How To MIG Weld Thin Sheet Metal - GMC G10 Boogie Van Rust Repair ( PT 2 )

[Music] [Music] what's up everybody welcome back to make it custom today we are working on the boogie van this is part two of the rest repair i'm concentrating with this video on how to weld thin sheet metal with a mig welder that's something that a lot of you guys have been asking me about so here it is we're gonna weld four feet this whole thing totally straight and we're not gonna warp it too much you're gonna see the technique that i like to use to control distortion on a panel like this with mig welding i wouldn't want to tig weld something like this because there's no access there's no access to the back side there's a full inner rocker back here it's totally kind of a hidden spot so i'm going to take my time and show you the technique i like to use with a mig welder on thin sheet metal right now make it custom let's do it don't forget to like click subscribe hit notifications let's get into the video [Music] uh [Music] [Music] all right so we got it all cut out here exposed the inner rocker do have a little bit more rust in the wheel lip than i anticipated once we took this trim off i just wanted to go over what tools i use to get this off i've tried a bunch of different ways over the years i've tried spot weld drills this is how i do it i just clean this thing off as much as i can with a wire wheel so that i can see the dimples of the spot welds you'll see a little dimple in the outer metal where each spot weld is i just use a regular drill bit like a large drill bit i think this one's about a 3 8 and i just stick it right in the dimple of the spot weld and drill a little bit not all the way through you're not waiting for it to break away or anything because i don't want to drill through that back panel you see none of these went right through they're not fully released when you drill them but then you come along with a air hammer like this this is just a cheap air hammer and this is the spot weld breaker tool if you loosen them up with the drill bit they come off like butter with this thing so that's how i peel it off i cut everything off with the zip cut you saw that and then i go i see this little strip that's still left here drill all the spot welds with my drill and then i take it off with the air hammer like i said then i just go ahead and clean it with a wire wheel get all the rust out of there out of any of the pits you see in the time lapse that i took my time this has got some gravel guard on it you got to take your time with this heat is the enemy this is a long straight thin piece of metal so i'm using a paint stripper disc called people call them cookie discs or spaghetti discs basically it strips the paint doesn't mess up the metal but if you stay there too long especially if you're trying to take away gravel guard it'll heat it up and the heat will warp the edge you want to keep this as straight as you can see i didn't warp it that's important so take your time kind of move along go back and forth slowly take away whatever paint to expose this because you can easily warp that especially when it's a cut edge then you're ready to start fitting up the panel let me just grab the panel here there it is so i left a little bit so that i can actually re-scribe and cut exactly where my panel fits up i'm going to continue to actually strip this down and get some more rust out i'm going to do this rocker here as well the other thing i'm going to do is prep the inside of the panels like this one it's going to have to be you know get some paint on the inside here i'm going to use weld through primer because i'm going to have to weld through this i'm gonna drill holes in this lip and spot weld it with the mig back where it was factory spot welded so i just wanted to go over that those are the tools i'm using okay let's keep going [Music] so i just want to show you guys something when we're talking about drilling spot welds and the way i drill them out on a van that were you know the rusty chunks that were cutting off where you don't need to save it drilling out spot welds on something else that you're going to keep this is a replacement patch panel that i cut out of another van obviously they fit the best because they're actual gm pieces but anyway i want to drill the spot welds and remove this outer skin from its inner because i think the inners on not too bad on that but either way you've got to separate them to install them the way that i like to do it is i'm going to drill straight through these like do you see each one of those each spot weld like that i'm going to take a small drill bit drill right in the center of each one so that i can punch through and then i'll go through with a slightly larger drill bit and then just get the rest of the spot weld i find it's the cleanest easiest way if you pre-drill them with something really tiny then your bit doesn't walk around because you're kind of trying to drill right on top of a you know hard little spot weld and then that way you'll be able to you know spot weld them all in the factory spots i'm probably going to use make on this spot weld them back in it'll all look cherry so there's a bit of sound deadening seam sealer type stuff that we're gonna have to get off of there a bunch of gravel guard