Are a few pin holds in the rocker panel acceptable at the butt joint? Ideally the pin holds were checked when the welds were ground and before being dressed. Also when dressed should the metal have any deep grinding marks or be smooth?
CK5
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Pin holes in sheet metal at butt joint
- Thread starter wazzabie
- Start date
I'm not sure the story behind this, but in general pin holes are bad. I you can put a tack on them to un-hole them you're better off.
Grinding, you want the metal as smooth as you can as it's just gonna make more work for you to finish it. I like using flap disks. There's a little give in them and can leave a reasonably polished finish. I only use hard disks for serious deep grinding.
Some more background and some pics would be helpful though.
Grinding, you want the metal as smooth as you can as it's just gonna make more work for you to finish it. I like using flap disks. There's a little give in them and can leave a reasonably polished finish. I only use hard disks for serious deep grinding.
Some more background and some pics would be helpful though.
I agree with everything above, just want to add that I try to be careful not to go too crazy smoothing the welds out. When I first started on my Blazer and was first figuring this stuff out, I found myself accidentally thinning out the metal more than I liked. Now I try to make sure the majority of my grinding is only on the weld itself until the very end when I smooth it out with the adjacent areas.
I may just have been being a gorilla with the flap disc when I first started, but just something to pay attention to. Hope that helps!
I may just have been being a gorilla with the flap disc when I first started, but just something to pay attention to. Hope that helps!
On the rockers how smooth should the butt weld join be after grinding down the welds? Also for filler on the rocker what thickness would be acceptable over the joint?
With filler, the less the better but it's a balance between spending hours and days to get the metal perfect versus putting filler.
If you can keep the filler down to 1/32" you are golden.
At butt joints it's not the joint area that is the problem but the area needed to blend in the curves to look good.
So you could cover 5" to blend it in if the weld is too high.
Knock it down to no more than 1/32" and you are safe.
how about hammering down the weld joint some to make it flush?
That was the extra work I was talking about, if you heat it up and use a hammer and dolly to smash it in you will need less filler, just don't hammer it from one side, you could put in a dent and make it worse.I think for your purposes grinding down to almost flat will be good enough though
