at the front or the back. It seems you could weld with it in, unless you need to weld right there. It gets covered with seam sealer from below after.

I guess if your repair is right there on top of the foam and you are doing it in place, your solution could be different than mine.

I just finished cleaning up that area on mine, spent a lot of time heating, scraping and digging seam sealer from around the vent tube. I know you said you don't want anything on there before welding that can contaminate, but if there are any areas that you absolutely can't get to later, I'd use weld thru primer first. It'll leave a coat of protective zinc after being heated by the weld. And it shouldn't affect the weld-ability at all in my experience.

After welding if there is any remaining surface rust, I'd use rust mort to kill it. Then epoxy primer/self etching primer. And then I'd use wurth stone guard to seal it all up. You can get a cheap schutz gun which is fantastic at spraying stone guard in really hard to reach places. It'll build up and seal that whole area very fast. If you don't want to go the wurth route another option would be to use a schutz gun to coat the whole area with Zero Rust. It's a great product and will build up thick enough to seal seams and flow into hard to reach places.

Yes, Wurth SKS kicks ass.