but this stayed nice and uh complete we didn't really mess it up too much a little bit of bending where we use a little chisel type tool to separate the spot welds just to break that last little bit you can see the flange has all these nice holes that we can use for welding it back on that's how i like to do it now i'm just going to clean it up get it kind of trimmed to the exact shape that i need and then we'll start marking it on the van make our cuts i did pull the interior stuff out of there this is right where that wheel well is so there's nothing down there that can burn i'm gonna wet it though just so that sparks don't travel at all and put a welding blanket in there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so this is where i'm at i got everything kind of trimmed out i'm sort of setting myself up for all the patch panels that we're doing here the inner wheel lip here like our outer skin goes over this inner wheel lip there's a piece of rust right here that i'm gonna have to replace so i kind of work from the inside out any of the places that have rust that my outer panels attach to obviously those things have to be done first so there's a little bit of rust here we've got some deep pitting i was lucky enough to be able to cut that piece off of the same van you saw me kind of dissect that inner and outer off that small front wheel lip and that's this piece right here so it's actually got this flange on it this piece here you didn't even see that because it was fully rusty and gone this one is gonna go in right about there so i'm gonna patch that in i'm gonna make a little piece for here and then i'm also gonna have to rebuild this kind of door jamb inner right there you just saw me make the rocker much in the same way that i did on part one where i rolled this and used the brake to make this lower quarter piece i made this rocker so here is my new rocker that top flange is obviously going to be trimmed to be welded right along this area here pretty happy with the way that one fits i mean check that out it's going to be perfect that's where i'm at so right now i'm just gonna hop to it get on patching in this inner piece this inner piece and this door jam inner piece and then we'll talk about it again and continue on with the outer sheet metal we're also gonna do a little bit of uh prep right after that get everything clean make sure that we get weld through zinc primer on everything and just protect this thing as best we can because we know they rust out [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so we've got this piece in here i did have to pie cut this a little bit i guess the difference between this piece on the other van and this van is the position this was spot welded to this so rather than sever all those spot welds i did pie cut that just a little and tipped this edge in so that we had kind of the nice profile here that's all good it's all in there this piece kind of laps in behind just a little bit so i welded that all in i used the plashing hammer a little it probably didn't need to but just gave it a tiny bit of shape because it does have a little bit of shape a little bit on the shrinker and then this is just a broke piece of 16 gauge this doesn't even actually spot weld to the outside it's just a flange that comes down that's all that is i welded it on the back side so i wouldn't have a ton of grinding here just had to grind a little bit of the penetration off cut this lip off i'm going to have to cut more of this because i'm going to probably weld right on this corner edge right up top here uh so this flange will be gone that's where our rocker is gonna go just like that and then our side panels i do wanna prep all this obviously before we weld it but i'm gonna actually take all the patch panels and temporarily kind of set them on and fit them as good as i can and then we'll be able to kind of mark out where all those pieces are going to go and i can do some trimming i'm going to use rust mort rust mort is a rust converter it's like this acidic thing that eats right into the cancer and the rust any of this stuff that's just like a little bit pitted it just kills it it just murders it so there's no more rust cancer in there so i'm going to spray that on everything and then zinc prime everything and then we'll do our final trim and start installing i also want to say i know a lot of you guys are watching this for uh some mig welding on sheet metal tricks tips techniques that kind of thing rather than go over it on every little piece i was gonna do most of my kind of explanations on the mig welding sheet metal side of it when we do the outer panels this stuff is it's pretty strong because it's like interior sheet metal it's also not super important how perfect that looks like there's nothing there's no structure behind that so it's gonna be more of a challenge to do the outer sheet metal and that's when i'm gonna do the explanation and the technique of welding thin sheet metal once we get to the outer side so bear with me i know that we're halfway through the video but we're gonna get there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so now that i'm waiting for that rest more to dry i'm gonna make the flanges for these repair panels i've got my rocker and this is my lower quarter panel and