Hey guys Chrisfix here! and today I'm going to show you how to permanently and Properly repair a rust hole in your car.
In this case our rust hole is in the floorboard So let's go underneath the car and let me show you the rust. We need to repair So right here is the floor of the car. This is where your seat bolts into This is where your feet go and this right here is a large rust hole Not only does it go through to the interior But right here is a structural point for the suspension it ties right into the floorboard and there's a giant hole So that's definitely not good This needs to be repaired. Now not only does this need to be repaired for safety reasons But it also has to be repaired because we want to double the horsepower of this car with a turbo kit And don't worry There will be an in-depth DIY video on how to install your very own turbo kit with common hand tools But before we do that We need to fix some odds and ends to make this safe and reliable for Double the horsepower also just for driving around in general We need to fix that rust hole And in order to fix that rust hole here are all the tools and products that you're going to need you are going to need A welder, don't worry I'll explain more about this But you can find them as cheap as a hundred bucks and I'll get more into that as we get to the welding portion That's not the difficult part! The difficult part is the cutting portion and you'll see why and here's the rest of the tools that you're gonna need as Always get those safety glasses on first and as you can see, we don't need many tools at all to get the job done We have an angle grinder with a wire wheel attachment We have a drill and the reason why we have a drills because we're gonna be using a sheet metal nibbler This is really helpful for cutting sheet metal and it works great. I can't wait to show you how that works Then we have a 12 millimeter Socket because we need to remove the seat to get to our hole and then we have our sheet metal now the sheet metal could Be sourced from an actual car maybe from a junkyard. Maybe somebody's parting out a car. Maybe somebody has a shell whatever it is See if you can get some sheet metal like this and it'll fit right? In but let's just say you can't get sheet metal like this. Well, you could go to a store and buy a sheet metal That's a similar thickness and then you could cut out the part that you need to patch the hole But if your holes very large or you need an entire floorboard most of the time those floorboards could be found Aftermarket and you cut out your old floorboards and you put in the new one and you weld it in so you could search that Online for your year, make and model no matter what method you use to get your sheet metal after watching this video You'll be able to patch the hole in car now The last thing to do after we patch the hole is to paint it so that we have a sealed surface Oxygen and water can't penetrate so we don't get rust again. And that's all there is to it Now before we go and start cutting out that old rust and welding in a new floor board the first thing you need to do Very important. The first thing is make sure you find out why it rusted you need to stop it from rusting again Most of the times because water gets in there it sits there and over time it rusts, especially on a car like this Which is a convertible check this out this seal is known to go bed since this top comes off and As you can see there's pulling water down there rained yesterday So you need to figure out where your water is coming from in this case? We know it's coming from this weather stripping right here. So let's real quickly swap it out first We need to remove the top to get to this weather stripping then it's held in by two Phillips head screws So remove the first one and the second one Good and then we could peel the weather stripping off the pinch weld to remove it and sometimes they use Adhesive to hold the weather stripping on but most of the time it's just pressed on like this so it should come off pretty easily so out with the old and in with the new but before we install the new weather stripping we need to address some hidden rust and if we run into any Rust like this we want to address it by sanding it down and then painting it so it doesn't rust any more So first send away the rust using a wire wheel and make sure you remove Every speck of rust any rust that you leave is just gonna spread again with all the rust removed now we're down to shiny metal and we could use a Special rust barrier paint that coats the metal and will prevent future rust so spray on that paint and let it dry All right. So with all the rust removed to bare metal it's painted. It's sealed it won't rust again I also did it in a couple other locations up here and a little bit down there I removed all the rust and painted it we are ready to install Our weather stripping so get the weather stripping in place And all you need to do is push it onto the pinch weld like that It's super easy and the top part just fits into the channel. So press it in all the way and we're good to go Finally, we need to screw these last two screws that hold it in place. And that's all there is to it All right with our new weather stripping installed. This looks awesome. Now we Our water issues so we won't be getting any more water onto the carpet so we won't get any more rust now what we need to do is take the seat out pull the carpeting up and get access to that rust hole so we could Cut it out. So the first thing we need to do let's unbolt this seat to remove the seat There are two 12 millimeter bolts in the front good and now we could slide the seat forward Which gives us access to the two rear bolts as well as the seat belt bolt and we're gonna have to remove that So we could pull the