Advice required on welding holes in my Manta floor panel

[8valve-craig]

Any amount of arc can seriously damage your vision. I would not advise even small passes without a mask!

[MSG]

Thanks mate for the safety advice, shall follow the safety rules.

1. wear a dust mask when using a grinder
2. wear safety glasses whe using a grinder
3. Use face mask when welding.
4. Beware of fire hazard when welding.
and so on.

[8valve-craig]

5. stop being so god damn clever

[MSG]

What I have always said....i hate garages who claim they can do top class work.......now went out to see how far has the guy done my welding, and I came back feeling gutted.....absolutely notrotious workmanship, ****ed up my underside chassi beams by placing stands to raise the car so high that it has dented the beams, he should have known that not all memebers are load bearing, some are there to stiffen the floor pan and you can't place one single point of a safety stand to take the entire weight of the car and so the story goes, completely gutted.

I have told him to don't put any underseal as i would like to have a go and do the final patching myself to my expectation, so he has agreed to leave the welds exposed and as long as it goes through the MOT, thats all it m,atters for now, once I get the road tax, I can bring the car on the road and then complete the final touches myself, looking at his welds, i could have done similar.

But on the whole, he has managed to patch things that needed to be patched for the MOT. Its going in tomorrow for the MOT at another garage nearby or I should say next door to him, so i won't be taking it back to the one that failed it as that could cause problems now as the car should not be on the road at all as the tax has now expired.

(DVLA states that you can renew or sorn a car within 14 days of the tax disc expiring as long as it is taken off the public roads)

[MSG]

here is the pic of my passenger side flor panel patched up, not as what i expeceted,




these little moggies giving their approval of satisfaction for the Manta carpets....which i need to wash and dry later on before going back in the car.

[8valve-craig]

Id be suprised if that passes an MOT. welds look to be tacked at very close intervals. Although it is in most peoples eyes an adequate repair you may get a proper anal tester who says it needs to be a continuous seam weld....

[MSG]

Excatlly now you know why i am not happy, I thought he was going to do a continuous seam, flowing smoothly, but he said the metal would buckle under uneven heating so it bhas to be done as a series of spots close to each other, but i would have done atleast in nsections of an inch or so long beads.

[8valve-craig]

Was he by any chance an old timer? Maybe stuck in his ways and not up to date with recent MOT regulations. What he says about heat distoting the plate is in a way true, but you would remedy this by tacking it first, grinding the tacks down and seam welding straight over the top of them.

Im sure it will be ok if you spend an hour or so tidying it up

[MSG]

From the underside, it looks worst, he was just going to apply the underseal and so put him on hold on that, and siad I would like to patch up a little more and add a few more bits of metal and make it a smooth finish before undersealing, will show you his pictures when he is finished and I have got the MOT, until then I can't do anything.

the guy is in his 50s and is from Kenya, he was surprsied when i spoke to him in Swahili, he was flippin all over the place when i said Jambo Bwana!!

[Gaz86]

Jesus I saw the pic before reading your reply and I knew you wouldn't have been happy with it.

[Steve!]

50 year old guy from Kenya, I wouldn't of let him near my car.... Jambo Banana or not!! lmao

[8valve-craig]

Oh right, Well by maybe by kenya's standards that repair is fit for a king.

[MSG]

Kenya had a British system of education and training, so either he couldn't care less or he is one of them bodgers!

The repair is effective but not tidy as I wanted it, I could have done just as good and saved a couple of hundred quid! my biggest probelm was the time, and my Mig welder would have paid for itself! He was reccomended by a lad working at the garage that failed my car!

Hence why I asked him to do what is now necessary to get the MOT and I will do the rest, I will probably cut it out and redo again.

[Steve!]

Good idea

[jayporn]

Looks messy but a grinder will probably tidy it up. Agreed though the guys done a poor job. Has he re-spot welded the jacking point and chassis leg to the new metal? (Cant see any heat marks).