they come together where they come together on the van [Applause] whoops they both had flanges there so those flanges those tipped edges because this is 16 gauge i mean you could definitely do it but it would be a ton of work to tip that flange and shrink the flange and make it you know perfect on the edge 18 gauge you could probably do it pretty simply anyway what i'm going to do is i just made the flanges i'm going to do the final trim after it's welded but uh leave this much material on it as i do my corner weld reason being is that it's just gonna hold it a lot better so i'll be able to weld that corner and then trim this flange then if there is a little bit of shrinking or stretching just to get it super perfect it's already in the shape so you'll see this 16 gauge can take the heat it'll look really really nice that also allows me to make both sides and match up this edge so what i'm gonna do and what i was using those vice grips i dropped for was to just vice grip these two pieces together here's my rocker flange and my sill flat or um quarter panel flange so i'm just gonna stick those two pieces together clamp them and then i'll grind them so they're exact profile and those two pieces will be perfect a coach builder would tip the edge this is kind of a cheat it's just something i do it doesn't matter to me so it'll be plenty plenty strong [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so something i wanted to mention is uh i just fusion welded this with tig i'm just using a 1 16 tungsten and about i think 80 amps just pulsing it with my foot a little bit the nice thing about this is that there's very little cleanup you got lots of penetration and the heat is nice and even so i didn't warp the crap out of this at all it's uh partially because it's 16 gauge so i just tacked in a bunch of spots until i was about three quarters of an inch apart and then just went for it i did the same thing on this side i did get a tiny bit of porosity right down there so i'll have to fill that up once i grind it but you can see that it's already kind of just rounds it over you know if you have a nice fit so lots of penetration on the back side nice and strong that's how i make my flanges and you can still tweak it once i actually trim this to about a three quarter inch flange maybe a little less if we have to shrink or stretch at all you can still do that so that's why i like to do it that way [Music] [Music] okay so i did a few coats of the rust mort the way to use it is that you keep it wet and make sure all the rust is converted it all turns black like this yeah just keep it wet do multiple coats if you need it and then go ahead and spray a little bit of water to convert this acid i guess not converted but you have to equalize it or whatever it's called somebody cracked me you spray it with a base which is water and that stops the process and then you got to make sure it's really dry i'm going to use a brush to get right in here i can't right now because i just got two hands not three spray with water get it all equalized and then brush it and keep soaking it with water that should be it once it's all totally dry then we can go ahead and apply well i'm probably going to scuff it up a little bit and then just apply our zinc primer well zinc weld through primer on all the areas [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so we got all the panels tacked on this is sort of the first round of tacking i just want to talk about you know how to install these panels basically what i did there and what you saw it's pretty obvious i just put the panel on where it was going to be and marked it cut it but the thing you need to think about when you are doing that when you're marking this and cutting it you need to think about whether or not the panel is overlapping old material and whether or not the panel will shift up a touch by the thickness of the material or a little bit more when you actually set it into place or whether it won't so in the case of this rocker this panel went straight in because there was no material on the bottom it wasn't overlapping anything i had already cut that stuff away so when i marked this that was the cut that was the perfect cut now on this wheel arch it was hung up a little bit on the bottom here so you need to expect that it's going to move up a touch those are the kinds of things you just want to think about before you make your cut because it really sucks to have to be tacking along and then all of a sudden oh you gotta cut a little bit more because it started overlapping that's all i really gotta say about that i haven't tagged down this inside edge yet i haven't done any of the spot welds you know i'm clamped in place as you can see it is pretty good i'm using a 110 volt welder with o23 wire i've got it turned up a little bit so that i can do really quick tacks like zap and it's it's hot but it went and did that really fast so that it's not putting a ton of heat into it i don't know if you can see like reflection wise there's almost no warping you can see kind of my arm in there and that's the key to mig welding on patches you want as little heat as you can go into the panel that doesn't mean put your welder to its coolest setting that means you want quick welds that are hot so that they penetrate