Rust cutting propject

[ibast]

Thought you guys might appreciated some photos.

It's all been going much, much slower than I hoped.

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[ibast]

I Had more photos, but changed phones a couple of times in there and lost a lot.

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Some of the crap I cut out. I didn't get a photo of the bog scilpture

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Fabing bits. I realized there was a mistake a bit later so had to cut and shape this a bit

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My Welding got better when I reduced the filler wire size. I did a later runs better again.

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Kind of where I'm at now.

Now I'm grinding of excess weld, touching up the odd bit here and there.

Then I'll be into the leading.

[pina4greg]

Looking like a great job there... weld done..lol

[drew56cus]

Good stuff! It can be a hard slog when you keep grinding back and finding more rust, but it is satisfying when it is done.
Why would you use lead these days if you are not going to show it in bare metal? Or do you already know how to do it and have everything you need?
Good luck with the rest of the job.
Drew

[ibast]

Thanks Drew,

I know the theory of leading, but until the other day hadn't done it. Although I have done old-school tin work soldering in the past.

I'm just doing it because I don't want the old girl full of bog. Although I will be using spray putty to get the final smoothness. And, as you can see I'm patch welding.

So just using lead to get the lows out and the odd hole.

Although I think it's going to be very frustrating when I try to do it on the vertical.

I suppose it will be more appropriate when I get to the front guards

I did one test run the other day on the top of the sill. Wasn't too bad. Hid the small undercuts from the welds.

What was apparent is I need to have no steel sitting high, as I cant go back with a grinder or air tool once I've leaded.

So now I'm concentrating on removing all those highs.

and then my air die grinder clapped out, so I moved to cleaning and prepping the inside of the front guard on the car.

[ibast]

Well, leading is fun. There is (of course) a knack to it. It's pretty amazing there used to be people that could get perfect finishes with this in the factories.

I started working on the front left door, and of course the check strap fell to pieces when I pulled it out.

And of course there's virtually none going around at the moment, whereas a couple of months ago there were plenty.

So does anyone know if any other models fit? Obviously the w114/5 does. Some of the w123 look very similar. And even the later side detent style look like they mount in a similar manner. And the w124 w126 and w201 look to mount in a similar manner.

I note some quite cheap new w123 ones out of the states. So it would be good if they work.

I'll get some photos of the door soon. The outer skin had some rust, which would have been good for a lead repair, but the inner door skin and bottom seal lip were rotted, so I need to cut the outer skin out to rebuild it.

But I worked the vertical dent out of it nicely first. So that's good.

Even though I hate body work, I'm actually getting into it a bit.

[Mercmad]

Make sure you get stuck in with lots of hot soapy water after you finish leading to kill off the flux completely ,otherwise it starts rusting the metal under the paint. Lead is much more preferable to bog as it becomes part of the cars structure . I have repaired a lot worse than that in the past on W108's but it's removing old repairs where you see the shortcuts and the problems they cause .

[Bartman4800]

Lead can hide a few sins too.

On my finny I had quite a big blister under the paint. Normal paint would have cracked.
It turned out it was a rust pocket that was leaded over, which then started to grow.

So make sure there are no small pockets of rust before you apply the lead....


Bart

[ibast]

Yeah, Bartman, I'm making sure I'm only leading over good metal and I'm etching first.

And Mercmad is not wrong about the flux mess.

I found the area around the lead went a steampunk sort of colour after a few days. And there was the paddle way too.

So I went through today and scrubbed it all back with hot water and detergent with a scourer.

I was getting flash rust by the time I got to the other end of the car, so I went back with the scourer and a bi-carb solution. then a good rinse off a wipe down and then metho and a wipe down.

All good preparation for an etch primer anyway.

I'll do another etch and wipe down before I prime.