carpet up good and now carefully remove the seat from the car So we don't damage anything then we could remove the floor mat And unfortunately, my door sill trim is broken but that just pops out and Finally we could sneak that carpet out from underneath the rear storage bins like so and then get the center console out of the way And then we can move the carpet to the side. All right So with the carpet pushed up out of the way I actually have a bungee cord to the steering wheel so we don't have to worry about the carpet falling down if we're cutting or Welding we don't want this to catch fire or get in our way now We could take a look at what we have to work here And unfortunately this hole seems a little bit bigger than it looked underneath it Looks like this is solid which is good, but it looks like we do have a bunch of rust here Another good thing is in the front here. You can see it's all good sheet metal I don't see any rust which is good. Hopefully this is just surface rust here So we're gonna just go around here and see with the grinder where our surface rust is versus where our bad rust is So let's get that done. Now since we're going to be using a grinder to grind away all this rust It's gonna create a lot of dust so it's very important You need to make sure you have I protect and a good dust mask now. This is an n95 dust mask It's better than nothing But our only filters out 95% of the particles in the air and these glasses are good because it'll prevent things from hitting your eyes But air could get around it and dust could still get in your eyes So what I prefer is a mask like this this works way better It completely seals your face. So you can't get anything in your eyes. You can see here We have a seal on the outside and we have a seal around your nose double-sealed and this is a p100 filter which filters out 99.97% Of dust in the air, which is a lot better You don't want to be breathing this stuff in especially since we're kind of in an enclosed area It's a good idea to find a mask or a half mask like this with the p100 filters. So that's my recommendation And since we don't want to get dust all over the interior of the car To breathe it in another idea that I had that you don't have to do but it's helpful is get something like this So I bought some 6-inch ducting tube and you can see very simple But it'll work and then a blower motor Finn and I'm gonna have negative pressure So this is gonna suck all that Dusty air out of the car and then you could put a filter on the end of here so you could blow it out far away This is about 20 feet long so I can keep it away from me get that air filtered and then we don't have to worry About that dust getting all over the interior of the car because that would just make a mess So just another thing that you guys can do you don't need to just giving you some ideas So, let's see how bad this rust really is. All right moment of truth with our wire wheel We got the vent going and let's have at it now It's very important to send down the entire floorboard there could easily be hidden rusts also you want to remove as much rust as you possibly can and get down to that shiny metal and Don't forget to get into all those nooks and crannies so you can get a good idea of what we need to cut out Speaking of nooks and crannies. We also want to remove any seam sealer We have near the rust so we can see if there's damage underneath that So just grab a flathead screwdriver Or a scraper or something like that and you want to scrape away the seam sealer This seam sealer is used by the factory because they don't weld the entire seam so they need to prevent moisture from getting in there which causes rust so they add this on top and With the seam sealer removed you can see I'm hitting this area here just to see how strong it is And this is solid which is good news So with our seam sealer removed from all the spots where we want to check out see if there's any rust and we have this Whole surface sanded down so we can see how bad the rust is. There's one more place We need to check and that Is to check underneath the car and we want to take a look under here to see how bad the rust is on this side As well, so just like up top. We want to get to the bare metal surface So wire wheel all the undercoating away to expose the metal and be sure to remove the undercoating a couple inches past the rust hole Sometimes the rust creeps up underneath the undercoating and you could miss it if you don't do that So here's what it looked like before with all the undercoating covering all the sheet metal so we couldn't see and here's the after Now look at how much more we could see in here with removing that under coating like right here this right here Didn't look like it was rusted through from the top, but from the bottom you could see there's holes So we're gonna have to cut this out gonna cut along here This metal is actually good over here, which is good and then we're gonna to come up to above here now The nice thing is the metal up here this top part is good This metal right here is gonna get cut out but this metal up here We're gonna be able to butt up against it and weld right to that, which is awesome So let's take a look at this from the other side Now looking from the top you can see I drew a line that shows exactly Where we're gonna cut out going around all the rust and then we have all good metal on the outside Here that we could weld to and then paint later on and one thing I want to show you How can you tell the difference between bad metal and good metal? Why did this line get drawn here? Why not like all the way out here? Well this metal over here That is solid this metal over here I Could punch right through that so that's how I came up with that line here. This metal is still good It's