See last post. Welding and rubber sealant removal coming to the end. Thanks.
Haven't been very active for a couple of years. Partly because the 911 has taken up my time. So I am finally getting around to rust repair on my '76. The floors have rusted through so I have been working on the layer cake that makes up the right side longitudinal, focused on the hell region. The rust has affected both the inner pieces as well as the outer ones, and it is concentrated where all of the pieces come together.
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I have cut away the pitted and perforated metal. My question is as follows. I am addressing the problem by restoring each piece to produce a longitudinal as it came from the factory. For example.
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In this case I made a piece to restore the tab of the forward inner layer of the outside long.
Then I added a piece to restore the rear inner layer piece the overlaps:
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Then I have made a patch for the outer wheel house piece to produce the outer layer. The patches are butt welded to good metal on the original pieces and shaped to reproduce the originals.
Here is the question. Is this really best practice? For example, instead of making a bunch of pieces that join together to match the original I could use a single sheet that replaces them all at once. With fewer butt welds and seams. My method so far has been heavily influenced by threads from people I admire here on the world. You folks make nice welds.