will finishing off body welds make a difference ?

-
mbaird

mbaird

mbaird
Joined
Dec 10, 2005
Messages
9,993
Reaction score
7,225
Location
Boise, Id
While stripping my Dart down to bare chassis I have noticed that the factory welds are spotty at best. Would finishing off the seem welds make much of a difference on tightening up the chassis ?
Anyone done this and noticed a difference ?
 
I have to believe it would assuming you could get full penetration. Which after these years of surface rust formation and the primer dipping process I doubt you can without taking the seams apart first. IMO it's best to just use frame connectors or the additional structural components available no to help add rigidity.
 
Back in the day when these cars were new, the racers like Sox&Martin and Dick Landy would reweld all of the factory welds and body seams to strengthen the cars a lot. This was standard practice.
So, does it make it make a difference?
Hell yeah!
The factory welds are mediocre at best, and most people can see this as easily as you have.
However, if you have a valuable rare car, you would decrease the value by rewelding or modifying the factory as built chassis, even if it was a lot better to do so.
BTW, i am a journeyman welder that has a lot of experience looking at factory and modified cars over the years, paying a lot of attention to how they were built and the quality or lack thereof from the factory vs modified.
Food for thought...........
 
Moper , are you saying that a wire wheel and grinding won't clean up the surface enough to weld ?
 
I did quite a bit of extra welding on my car when I had the floor floor out. Most stuff is only tabbed in with spot welds on flanges so I ran some beads around the inside on everything. Seemed to make quite a difference even before I put in connectors. It's in the old DC chassis book to weld the longitudinals.
 
Cleaner the better, I use wire wheel, 3 inch scotchbrite disks, cartridge rolls on a die grinder. Grinding can thin the base metal and then you're not welding much of anything.
 
Even the Torque Boxes are just tacked in.... It's pretty amazing that these cars could bounce down the road for 50 yrs and not fall apart at the seams ... (pun intended)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top