just surface rust will be able to weld right to it So with that we know all this metal is bad and all this metal here is good Let's go cut out the bad metal and you could cut this out a bunch of different ways You could get a cut off wheel and just cut out this whole thing. You get a plasma cutter You could get a saw the possibilities are endless what I'm gonna be using is a sheet metal nibbler when you pull the trigger on the drill the end of the tool has like A little punch that punches out the sheet metal little by little it's basically taking little nibbles out of that sheet metal So this is super easy to use. It's a versatile tool you could cut in any direction and it's perfect for this sheet metal So let me show you how to use it all you have to do is put the sheet metal in the opening of the nibbler and push it in the direction you want to Cut that's all there is to it Like I said, you could use any tool you want to cut this metal out But I thought this was a good tool for the job where you have good control You can make Street even lines and it's pretty accessible to everybody all you need is a drill also as you get more comfortable with this you could crank this baby up to full speed and get stuff cut out even quicker overall The tool is easy and safe to use and also doing it from under the car gives you more room to move the drill around So it's a lot easier so you get the idea make sure you cut out all the rust It's pretty simple and any spots that aren't clean cut like this. Don't worry You could use a file to straighten out the edges, but at this stage, it doesn't have to be perfect Just get it a little bit straighter like that. So there we go that's a nice clean cut and we cleaned up all the edges with the We could clean it up a little bit more but we might as well wait This is gonna be a nice easy shape to cut out of our new sheet metal So this is perfect and we got rid of all that old Rust and we even got rid of some good material so that we know for sure the rust was cut out I was really impressed with this sheet metal nibbler it worked perfect The only part it was a little bit difficult to use with is when the sheet metal wasn't completely flat It had a little indent or a valley in there. You really had to twist it and turn it with that valley So it's level the whole time. Otherwise, it worked perfect So now with all the rust removed we could take our sheet metal and what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to cut this sheet metal the Same shape as our hole and you can see we have some good points that we could reference such as this piece right here Matches exactly this piece right here. So we just have to cut around that so let's roughly mark this up on where we want to make our initial cuts and Just compare your hole to the sheet metal and mark it up. It doesn't have to be perfect If anything make it a little bit bigger because you could always trim more metal off later then again This is just a rough shape. I just want to get my first cut done and then I could go match it up Make sure I get it more accurate So let's get this cut out and to cut out these lines on the sheet metal. I'm using the sheet metal nibbler Remember, this is just a first rough cut So don't go crazy trying to make it perfect and just to show you there are other tools you could use like this cutoff wheel On an angle grinder. So use whatever you have. And then after we're done making our cuts check it out We have a rough shape. That looks pretty good. And let's see how we did not bad now We want to mark up the spots that we could trim to make this fit better and the easiest way to do this is just to trace the shape of the hole onto the new metal so we know where to Cut and with that all marked up, let's cut this metal to shape now I want to have a little buffer between my cut and the line because I could always go back and Easily take off more metal But it's harder to add metal on So leave a little bit of room between your cut and your line then we can bring it back and see how it looks Getting better for sure, but now we need to be more precise So let's make some reference marks which are just some lines on the new sheet metal that go over to the old sheet metal in Different spots along the edge that way we could easily align the sheet metal to the same exact spot When we make a new cut and then come back to see how we did. So what the reference marks made? Let's cut this more precisely and get a tight fit this is the most tedious but Important part we need to cut the metal to where we think it's gonna fit up nice and tight and then we need to go Test fit it and see how we did then We need to cut it some more again with the goal of getting it to fit as tight as possible and then go back and test fit it again and see how We did you want to make small adjustments so you don't cut too much Material away and you can see I'm getting closer and closer to that green line I drew All right. Now Pitman is everything so spend your time on doing that. We're still not done. There's still little adjustments I need to make I want to show you and I also want to show you it's not gonna be perfect You see right there. There's a little bit of a gap. Well, that's what happens There's solutions to that when we weld not a big deal We just want to try to get a really tight edge all the way around if possible And this looks really good. The only thing I need to do is right there I need to sand away just a little bit of material So I'm gonna go do that and then this should be ready to go for the fine adjustments like this I'm using a file so we don't remove too much material and just file away a thin layer of metal and then let's test fit it Beautiful and this is a nice tight fit. That's exactly what we want. All right now check this