Thank you
Advanced Design and
BossHogg69, I aim to do it
right. No use botching this job as it's going to get painted afterwards, and it's
not fun if it looks all crooked when painted.
Got some time to finish the work on the rear of the wagon this weekend. I was
going to start grinding the welds saturday, when I discovered two huge rust
holes in the tail gate.
A deep sigh, and a thought that this will take me a couple weeks to do hit me.
On with it.
I measured the big patch inte middle, and cut it out. Then made a bend on the
sheet metal brake. Some persuasion later, I had a part that fit nicely. I cut
away the rust, and adjusted until I could start welding. A few tacks in this pic.
On the other side the sheet metal was hammered and dollied flush with the
original folded skin, and rosette welded through holes that I had drilled previously.
The green arrow points at some more rust.
It was a busy saturday, so I only got this patch welded and partly ground. I
barely looked at the other rust hole, and even thought of using fiberglass
filler, it was in such an awkward place behind the hinge.
Sunday I looked at the problematic hole, and decided to give it a try. I cut as
much as I could with my small angle grinder with a worn down cutting wheel,
and then cut the rest with a rotating file. It worked perfectly, albeit a bit
slowly. I measured and cut a patch piece for it, again hammered to a nice
shape, and welded it in. Grinding the welds was as hard as cutting the hole,
but the same grinder with another file made grinding the welds pretty easy. I
sanded the coarse-ish surface with my not-a-dremel and a sanding flap wheel
of sorts. Those are toys when it comes to this kind of work, but it made a
difference, and my hourly rate is very low
Here the welds are ground. There's also a little patch on the rear quarter,
partly behind the hinge. This all was time consuming, but the result is okay, and I'm very happy to have it done.