A very rusty z.

[jamo240]

Hey Thriller....

 

I would use gas. Gasless has its place (mostly outdoors on building sites where the wind blows the shielding gas away), but in my experience gas systems give a better result, especially for auto work. The right gas is Argoshield (CO2/Argon blend)...the blends are used to reduce spatter, whereas you use straight argon for a TIG.

 

ESAB build the best welders in the business. I picked one up the other week for $750 second hand....it's a great unit. I have my old one available that you might be interested in if you can't find an ESAB or Miller.

 

A good 170A machine is fine, and will work on a 15A circuit. 200A will kill it.

 

Cheers

 

Grant

 

[nizm0zed]

ditto on the gas welder.

you'll get a better weld, but most importantly for someone learning, you'll get an easier weld.

now, understand im not saying that a gas welder will be easier to use than a gasless, but you'll find its a lot easier to learn and hone your skills, particularly as your trying to learn several things all at once.

That'll equate to a better overall finish and less work 'finishing' your welds.

 

Make sure you shop around for bottle prices, i have found that BOC are a$$holes to everyone unless your a business that goes through more than 1 bottle a fortnight.

I am with Linde Gas, the bottle rental per year is cheaper, and the refill cost is cheaper than BOC.

You cant refill your own private bottle, which is bollocks, coz it locks you into one of their contracts. They claim that its to do with saftey and testing of the cylinder, which on face value is a pretty fair point.

Best is if you can get a plumber/panel shop mate to get you refill bottles on their account.

I use a E size bottle, its upto my chest in height, so its still a big bottle and lasts a while, but its still able to be moved around. While i dont use it very much, i'll get about a year out of a bottle.

looking at what your in for, i would say that you'll probably knock over 3 bottles of gas in that total body job, someone like John (Sirpent) or Locky (Lurch) will probably be able to judge that better though. they are both smart cookies, so make sure you hit them up for info as you go.

[thriller]

Thanks heaps for the tips guys, I'm very glad I didn't pull the trigger on a cheap gasless a few days ago. I figure I won't be needing to weld for a little while to come, so in the meantime research research research + saving saving saving. Before that happens I think I'm pretty well set for a blast jobby, cut out all the rust, prime to cover up the metal and then weld up a rotisserie for a nice little starting project. Then she'll start coming together rather than being ripped apart.

[Wayne G]

I bought a good quality gasless 150amp unit ten years ago because of the cost of bottles.  Great unit but the finished weld has a little "slag" when compared to a gas unit.  This can be reduce by ensuring all metal if spotlessly clean prior to welding.  I also don't think that learning to weld on gasless unit would be ideal. 

 

Irrespective of whether you buy gas or gasless setup, don't buy cheap because you will regret it.  Looking at what you have in front of you, you are going to spend a significant amount of time with your welder, so get a good one so you only do the job once. 

 

Oh, and don't "learn" on your car.  Get some scraps, similar thickness to your panels, and practise.  My teacher made me spend ages just learing to write my name with a welder, grind it off and then do over, before practising joins.

 

My 2 cents worth 

[FuzzyDropbear]

...

Irrespective of whether you buy gas or gasless setup, don't buy cheap because you will regret it.  Looking at what you have in front of you, you are going to spend a significant amount of time with your welder, so get a good one so you only do the job once. 

...

 

Totally agree here, you're not paying for someone else to do it, so you may as well purchase good tools to do the job yourself. Buy a good unit and you'll have fun welding, rather than struggling with it when you're learning and getting frustrated with it (especially considering the amount of welding you have ahead of you).

 

I've only just started welding and bought a gass BOC 190amp and I rekon it's one of the best purchases I've made. I still haven't used gassless, but I've been able to do decent welds without too much hassle.

[chartoo]

I did one of the adult education 8 weeks classes. 3 hrs a night once a week. Did one for welding and panel work and one for painting. Learnt so much

[thriller]

Thanks guys, should mention that I've done a fair bit of welding at school, but that was just with a basic oxy setup. So I'm not completely new to it, but new to mig. I'll start off with a whole pile of scrap and if I decide to get a rotisserie, I'll weld that up first before touching the car with it. Thanks again for the tips.

[Riceburner]

Mig is a little different to oxy/act, I'm good at that but has taken a while to get the hang of mig. I have a gasless unit and compared to the sheilded unit I have used it is a lot harder to get a good consistent weld (for me anyway). 'D' size is about knee height, 'E' size is about chest height and is the one you want.

