ZUKIWORLD Online | Suzuki 4x4 Editorial and Forum
ZUKIWORLD Discussion Forum => Technical Discussion - Beginner / Repair => Topic started by: 8yota9 on May 30, 2010, 09:08:57 AM
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eney ideas on how to fix this without major money? T is the worst of it. im not to good at metle work and dont owne a welder. i think its a little much for fiberglass lol.
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so i did some fiberglass for the first time and it came out really bad. im going to let it dry sand it and hit it with some bondo and see what happens.
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that one, you're gonna HAVE to break down, buy a welder an learn how to do sheet metal work, theres no way around it honestly. I need to do a little n mine in the same place, but its NOWHERE near that bad, yet.
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yeah i figured. theres no way coat after coat of fiberglass and some bondo is gona do eney good? ive been looking at the little chicago welders but i dont think there all that good. i no how to weld just dont really know about bending and sheat metle. i was in a steal shop for a year or so and took a corse in school and all we used were miller. and they have a heavy price tag. half cab info eneyone lol?
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The chicago electric stick welders are ok, but the wire feed units SUCK. I used to know someone that had one, we preferred the stick welder because it just did better welds for us.
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it wouldent blow threw this thin metle even at lowest settings you dont think?
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now that I cant say on, we only messed with it as a 110v unit doing 1/8" steel fab work.
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cut out a replacement wheel arch from a donor rig, trim to shape with
a pair of metal shears or tin snips, and get a pop rivet gun, drill some holes
and pop it into place, you can also use some polyurethane structural
adhesive in between the 2 metal parts before you pop them together,
it won't be perfect, but you can mend the hole you have
Wild
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You can get a halfway-decent wire welder at Tractor Supply for around 400 bucks. Lowes and HD also sell reasonably-priced brand-name wire welders, both gas and flux.
I did some sheet-metal patching on my rear floor with my Tractor Supply Farmhand 110 and was successful - although it wasn't pretty. With a little practice, I bet you can rebuild it by running at very low power and working slowly.
My wheel wells are slowly rusting out so I imagine that I'll be doing that too someday.
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I actually need to patch my wheelwells soon and kill some rust off. they look pretty rough right now, but still not that bad.
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Skin the outside of the fenders will some thin sheetmetal. I know you can't really see it, but the samurai in my avatar was rusted probably as bad, if not worse than yours and I cut some sheetmetal and skinned the front and rear fenders. Oh, I riveted them on too.....so no welding needed.
Here is a little bigger pic. I also made new inner fenders on the rear...basically tubbed the rear.
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I believe there are replacement patch panels available.
???
That'd make it a lot easier.
-Eric
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I don't know, I kinda like the lime green..... ;)
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yea the panels are way outa budget for me. and i kinda like the home made idea gives it more charicter. when you did the sheat metle did you just cut all the rust out paint and rivit on to whatever is left? do you have eney pics of youe wheel well what you did to it. it came out really well looks very clean and you camoed the rivets well lol. thanks i just had a can of paint layin around gives it a nice accent. and i got some 30" tires goin under her i hope the arent to to small with all that lift ::)
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Oops, I guess I missed your last post.
Yeah, I just cut out all the rust and riveted to whatever good metal was left. Luckily, there was enough good metal around the perimeter area of the panels that I was able to rivet to the original fenders with any problems.
For the rear wheel wells, I just made new ones. I just "tubbed" the rear fenderwells.
For the front, the inner fenderwells were in good enough shape that I just slit the ends (where they bend down as they get to the outer fender), then bent them so they were flat, and welded the ends to the outer skin that I riveted on.