and they can just be zap and that's it that's something that you got to know is that to put less heat in you sometimes have to have your machine up a little bit i know it sounds weird it's the same thing with tig welding some guys struggle because they're welding so slow and they got such little heat they're trying to put such little heat into it well guess what you're going too slow and it's not hot enough so you're sitting there adding so much heat to warm up the metal enough it's the same thing with mig welding you turn your machine up you get nice tight gaps the tighter the gap the better the more consistent your gaps the better same thing with tig welding and mig welding you want your fit to be as tight and as consistent as possible so that your welds can be as tight and as consistent as possible consistency is key so what i'm gonna do next all these ones i've i've lined up so that i can feel anything even if you don't really feel anything there could be a little bit of panel discrepancy and that's something that we're going to go over when we grind everything if it didn't line up perfect don't grind until you know your weld totally disappears if it didn't line up perfect that's okay as long as it's close it's more important to leave the weld on so it's strong you don't want to grind it away so that the metal is thin that's something everybody does you'll see on mine too is that one of these panels came up a touch like just a little bit i'm only i'm gonna stop the weld at the base material whatever side of this it hits first so if i'm grinding this and see this is a little bit proud i'll grind it and then if it drops down on the other side of the weld i didn't line it up perfect that's okay it's close and it's gonna get a tiny bit of filler and whatever but don't grind too far you'll get better at lining it up as you go along but it's important not to grind too far if it was something where i had access to the back side and we had a little bit of a panel misalignment we could tack everything grind the tips of all the welds down and then i could go with the dolly on the back side and a hammer on the front side and i could line up all those panels and then yes when you grind away your weld you damn right it's perfect but just take your time we're going to weld all this attack these bunch more times until we've got tacks every you know inch or so yeah maybe every inch or so and that's to keep the panel alignment if you tack one spot here it could you know heat up this side more than this side and you could get a the panel expanding or pulling away that sort of deal so that's why we're gonna tack everything everywhere so that it's held nice and tight it's not going to go anywhere and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to start stacking my tacks i'm going to tack rate on the other side of this tack and i'm going to let it cool with some air some people don't like that some people say don't cool your welds and stuff but yes it makes it a little bit more brittle and the reason that would mess you up is if you're trying to hammer it if you're trying to hammer stretch a weld back out that you've cooled with air and it's kind of brittle and it's mig welded make weld mig welds are a little bit more hard than tig welds anyway in this case it doesn't matter because we're not hammering the welts we're more concerned about panel distortion so i'm going to attack on the other side of this weld i'm going to let it cool i'm going to attack on the other side of this weld i'm going to let it cool i'm going to do that all the way and i mean it takes time it takes time to not warp the out of it what you can do is just be efficient and attack be ready to cool it you're cooling that one you're already moved over attack you're cooling that one you already moved over attack you just work at it the whole way it's gonna look really funny and it's gonna look really fast when you see it on time-lapse but that's all i'm doing you make sure everything's lined up as good as you can be use your finger and feel that everything is lined up nice that's lined up nice i'll do a tack that's lined up nice i'll do attack you know maybe this one's a little bit above this one i'll use the the nozzle of the welder and i'll press down a little bit until they line up perfect and do attack that's my technique you're about to see it yeah everything's going good with this man that's that's just uh that's how i do mig welding when i can't get to the back side all right let's do it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i'm all welded up got everything done you saw there the technique you kind of tack tack tack cool as you're going and then you just keep stacking those tacks right on to the next one and they've got good penetration i know that i know that i've seen the back side of welding like this it's uh it's all good and the best part about it is that there's not much for warpage you can see a tiny tiny ripple almost in the pattern of the initial set of tacks but you'll see once we grind it there's like i'll put a straight edge on that you'll be able to see it's it's pretty damn good now i'm just going to grind it all up now grinding technique you can use an angle grinder i don't recommend it but i sometimes do just to grind the tips of these welds