 

IMO basic mechanical repairs for a stock car are most of the time not super difficult, but paint/panel/bodywork is a very hard thing to master and unless it's done very well is easy to pick up faults. You'll be very good by the end of the build, I'm looking foward to the progress

[Joiji]

If you're in the market for a welder, my old man just picked up a new Cigweld mig from WESS, down Grand Junction Road way. (http://www.wess.com.au/).

 

I echo the comment about mechanical vs body work, but you tend to not do as much damage if you stuff up body work (within reason of course). You can always cut pieces away and refab, or reshape. A lot of the pieces it looks like you need are fairly simple to fabricate with the right tools, or by hand if you're stuck. I'd be happy to help you build a rotisserie if you buy the steel. I've a bandsaw and mig which would be more than up to the task, so you can practice a bit before you go spending a lot of money on kit? So long as I can borrow it myself after you're done with it  .

 

Also, if you want to really get to grips with MIG quickly, give TAFE SA a call. Regency TAFE has a night course for 3 hours a week or so you can attend which will get you a basic qualification in whatever kind of welding you want, including MIG. I did MIG/stick ARC and Oxy (both fusion and braze) over six weeks as part of my teaching degree. Was more helpful than I expected, plus, well maintained machines and space are a nice touch.

 

Regency TAFE also runs some sheet metal classes, if you want to brush up a bit on that before you start major bodywork. My old lecturer is happy for me to drop past every now and again and just fabricate something up if I need to, so that's always a great advantage, too. Also, they've just installed a 3600mm die folder *drool*.

 

You've certainly got your work cut out for you with your new project, but it's pretty great fun, so I doubt you'll mind. I'll certainly be watching to see your progress.

[Sirpent]

Been looking at this thread for a while and have asked myself how I would tackle this one.

 

There are a few variables here that really do dictate how best to attack this project and I would take this approach.

 

#1 Decide which panels will have to be replaced, in this case the floor, rails and at very least the outer sills.

#2 Have the car squared up on a bench then have these sections removed.

#3 While benched have the bar braced with long end to end square channels which would also lend themselves as rotiesse mount points

#4 Have the car chemically dipped, cleaned then sealed in an etch primer

#5 Move on to having the car mounted and concentrate on first giving it back its spine in the floor, rails followed by the sills

#6 As these major concealing items had been off it will allow you to also look at repairing internal rust area's in the sills and then clean and seal them

#7 Complete smaller rust repair patches.

 

My $0.05

 

Cheers

 

John

 

 

 

[Veloce]

I have a Lincoln Powermig 180C, cost me about $900 a few years ago, highly recommended.

 

From what iv'e heard with lower cost MIG's,  the quality of the wire feed unit is the most important part of the machine and what the cheap chinese units lack.

 

Mine has been faultless (its american made), however i can imagine a dodgy wire feed causing all sorts of grief (slipping wire, jams, breakages etc).

 

I'd say a decent welder is a very good investment.

[jamo240]

What Veloce says about MIG's is spot on.

 

Wire feed is a HUGE issue in cheap MIG machines....if the feed mechanism is dodgy, the MIG can be so frustrating to work with that you'll stop trying, get a crap result, or both.

 

The good machines have well sorted out feed mechanisms, but also have much more sophisticated current/voltage regulation to produce a nicer start and stop to the weld, as well as consistency and finish.

 

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

 

Jamo

[thriller]

Really appreciate the help everyone, I'm taking it all on board. Just going to quickly post these few shots up as I'm a bit busy and need to give page 5 something to look at.

 

Prick of a job this one. Had to pull the dashboard out in my S13 when I was doing transmission conversion, the s13 was far easier than the Z for some reason.

 

I thoroughly enjoy removing stuff to find beautiful fresh metal underneath. Of course this wouldn't end up rusted, but it's still one less thing to worry about haha. Wiring this back up is going to be buckets of fun...

 

5 cents in one of the heater hoses.... Was a 1994 coin, and the car was last rego'd in 1992, meaning someone has gone out of their way to lose a 5-cent coin down one of the heater vents. Weird hey? I've found a total of 15 cents so far.

 

Dashboard in need of some love. See how I go with reskinning this later on.

[zed74]

Hah - the metal from the coins will come in useful!

[thriller]

Haha yeah, slowly finding enough coin that I might not even need to buy replacement sheet! I found a 10c piece between the trans tunnel diamond vinyl and the gross fabric underneath it... strange.

 

Anyway, with the exception of anything touching the roof, the interior is entirely stripped now. Only leaving the steering wheel in.