out This looks so good All the edges are buttered up against each other nice and tight, even though we do have a couple of holes like that I'll show you guys how to work with that but next what we need to do is we need to prepare both this piece of metal and this piece of metal so that we could Weld them together and real quick. I want to mention something because it's very important What we're doing here is called butt welding We're taking the two pieces of metal and we're Budig them up to each other so that there's no gap and this is really good This is the best type of welding you could do Especially for quarter panels or floors because the metal comes right up against each other and there's no seam There's no chance for rust But it does take the longest because we do have to make sure this is perfectly cut we have to go back and forth and make sure we trim it and get it to fit and Butt up against each other nicely But there is another method that's a lot easier and that's called a lap weld so this hole right here this circular hole Let's just say we wanted to fill that instead of cutting it out perfectly like we did here a perfect circle what we do is we just cut out a piece of metal doesn't have to be perfect and you place it either over or Underneath and then you weld all the seams You can even weld the bottom if you want this is a lot quicker because you don't have to cut a perfect circle you could just cut a square like this and fit it in and weld it now your holes sealed the Downside is you could get moisture in between the two pieces of metal That'll cause rust later on and also this is not flat anymore. We have a bump here for a floorboard That doesn't really matter you're more concerned about that rust. But hey, the factory does lap welds So as long as you put a bunch of paint and seam sealer on it, it'll last for a good long time But I like to show you guys the best method possible And that is the butt weld so that's why I did it that way But I did want to let you know you can Lap weld something a lot quicker a lot easier and it'll get the job done. It's just not as good Alright, so whether you're gonna butt weld your metal or you're gonna lap weld your metal the next part is very important and that is Prepping the surface for welding just like you need a prepper surface for painting to get the best paint job You need to prep your metal surfaces for welding So you could get good welds that are contaminant free what I mean by that is you can't have any seam sealer You can't have any paint galvanization any rust and the undercoating any of that can't be? Near where you're welding Otherwise, you're gonna contaminate the welds and that's gonna cause welds cracking you won't get good penetration. You get porosity all bad things So let me show you how to properly prep this so that we could get good welds so the main thing you want to do to prep the metal surface is sand down the edge where you're gonna weld I'm using a Wire wheel to do this and you only need to do the parts that you're welding You don't have to waste your time sending the entire piece down and there we go Check it out So you can see right around the whole perimeter about a half an inch to an inch wide We have bare metal and we have that on both sides. So this is all ready to get welded into the car So not only do we need to do this side, but we also have to do the other side of the metal as well so same thing sand the floor down where we're gonna weld and Good and don't forget to do the underside as well And then finally the last thing we want to do is we want to get some isopropyl alcohol or acetone And then we want to wipe down our bare metal surface that we're gonna weld on Just want to get it clean from any oils or any extra dirt and debris and this is gonna be our final prep step also Don't forget to do the little cutout piece of metal that you have and just get all these surfaces nice and degreased good So this is everything you need to do to prep the metal to get it ready for welding So that mean we're ready to weld. So let me show you how to do that And this is the thin gauge sheet metal, which makes it really difficult to well, but don't worry I have a bunch of tips and tricks which are gonna help you So the first thing I want to cover is what kind of welder should you use? This is a MIG welder This is a flux core welder. Let's start here. This is a great beginner welder It's relatively affordable at $100 and you don't need any gas now You don't need gas because this uses flux core wire flux core wire has a hollow core and inside that core is flux which ends up being your shielding gas so you could get good welds now the Problem with that is you can see right here The thinnest wire we could get for this machine is point O 3 Oh inches because it has to be hollow And that means we could only weld down to 22 gauge or 0.8 millimeter. Our metal is even thinner than that So technically we can't use this we could probably use it and work around a little bit But really it's not within the scope of this machine. So what I recommend is getting something like this This is a MIG welder is a gas welder. It's a little more expensive starts around about $200 and you need to get gas I'll cover that in a second, but the benefit is you have a lot of flexibility You could change your wire speed you could change your voltage and more Importantly, we're able to get the wire we need since we're using guess we're able to get down to 0.025 inch wire Which is really thin and if we check out our chart here, it says 24 gauge point 6 millimeter Which is the thickness of our sheet metal we'll work with our point o2 5 wire now Let me give you a little more information on how to use a welder so that you guys could set up your welder and get Started at least have