Well, lets do this again!

[akitaman]

22 ga (u.s. steel) high straight steel is ideal for Afla's. It's very close to what they used. Now that is for panels only. Structural areas tend to be much thinker. The caged area's (i.e. door opening and front window post) in an Alfa are closer to 16 Ga. You are very correct on that. The shock tower area is doubled up (close to a 20Ga X2) steel. Keep in mind I'm using 18 Ga high straight on the inner and 22 Ga. high straight on the outer. These two piece will not be independent, they get resistance welded together. This will be far more stronger then what was there. I'm assuming you thought they would be not in contact to one another. Good question endel. Sounds like you have a engineering back round?

[akitaman]

Okay, last of the work that will be done today. My wife is getting hot under the collar. She does not like it when I work on Sundays. Once football season starts (U.S. style) I won't be touching cars on Sundays. That's in two weeks. Anyway, I decided to go after the radiator support rust.

Yummy!


With all this metal being cut off I bet MUBEZZI will pick up at least a have second at the track!


Ah! nice clean area to fab metal to.


See, I like doing this stuff to much to call it work. It's best my wife doesn't find out. She find a way to make it turn in to work.

[PSk]

Interesting ... this is the area that I just did on my car, don't think I enjoyed it as much as you are though

Looking good ofcourse.
Pete

[akitaman]

Pete, when the wife and I visit Australia and New Zealand Next year, You and the rest of the BB'ers down there Must get together with us for one big dinner.

[PSk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by akitaman Pete, when the wife and I visit Australia and New Zealand Next year, You and the rest of the BB'ers down there Must get together with us for one big dinner.

[Alex]

Quote:

Originally Posted by akitaman An Alfa management team went to Russia (the steel provider) to find out why sometimes the rust would be so heavy before the car even left the factory. And at other times it seemed almost bullet proof. It turned out that sometimes the steel would get treated for protection, and sometimes it would not. In either case the factory knew the condition of the steel and shipped it. When the steel didn't get treated it was because, as things were in Russia, there was a shortage on the etching solution. The steel used for military products had priority. The rest would get sent to the standard steel manufactures. I almost challenge this because, when I was in the Army, my troops and I captured an Iraqi tank squad (first gulf war) of three tanks. We had the tanks loaded on a couple of trucks to ship back to the states and in all three cases these tanks had lots of rust. I dare say a 50 cal. machine gun could have turned it to swiss cheese.

[akitaman]

I would like to see where this conversion goes. Just from an education point of view. Not that the past will change our cars issues today but, just the idea of knowing more. Besides you got to figure PAPAJAM or PSK, italiancarguy or others know more on the subject.

[Damo105]

Quote:

Originally Posted by akitaman Pete, when the wife and I visit Australia and New Zealand Next year, You and the rest of the BB'ers down there Must get together with us for one big dinner.

[PSk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by akitaman I would like to see where this conversion goes. Just from an education point of view. Not that the past will change our cars issues today but, just the idea of knowing more. Besides you got to figure PAPAJAM or PSK, italiancarguy or others know more on the subject.

[gritsop]

Hi,

Psk, you are absolutely right. Rust on these cars, Suds, GTV etc comes from the inside of the body. It is also a fact that GTV body panels right off the production line of Bertone were not primed and not only that, these unpainted areas were spot welded and of course there was no way primer could reach these blind spots.

I have seen Suds rusting at the most difficult spots (eg. between overlapping panels, rust kicking out seam sealer etc) and the only exclamation is "how is it going to be treated?" and if treated who can ensure that rust will not emerge a few cm away?

In my 1991 33 one can see the different mentality of AR. I had serviced the floor pan some years ago and I could see inside the rockers/sills everything primed in grey and cavities treated in black material like POR-15 or rust inhibitors.

In addition, we used to own a 1970 OPEL Record which at its 20 years life had a completely rotten floor where you could see the road underneath. So I wouldn't critisize that only Alfas rusted but also many other manufacturers suffered from low quality steel and lack of knowledge about steel protection. (Who knew galvanisation process during the 70s and early 80s?)

Turns out that even if the steel quality is not so high, anticorrosive protection, and proper water draining play a significant role.

Regards,

[py105]

I think it's also now a part of design though as well - and something which can be helped enormously by CAD and obviously by experience.

Take the original mini for example - here is just a list of rust hot spots.

- external seams covered by strip, moisture gets under the strip and rots the seams, panels are attached to each other with... nothing
- Deep dark corners in the front wings and no splash protection. As a result, mud and water are flown into the top corner of the wing and stay there, and rot it.
- Little "shelves" in the pressings - everywhere, inside and outside that moisture or crud sits on top of and then rusts through.
- Terrible door seals meant floors often rusted inside out
- Drain holes from the roof ran down the car and collected.... on top of another seam!! more rust.

And yet, these cars had a full protection dipping in their body prep but it wasnt enough to save them from flaws in the design that helped rust on its merry way.

Even in 2000 when the last Minis were being built with modern steels and everything known about corrosion to that point, most still began rusting within 2-3 years in those spots.

[PSk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by py105 I think it's also now a part of design though as well - and something which can be helped enormously by CAD and obviously by experience.

[GoldCloverLeaf]

Early BMW's seem to rust jast as bad. Its scary how most of the 3.0CS coupes have rusted away into nothing.

[py105]

Yeah but that has more to do with their bodies being built and prepped by Karmann not BMW.

Having said that 02s rust a bit too, just not as bad as Alfas.

[akitaman]

Let the scary stuff begin! charlie and I got a pretty good start on things today. The driver side sway bar area is almost done. We started by welding up the heavy inner plate on the upper arm location box. In this shot Charlie is using the resistance weld to tack down the edge.


once the inner plate was secure, Charlie started locating and tacking down the engine bay, metal that I fab'd up last week.



Before we go further on this area were going to use metal etch primer on the inside of the frame we made. Once it's done we are going to use cavity wax, injecting it from up top. this will protect the work for years to come.

I took this shot to show how hard it is to weld in the inner plate. It's hard to see, but charlie had to feed the welder tip, up into the frame, upside down.



We used a combination of welders in this, The new lower section Mig welded across the top but here, Charlie is using the resistance welder to tack down the piece that mounts to the lower portion of the front valance.


Mean while the parts arrived to start working on the rear!


Oooh new metal! Nice quality too! What were looking at here is two rear wings and the inner, middle and outer rockers for both sides.



Now that we have them I started removing the rear wing small sections at a time. The reason I did it like this is so if I hit a rusted out section, I have structural support around it.






Doesn't look half bad up there.



I'd say were getting to this just in the nick of time! This is something you don't see everyday. Its the outside of the rear wheel well, where the rear wing was.





thanks for looking