off it just saves some of the discs but just grind the tips of the welds off you can use a harsher grit like 36 or something to grind the tips but i like to use 80 grit when i know i'm gonna get down and touch the metal i use 80 grit on a three inch roll lock everybody asks what kind of discs i like these are 3m cubatron discs they're purple and they are extremely hard they stay extremely sharp they last better than any disc i've ever used and that's no joke they're really expensive only i think only 15 come in a box but they're they're worth it they last you know three times as long as anything else and they're probably only double the price so i like cubatron 3m discs that's what i use and then after we go over all the welds with this there might be a couple of pinholes that i have to weld up but then i'll use a da with 80 grit on it and we'll finish it out it'll get this finish like this [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're done grinding i took it to 80 grit on the da's i like to use just these angle die grinders i'm actually going to show you guys a little trick here not really a trick but a way i save money so i've got three inch angle die grinder and i've got a two inch angle die grinder and then i've got one that i've even cut a little bit smaller it's like inch and a half maybe the different sizes are nice for getting into different spots obviously but with those cubatron discs i'll use them on the three inch and then i don't buy two inch ones i just cut them down because usually you only really wear the edge and those cubatron ones last so long that like the edge will wear out before the center so i just cut them down and then i cut them down again i don't have to buy this for the other ones so that's just a way of me being cheap anyway this is how it turned out it's pretty dang good if i do say so myself i'm not gonna do any bondo just because i don't do bondo i hate it then that out for people i'll do it on some things but anyway we're not a body shop so i'm just going to paint this stuff with rattle can satin black and then the bottom is going to get the same kind of undercoating that it used to have and that's it this guy's got a few more steps to go with the metal work but this is just step one so we're taking care of this side and you know the corners of the other door that'll come later so step at a time it's all good like i said this is all just um the three inch roll lock i did use the angle grinder to knock down the welds if you're comfortable being really steady with the angle grinder so you do not touch the sheet metal you're just knocking the tips off of the weld then go ahead and use it it's awesome because it's pretty aggressive and you can really save yourself a lot of time using that first if you are in a spot where you can be steady so i'm going to show you like i said the warpage factor here i don't know if you can see that like there's a slight bow in the outside of the body kind of as per stock but look at that there's no no warpage or i'd say little to no warpage you know everything moves a little bit but this stuff stayed beautiful there's gonna be a little bit of bondo if he wants to paint this lower rocker area but i'm pretty sure this is just gonna disappear as soon as i run the undercoating on it yeah that's what i'm gonna do next i'm just gonna tape it all off spray some uh rust inhibiting black paint on everything and then i'm gonna tape it off for undercoat and that's it so i hope you guys learned something on this stuff i'm just gonna go ahead and undercoat it now [Music] [Music] [Music] so all right well that's it for the van we got uh got her all done i'm super happy with the repair i think it turned out wicked you can't even tell but that's just bare metal feathered in i mean it's just flat black flat black hides a lot of sin but yeah i'm super stoked there's no bondo in that it's as close as i could get without putting filler on it all of it turned out awesome there's no oil canning in anything it's wicked so hopefully you guys learned a little bit about mig welding on sheet metal and a little bit on how to repair a van i guess so thanks a lot for watching make it custom everybody appreciate your comments your likes everything we're gonna be moving shops in a couple weeks i'm trying to just burn in here after this i'm gonna get onto the model a shortly after that we're just gonna move shop so hopefully we'll have a couple videos for you guys during those couple of weeks that we're moving keep you guys going thanks a lot don't forget to like click subscribe hit notifications tell your friends we're here twice a week have a good one everybody bye bye you

Channel: Make It Kustom

Views: 1,608,267

Keywords: rust repair, sheet metal repair, dent repair, sheet metal, MIG welding, welding, spot welding, metal shaping, metal forming, metal shaping techniques, english wheel, fabrication, metal fabrication, custom fabrication, sheet metal fabrication, metal brake, finger brake, rosette welding, shear, tig welding, GMC, GMC g10, boogie van, hot rods, metal fab, metal fab shop, how to weld, fabrication how to, fabrication tools, fabrication tips and tricks, fabrication techniques

Id: qi5zwQzNnnk

Length: 39min 54sec (2394 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021