DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

The improvements are obvious - you must be very pleased (& rightly so) with your latest efforts.

You see what a new shed can do to a man!!

Good work mate, looks great

How precise is your welding now? I've got a watch bezel 'insert' that has cracked and split...

No worries - bring it over

Nice work Mark !! Need to get myself some of those Scissor / Snip things

OK Easter arrived and I disappeared into the Shed...

Now needed to work on the sidelight area which was a bit lacey. I had made the replacement piece for this about a year ago. It looked to be pretty much spot on apart from a nick I managed to put in the front lip. A bit of welding a grinding and all was well. I then cut out the old support for the sidelight, and also this bit at the bottom of the wing (here viewed from underneath)


replaced that with something a bit more metallic

This is the piece I made a year ago and before cutting anything out it looked pretty much perfect

However once I'd cut the rotten bit out I realised that I hadn't compared all the relevant bits at the same time - so it was too wide at one end. A bit of dressing and swearing and I managed to get it to fit, and once in it looked like this

Next it was on to the top of the headlight bowl - this was the problem I was presented with:-


I spent a loooong long time on a suitable piece of metal


it's a bit of a pain beccause the headlamp bowl isn't perpendicular to the curve of the wing - it's at an angle. Also the curve down into the bowl isn't at 90 degrees either.
After a lot of work I couldn't seem to get it any better than this


Which I wasn't happy with. If I put more curve into the wing part it didn't go in evenly, and changing the flange part buggered up the wing part. Eventually I stomped off indoors. After a day at work to think about it (well I've got to do something whilst I'm there...) I decided it would be much easier to start again, only this time make it from two pieces of steel. The two shapes aren't that bad but put them together and you've got 2 curves fighting against each other.

So I started with a freshly cut flat piece


which actually didn't take much shaping to get it to site flat

I then cut another piece for the bowl end and sat the two of them next to each other


I did a couple of tacks to fix them together, and then welded the two pieces together from the underside


This left me with a top-side like this


Which might not look pretty but you're looking at the back of the weld here.
A bit of planishing and I got this


Which sits on the wing quite nicely


(It doesn't sit perfectly because the weld on the underside makes it sit proud) - it's way better than the previous effort from one piece of metal. If I'd been able to weld them with oxy-aceteline or TIG then I could have shaped it further afterwards (which is fine except a. I don't have a TIG welder or oxy-gear and b. I can't TIG or oxy-weld). I knew MIG would be too hard to let me do that so I knew I had to get the shape right. I think it's there, but by then it was time to go indoors and watch 24 with the missus (working through series 1 on netflix). I'll leave the cutting and welding for another time when I've got more energy

Absolutely shocking, Mark....

Series 1 of 24? Where have you been, man

Harsh but fair. The wife bought me a boxed set 5 years ago but we never got round to watching it. Now we've got Netflix it's much more accessible and also the kids don't take as much looking after (duct tape is such a wonderful thing....). We're at 9:00am to 10:00am at the moment.

Excellent stuff, some really good skill developing there. Its nice to think that although it takes twice as long learning and DIY'ing there is no hourly rate mounting up.

Keep it up.

Andy

Thanks andy. I'm loving the learning process and yes it's nice that it just costs my time and some cheap materials

More updates to welding 101:-

I returned to the job last week-end. I thought all that was left was to cut out the top of the wing and weld in the little curvy patch shown above

I thought I'd check out these bubbles inside the headlamp bowl - after a bit of poking it became clear they weren't great.


Cornflakes to the rescue


from Kelloggs to steel:-


Welded in


Smoothed it down a bit - not obsessed with getting it flat as it's held within the headlamp bowl and will never be seen.

I may smooth it down some more at the week-end

While tidying up ready to weld in that top piece I found that the corrosion went further round the headlamp bowl than previously though:-


Gosh I said. My, my, I said.


While trying to calm myself down about that I thought I'd weld the top bit in anyway. Here it is just sat in place


And welded into place - with me holding a sliver of steel behind the 'new' holes. I tacked this into place and then welded it in - actually went in OK, and everything ground down pretty well.



I reckon I'm pretty much there with the welding for this wing now. The next stage will be lead loading, before going on to prep and paint (how hard can it be!?)

Before all that though I've decide to get the whole wing dipped - and while I'm at it I'll probably get the other one done as well so when I start welding that I can already see all the holes. I'm taking them in to http://www.prostrip.co.uk/ on Monday - spoke to them on the phone and seemed nice enough and they are just down the road from me - will charge £60 a wing which I thought was OK - I'm dropping them off on Monday morning.