20V CQ Tidy Up

[Error404]

Not had a chance to do a massive amount recently, but managed to get my ABY battery box installed - bit scary cutting a massive hole under the rear bench
(forgot to take a pic), but luckily my template was perfect, and it slotted straight in - then welded it into place. Needs a bit of a tidy up under the rear seat where i chiselled off the sound insulation stuff, but nothing too bad.











Should be sorting out the rust this weekend - my mate Glen is helping as i'm not sure my welding is good enough to butt weld thin steel to a good enough standard. that'll be the worst of the job over i hope....

Then i just need to seam weld the chassis, clean, paint, underseal, two dinitrol layers, new brake lines, new fuel lines, then reassemble everything.... not much really

[Flat on my back]

Pah...

Evenings work yu girl...



Stunning refurb...you'll be on Wheeler Dealers soon...and again...

[Error404]

hehe.. yeah maybe if i lived at the north pole and the evening lasted for 6 months of the year

Looks like we'll need to fabricate a piece to replace the rear of the drivers side sill as thats rotten where its been repaired badly before - another jacking point crush by the look of it - this will have to do for the time being - if it looks good once its been done i'll leave it as is, but otherwise i'll get a new sill and have it replaced properly at some point in the future.

I've been a bit lax with pictures on the refurb recenlt, hopefully i'll remeber to take some when working on the car this weekend

[Error404]

Managed to find time over the weekend to do some more work on the car - patched in new sttel where the rust was, and made a new piece of sill on the rear drivers side, where it has had a bad repair from some jacking damage by the look of it - lots of filler, and rotten where it hadn't been done properly
But managed to get a pretty good job on it and hoepfully you won't be able to tell once its been fillered and painted

Some pics of the repaired section:





and the other patches you'll remember from the horror shots I posted previously:

[Error404]

Once that was finished, i had a mini celebration in the form of a nice cold Peroni

Then Started the seam welding - this is ****ing horrible to weld!
The combination of seam sealer / bonding stuff and galvanised steel isn't very nice at all - I've got countless burns all over me where it spits and bubbles and blows molten balls all over you......... at least i was warned by a few people

Some of the seams are ok if you brush them right back to nice clean metal and scrape as much sealer etc out the the seam, but others are a nightmare and are almost unweldable... well with my skill level anyway

Here's some pics for your amusement















I need a better gas regulator and some more gas, then a couple more days of welding and I should be ready for paint & underseal

[Error404]

Well, the seam wedling is complete as far as the firewall - the front section will be done when i take the enigne and gearbox out for the 20vt swap at some point - but for now the welding is over - added 3kg of wire doing this

As a side note i'd say that this is maybe not the best project to learn to weld on, but i got there and pleased with the results - just need to do the finishing, and i can start to put the car back together.

Some shots from under the car:

[Error404]

Then i welded all the seams from inside the car where possible to add extra strength, as some areas underneath I wasn't that happy with - amazing how much easier and more pleasant it is to weld the right way up, not lying on your back getting showered with fizzing zinc globules and balls of molten steel

Then zinc primered up the seams and starting to look half decent - more pics:

[Error404]

Suspension turrets do not like being welded, really hard to get any decent penetration becasue of the bonding adhesive type stuff. Use high power and the top layer of steel blows away, low power and it wants to just sit on top. Managed to get good penetration from the underside luckily, but just wasn't happening up here, and really snotty.










and heres the car as it looks now - some work still to do

[Acidburn]

good work alex, but no chance i'd do that myself, fed up of working underneath cars hence the new one's not getting much done underneath just a set of wheels and engine mods.

[Error404]

yeah i've had enough too now strangley
Only need to do this once though (i keep telling myself!)

[Error404]

My old fuel pump was a bit noisy, and since in douing the engine swap i though i'd replace the pump while the tank was out.
Bosch 044 is pretty much a straight into the CQ inc wiring, dunno why they changed so much for the S2, only thing needed is a copper washer and the dome nut to remove the pressure damper.
Bit bigger than the OEM pump

[Big Lee M]

Nice work,but the welding you have done isn't it called stitch welding and not seam welding? I thought seam weling was the whole seam welded up?

[Error404]

errr.. yeah probably.. dunno

It was seams I was welding so thats what I called it

[Big Lee M]

Oh right so you have welded seams. Yeah,i'm sure they call that stitch welding,but i'm no expert.Looks as if it will make a big difference in the handling. Great project you got there.

[Error404]

no you're right Lee, stich welding it is, been corrected by my geek mate this morning lol.
Yeah hopefully it should stiffen things up nicely, aiming for a less wobbly car so I don't need mega stiff suspension for it to handle well

I'm remaking the tunnel brace out of 3mm plate rather than the paper thin factory effort, also welding in S2 / V6 front strut-brace pick-ups to the front turrets, rear strut brace mounts and also pick-ups for a chassis brace across the front of the chassis rails behind the front subframe, and one across the middle of the tunnel if i can - need to mount the exhaust back up to see how much clearance there is (if any!).