 

Good news:

-I think that every piece of interior I've taken off will be able to be restored. There's a few cracks and splits in some plastic pieces but I think some plastic welding will fix all that.

-No rust under anything in the interior. That's pretty much a give, but always nice to see anyway

 

Bad news:

-Think I'll have to fork out for a roof. Will assess after blasting though.

-Both seats are buggered, and there's no driver door card. Dunno where I'll find one, but I need to at some point.

-Obviously all the speakers are completely shot. Might trawl YAJ in hopes of finding some sweet oldschool box speakers, maybe a 'becker europa' headunit (or any old looking one that I can retrofit an AUX jack into)

-kick panels are disgusting, can probably make replacements for those myself though. Only looks like cardboard and foam.

 

Also, I'm just going to ignore all the hanging panels until the shell is sweet; what's the best way to treat those? Just spray some fish-oil on and forget about them, since they'll be stripped eventually the fish oil won't react with the new paint...right?

[1600dave]

I'd just store the hanging panels away somewhere dry if you can - they won't need any treatment that way. Stuff like fishoil will only cause you lots of extra work down the track and will need to be scrupulously removed before painting.

 

If your shed is at all damp, just wrap and seal the panels in plastic (cheap plastic painting dropcloths from Bunnings are perfect) to prevent any surface rust that may possibly result from condensation forming on the panels.

 

I've got panels that have been stored away in my shed for many years, they haven't deteriorated any further.

[mossy]

Maybe try and contact jeff43 on this forum for a roof, he recently bought a shell off me and not sure if he was cutting it up or not but he is in SA also, don't expect a roof skin to be cheap though.

[saxon]

Sometimes I get the feeling I am way over my head with this car restoration thing. And then I see you and I feel okay

 

Good luck man!

 

 

[PeterAllen]

Sometimes I get the feeling I am way over my head with this car restoration thing. And then I see you and I feel okay...

Your logic fails because of an arguable (if not false) premise.

 

Moving on. I'm not so sure you need a replacement roof. If you only want to fill in where the sunroof was then just cover it with a piece of sheet metal. I don't know that there is any curve front to back but if there is it is minimal in that area. Any left to right curve you can create by just flexing the metal. Even original roofs are near impossible to get right and nearly all restorations have plenty of bog on the roof - enough to cover the welds on an insert. Just a suggestion

[Zedman240®]

Its very hard to patch the roof with a piece of sheetmetal. There are plenty of curves on the roof that are very hard to make by hand. If it was easy, people would'nt be killing each other to get roof skins! Best way out but no very cheap is to get a metal sunroof installed; seen one installed in a 2+2 that looked awesome. You'd think it was a factory installation. Might be worth a look. Cost was around $1k IIRC

[Ledge]

HI

Its not hard to make a roof section to fill the sunroof

hole. All you need is an English wheel and the ability

to use it.

regards

Paul

[Roberto]

Rob at the Z factory can do this.  Problem for us is he is in Melbourne.

 

If you can do this Ledge, I am happy to be your first sunroof removal customer.......

[thriller]

Hahah Saxon. Just gotta look at it in a different light, it's really not too much work.

 

Unfortunately Paul, I have neither... I'll reserve from making a decision on patching/replacing until I see how it is after the blasting, though I'm 90% sure the hole is going to have to go one way or another. I'll probably be in the same boat as Roberto if you reckon you can fab one up though.

 

In other news, it seems that someone has applied some oldschool weight reduction techniques to the thermostat....

 

Everything on the engine is disconnected, radiator is pulled out, stupid shitty mangled bent-up piece of crap exhaust has been removed, the complete interior other than a steering column (and the sound deadener) has been removed too. Next up is pulling the engine + trans out, followed by the loom and any other random bits and bobs around the rest of the car. Door hinges, windows, chrome trim, etc etc.

[Veloce]

This place in Sydney has a complete roof for sale, it would also sort out your A pillar rust.

 

$900, but shipping might be a killer.

 

http://www.sportsclassic.com.au/PartsShells.aspx?bid=103&mid=43&aid=5

 

 

[J.B.]

Thriller, you might be the luckiest Z owner I know...

 

I'm in Adelaide and MAY have a spare 2-seater roof skin that you could use to fix the roof.... bear in mind its a roof skin, not a complete roof cut (i.e no A pillars). I bought it in Melbourne last year, but I've sourced another complete wreck that I will use. It's got the curve you need for the roof and will have you sorted pretty easily (no french wheel needed!!)

 

PM me if you interested in grabbing this. Man, can't believe this... I waited 6 months to find a roof skin and now I have 2!!