a basic idea of what you're doing So the first thing you want to do to get the correct settings for your welder is grab a digital caliper Zero it out grab a piece of your sheet metal I already did this but you just want to see how thick your sheet metal actually is in this case You can see it's about 0.6 millimeters thick now. We can check out the settings We can see we have 24 gauge metal at 0.6 millimeters thick and we want to go 3 volts and we want to have a wire speed of 25 So on our welder we could go to our voltage We need to set this to 3 volts and then our wire speed set to 25 We can make adjustments later. Probably going to adjust the wire speed and keep the voltage the same I'll show you how to do that. Now. Let me show you the gas MIG welding steel you're pretty much always going to be using 25 percent co2 75 percent argon Don't worry go to your local gas. Supply. They know exactly what you need from big welding They'll set you up now all you have to do is open up this bottle all The way like so and then what we have to do is pay attention to this gauge right here This will let us know how much air is coming out of our welding gun when we press the trigger So let's turn this to open it and where we want to be on this gauge is at 10 liters per minute Which is the black or 20 CF H, which is the red you can see we're up a little bit. That's fine Let's turn the welder on and now grab your gun and you want to lightly tap the trigger Actually, that's almost perfect and you can see how the pressure drops down as the triggers tapped That's how much flow our nozzle has when we press the trigger and that is spot-on. I got lucky on that first shot So that's how you dial in your air to the correct flow rate? and then the last thing is the amount of wire you want sticking out when you start is just a Little bit past the nozzle like that. That's perfect So let's go practice our welding and I know you're gonna be tempted to start welding in your car right away but don't you always have to do a few practice welds so I have some scrap sheet metal that we cut out and we're gonna Practice on that and make sure our settings are good and also just for practice for such a thin sheet metal So get your welding helmet on then get your welding gloves on have a fire extinguisher nearby and let's see how dialed in we are And we are not dialed in at all. And that was pretty bad. So let's crank up the wire speed to 35 All right a little bit better, but this should sound like frying bacon that sizzling sound. So let's try a wire speed of 45 and That's better. This seems pretty good This sounds more like frying bacon And we aren't blowing through and this is exactly where we need to be and now we want to inspect our weld So when we started out we had the wrong settings We made some fine adjustments just on wire speed until we were pretty good now to make sure we're pretty good Yeah, check that out. See how this goes all the way through the weld penetrates through the metal, but it doesn't burn through That's what we want So now that we're dialed in we could go and start welding in our car and I almost forgot which is why I wrote this Note make sure you remove the neg cable from the battery before you weld The welder is pushing a lot of amps into the metal of the car So removing The negative cable helps prevent the electricity from frying the computer or sensors to remember to disconnect the negative cable from the battery So with that negative cable removed we are ready to weld I also have a welding blanket set up So we don't damage any of the interior pieces and I have our vent so we don't breathe in any of the fumes So now let's position our sheet metal into the hole. So it fits there nice and tight like so Now one of the most important things to a successful weld is putting your ground clamp somewhere near your welding surface. That's very clean So like a clean piece of metal or a bolt Some people weld on the bolt to the sheet metal in this case we could just use where the seat belt connects I'll screw this in and then now we have a really good ground clamp area like that That's gonna allow us to have good welds All right Now we're ready to finally weld this piece of metal in and what we're gonna be doing is called a tack Weld this is when you weld one spot for just a second to fuse the two pieces of metal together You want to tack weld a few different spots around the sheetmetal that way the metal is held in place Here's what a tack weld looks like up close You can see the weld is small and focused in one spot and it fuses both pieces of metal together This weld has good penetration. It's not a glob of metal on the surface and it's relatively flat So this is exactly what a good tack looks like another thing We need to keep an eye on as we tack weld is making sure the two pieces of sheet metal are level you can see Here there's a large gap and the two pieces are not level so grab two hammers one above and one below and we're gonna hammer from below the top hammers used to keep the metal level as You hammer it up from the bottom like so and check it out this work perfect. Nice and level Okay So that's the process you work your way around the sheet metal tack welded in if a spot doesn't fit right? Use a hammer to hit it in place and make it so that it's even and level Alright, so since everything is tacked in all the way around we use that hammer to make sure all our surfaces are even we are Ready to do something called stitch welding now unfortunately We can't just run a weld all the way across and down and all the way across if you do that The metal is gonna warp. You're probably gonna blow through from adding too much heat to one section at a time So we do something called stitch welding For example, we'll go from this weld to this