Brilliant cat pictures i had the same face as the cat when i saw the pic :/





lmao

[MSG]

Jacking point has been stiffened with a 2mm section of a U shaped piece that was welded to the remaining solid metal, and taken all the way to the main beam/or chasis runner, that runner itself was further reinforced with another 2mm piece going across, I wish I had taken the picture of that before he capped it all by this top floor sheet. The top sheet itself I am not happy with because I had asked him not to put lots of joints and use a single sheet bent at corners and sides, he said he couldn't do it that way, I had left him a cardboard template. really dissapointed!

And now I will need to patch up more from the bottom when i get the car back after the MOT, because although it will pass the MOT, but I am not satisfied from the bottom looks even more shabby. as some of the jacking point piece should have been spot welded to the floor to keep its integrity even more. i will do that now in my own time once the road tax is obtained.


here are some photos of the 2mm strengthening sections but i could not take photos of how he welded or seen it as he capped it before I could see it!

[Gaz86]

he looks to have made a horrible rust trap in there!

[MSG]

No that channel (U piece ) is open from the bottom, he was going to underseal all the openings, but i said No, because I want to stich it all together and use more strengthening pieces from underneath, so that it is totally sealed for any water to get in before it is undersealed, you have to rememeber my Manta caught rust from the inside.

But when I peeled off the old underseal from the underneath, the steel panels were still shiney, most of the rust had started from inside the car and broke through to the outside .

There must have been some problem with water ingress, Manta's window seals aren't perfect so water must have got in somehow on the carpets and underside of them, I will probably not use the carpets for a while and check when it rains to see if any water lands in the footwell areas.


Mate honestly i wish i had my own space, i would have practised and got better at welding and would have done it all myself to a proper restoration specifications, taking my time, but I had to get the MOT to get the road tax, this is why i never wanted the garage that failed the MOT to do a quick patching, they only wanted 150 quid to patch it up and issue an MOT cert, but i said no I wanted it restored more properly, but ran out of time, look what happens now, I ended up worst off. That garage does my MOT would have probably done a better job!

[8valve-craig]

At least if they had done the work they couldnt then fail it.....

[MSG]

Really can't understand why he had to beat the ****e out of that floor plate, its got hundreds of tiny dings!

[MSG]

Just had a call from the welder, he sent the car over to the next garage where another of his mate's runs an MOT test station. right next door!!

Congratulations! Manta passed its MOT,


so now i must get on my bike or get 3 busses and spend £6.0 on bus fares, but I am taking my bike! hopefully it will accomodate inside the manta to bring it back along, handy this sports bike I had owned for well over 30 years!!

then get the MOT certificate

Go to post office and get the tax disc

Go back to the garage

Display the tax disc , pay the welder his bill, and then drive back.

I wish life could be a little less complicated, thanks to DVLA, they said I cannot renew tax online now as the disc will take 3 to 5 working days and I cannot leave the car on the road outside my house without a disc displaying, although i can bring it back straight from the garage to my house, but I must park it on my own drive and not outside on the road!


and its a flippin very nice day today with thundering showers and lightening!!

[Dave Dempsey]

I cant help but look at this picture and get rather concerned:



I just hope your better with cats than fish lol

[MSG]

yup it was very unfortunate about those fish, they were tropical fish and very tempramental and I have had no problem since with gold fish.


with the cats I am OK, had cats most of my life, the kittens you see I was the Midwife, i helped my cat deliver these kittens, there were 7 of them and 2 were still born and 2 died two days later as the mother cat refused to let them all suckle. 3 survived and each had their dedicated nipple, it was simply amazing to see a cat give birth, and I helped in nursing what i could do, it was a bloody sight but well worth it. This expirience gained on this could well come handy who knows, perhaphs help a woman give birth on a plane, or even in a car stuck in traffic!!

[MSG]

Got the car back now, I will post some pictures of the welding the guy did, get ready for the horror scenes! BTW, the amount of CO2 used canister I supplied as well and only 66gm was used up from 350gm cylinder. So I have plenty left to do my own clean up. pics will be taken tommorrow as its been raining and still is.


Just found this pic of a replica model of GTE, on sale on ebay, wish i could restore mine to this standard:

[8valve-craig]

I wonder how rusty that one is ?