This weekend I spent building a new stand for my new welder. I have been using a Lincoln Electric 3200HD which runs on a standard outlet to do all of the welding thus far. I've built the rotisserie, welded the frame and plenty of spot welding on the panels. It's done a great job however with the intent of putting in a roll bar all of the reading on-line and in the manual from Competition Engineering states that you shouldn't use Flux-Core (InnerShield). So I went ahead and upgraded to the Lincoln Electric 180HD that use 240v and can MIG weld up to 3/16" without problems. Since the roll bar is just under 1/8" the welder will do just fine. With Flux-Core (InnerShield) you can weld up to 1/2" in a single pass, this is double what the 3200HD can do so it should be plenty for what I need to do in the garage.
I had a lot of scrap 1"x1"x1/8" tube that I used to hold the body shell of the car together when I was replacing all of the panels. So it was a good use of the tube and also gave me time time to practice with the new welder. I made the stand a little shorter and with heavier steel so that it wouldn't tip over like the other one did. The new welder weighs in at nearly 70lbs and with the cart, tank and 10lbs of welding wire it's well over 150lbs.
Here's a view from the rear, I went ahead and mounted my extension cord box and attached the cord to the cart. this will make clean-up much easier. I was also able to use a piece of round stock to help hold the tank in place, I spent a bit more time working on it than I wanted but it came out looking much nicer.
Over the course of the last 2 weekends I've spent working on the trunk hinges. When I bought the car they had torched these so they could fit the large tubs in the car so I had to fabricate these from flat sheet metal. However, I was able to use several pictures and get the outcome very close to factory. There are some impressions missing from the steel but after some trunk spatter is sprayed you won't hardly be able to tell. Below is the drivers side and then the passenger side.
After I finished fixing the brackets I had to fix the actual steel rods that went from one side to the other since they were also cut with the torch and someone actually welded them to the brackets so it made for quite a mess to fix. The nice thing at the end is that the trunk stays up on it's own now! I need to make a few more adjustments but all in all I'm quite happy with the outcome.
Here you can see the final welded version of the x-braces that are behind the rear seat. After getting these fixed and the trunk they were the last remaining large missing pieces that I couldn't purchase. I probably have 40+ hours into fixing the x-brace and trunk hinges but now that it's complete I think it was worth it since it will help return the car to a near factory look.
I've finally got all of the steel together for the 6-point roll bar that I'll be installing. I got the main hoop from Competition Engineering which is actually only 20 minutes from the house so I was able to save on shipping. I got the rear struts as well from them so that I can still have the back seat in the car. When I got the hoop and rear struts they were out of the kit to do the rest of the car so I went ahead and got it from a local steel company. I was able to get a great deal on the steel and plate, I got 36 feet of 1.75 x .125 DOM tubing and a piece of 18"x36" 1/8" plate to weld the tube to the floor.
The plan is to finish the spot welding inside of the car and trunk area and then start working on the roll bar. I've probably got another 2-3 days of work to get the spot welding finished on the inside of the car and the trunk area (lot's of welds!) so it'll probably be later this month or February before I can start the roll bar. The other area that I'm going to be adding steel is on the frame by boxing the frame and then adding some tube steel to help provide a more rigid frame.
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