weld and stop and then we'll go find another tack-weld over here We'll go from this weld to that weld and stop and then we'll find a tack weld over here We'll go from this world to that weld and stop and we're spreading the heat out So we don't blow through we don't warp this and we let these other welds cool down before we go and weld next to that One so now you have an idea of how we're gonna stitch weld all these pieces together The one thing we're gonna do is we're gonna ignore all the spots where there's big gaps I'm going to show you how to fix that at the end So don't worry about stitch welding that right now just stitch weld all the good pieces of metal that are buttered up next to each Other so we'll start right there so what you're looking at right now is exactly what it looks like through a welding mask what you see here is exactly What I see, so let's stitch. Weld this you're gonna start over here at this tack weld hold the trigger for a second then let it cool down hold the trigger for a second then let it cool down pull the Trigger for a second and let it cool down now you can see that bright orange puddle. It's literally molten metal You know when that puddle is cool when it has a dull orange glow That's when you want to do the next well, then you let it cool to a dull orange And then you start your next weld You want to add wire to the puddle for only about a second because if it gets too hot? You're gonna melt the surrounding super thin sheet metal and that's just gonna create holes And I think this is a really good visual of the process You want to repeat this until you get to the next tack weld and check this out We started a little cold since there was no heat into the metal. But by the third or fourth weld we were perfect So that's a good example of a stitch weld Let's do another So let's start at the tack weld and just like the last seam weld I'm doing short trigger pulls so we don't overheat the metal And if you listen, you could hear a slight difference in what this weld sounds like compared to the last seam Weld this one doesn't sound like frying bacon So our settings are a little bit off and I think we need to increase the wire speed Although the welds are looking pretty good. So I'm just gonna continue also take a look right in front of the puddle You can see there's a hole forming every time I add metal that's from the metal getting too hot So I'm gonna stop welding and let this cool So after letting this cool for 20 seconds Let's finish the stitch weld and I'm going to be quiet so you can listen and watch the rest of this stitch All right, and that's pretty good Now we did make a little bit of a change here. We did a little bit of welding it got too hot I saw it blowing through so I decided this stop let it cool down gave it about 15 seconds. And then Restarted and that looks pretty good and he blow through that We had I just built the puddle up a little bit more I focused the metal going in on that puddle rather than on the two pieces of thin sheet metal. Sure It's not as flat as I'd like it, but it's a floorboard so not a big deal and this is solid now Let me show you the penetration from under the car This is a little more penetration than I like to see but this sheet metal is super thin and I really can't complain It's definitely better to have a little too much penetration and make sure those two pieces of metal are welded solid together then not have Enough penetration. So let me knock out the rest of these stitch welds off-camera so that I could get this done You know how to do it you get the idea I don't want to bore you and then we'll move on to the gaps here and I'll show you how to fix those and just So you have an idea I stitch welded this entire panel up in about 30 minutes alright and I am done stitch welding this entire piece in it is Solid that's not going anywhere and remember This is my first time welding point six millimeter thick sheet metal that is really thin for you guys out there Anytime you're welding The first time don't expect to weld dimes the key is to make sure you have good weld penetration And you're bonding both pieces of metal together so that it's solid. This is a floor Remember this is gonna get covered in paint in carpet. Nobody's gonna see it so structural rigidity is the most important thing now to Successfully fill all the gaps and not have any more burn through. What I'm gonna do is use a piece of copper This is a flattened copper pipe. You could also use a sheet of copper or even aluminum aluminum is gonna work as well Both of those metals the welds won't stick to and they act really well as a heat sink They absorb the heat So we're gonna do with this you're gonna place this Underneath the gap and then you're gonna use that Jack or some magnets to hold this in place and with that copper heatsink pressed up against the bottom of our hole that's gonna absorb any heat that we Introduce into this and it's gonna be a lot easier to weld this hole up Now you can see there's a lot of thick metal right here So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna focus the heat on this metal build up my puddle and then work along to there Okay let's get this gap filled so you can see I'm focusing the welding wire onto that last weld because it's thicker metal and I'm basically growing the puddle outwards to cover the ghin notice how I could weld for longer and if I get any burn through I just Stop and let it cool. Then I resume and let the puddle build up again. So it covers the hole And he saw how well our heatsink worked You can see that the welds do not stick to this so that worked perfectly and this was very hard to let it cool down But this absorbs the heat it prevents the weld from sticking and allows you to fill gaps just like that while still getting penetration So I used the same exact method with the copper heatsink to fill all the large holes that were left and now we have completely welded in our sheet metal and one way to Verify there are no gaps because there could be pinholes that you don't see if your welds aren't perfect is you could wait till night And then go underneath the car and then shine a light upwards and look for any light leaking through or you could grab a box I cut a little hole in it and the box is designed to keep the light out so you can look for those pinholes Even during the day so just get a strong LED Light and shine it below the metal that you welded and so far so good I don't see any light leaking through There's no pinholes and then if I bring my light down here at the bottom where that factory hole is don't worry We're gonna fill that with a plastic grommet when we're done. But if we bring it back here check that out You see those two pin holes right at the bottom right there. That's what you're gonna look for That's two small holes that we would have otherwise missed if we didn't use this method So we need to make sure we fill those and just to give you an idea of what it looks like in the daylight There's the first small hole and then there's the second even smaller hole right there. So it's a good little trick and now it's Fillies And Finally with those two simple welds we have sealed this completely off This is welded in and we are done but not completely done. We're done welding now What we need to do is we need to seal this we need to paint it so that we don't get rust There's always going to be some moisture and some oxygen in the air that could cause this to rust So painting is very important and to prep the surface for paint We want to get rid of all that loose surface rust which we did in order to weld So we're good with that Then you want to grab your 80 grit sandpaper And we want to send the metal surface to give the paint something to grab onto 80 grit is pretty aggressive So it's gonna leave some deeper scratches and that paint is gonna be able to adhere to that very well compared to a smooth surface then vacuum up all the dust from sanding and finally clean off the surface with alcohol which is going to remove any oils and On the metal so that we have a good clean surface for the paint distictive and look at all that dirt we removed and Now we are ready to paint but never paint out of your container because if you don't use it all the paint in the container Is gonna go bad quicker so pour a little paint into the cup Trying not to make a mess and a really cool trick to seal your paint can so it lasts a long time on the shelf Grab some plastic wrap and cover the can but leave a little opening Then grab one of these compressed air dusters and you want to slowly add air to the can The canned air that you're adding is actually r134a a refrigerant So it's gonna sink down to the bottom and displace the oxygen since it's heavier oxygen is what makes the paint Harden So without the oxygen the paint is gonna be like brand-new the next time you open it now get your paint and spread a thin Coat around the entire floorboard making sure to work it into every nook and cranny I like to add the paint thick so it covers everything but don't leave it thick make sure you spread it out nice and thin All right. So four hours later, we know this is dry because my finger isn't sticking to the paint So with the new brush, let's add our second thin coat of paint. And again, make sure this layer is thin All right and 24 hours later check this out. Now. It doesn't have to look perfect. But that does look pretty good for something That's gonna get covered by carpet the most important thing though is how it functions and this is a special paint That's impermeable It goes on relatively thick and it creates a barrier between the metal and the air and moisture That's gonna prevent rust and it seals in all of our welds as well And since we did but welds and not lap welds we don't need to use seam sealer. So this is a job Well done, and if you're wondering I sealed under the car as well Not only did I paint where we welded But I also painted past that that way it seals it off really well So our sheet metal is sealed on both sides now There's one more thing we need to do and that is install a rubber grommet in the factory hole I assumed the previous owner left this undone to let the water drain out, but now we don't need that So just push it into place and there you go That is how you properly repair a rust hole whether it's in your quarter panel or if it's in your floor That is the exact process that you want to follow. I mean check it out Here's a before and after and the best thing is this repair was done properly so it will outlast the life of this car and now we have one last thing and That is how you repair a rust hole in your vehicle Hopefully the video was helpful. If it was remember to give it a thumbs up. Also consider hitting that subscribe button There are a lot of really cool videos coming up with this car Including sound deadening it fixing the shifter the turbo kit and many more and as always All the tools and products I used in this video are linked in the description stay tuned
That hole looks like Africa
ChrisFix's video are insanely high quality. Guilty of watching them multiple times.
Damn I need to buy a nibbler.
Good job
I did not intend to spend 30 minutes watching this, but no complaints.
This dude has millions of subs, drives older cheap (except hummer) vehicles, lives at home. He could retire now will all the money he's made. He seems like a big saver.
I will admit, I've unproperly repaired rust holes with Great Stuff expanding foam.
Come at me.
Would have like to have seen him do it with jb weld.
Just watched this rn lol