Polishing the welds

Happy that all the panels are now welded together as in the last post, I now needed to clean the welds up, I will be using several grades of flapper discs attached to the angle grinder. Basically starting with a 40 grit to remove the main part of the weld then dropping to 60 - 80 - 120 and then over with a polishing disc.

I have to say that the panels look very good in the flesh but being shiny the camera flash does not pick it up well. There is still some more polishing to do as you can still see the edge of some welds though I will be using body filler too, ensuring that the finish is A1. Then I will re-trim the car and hide all the body work...

Here are the pictures of the day, there is a lot of work gone into the bodywork but its mostly time and hence there really isn't much to write about. Though once again I decided not to put my overalls on and work in something comfortable, consequently while I was welding I realised I was again on fire ~ fair to say I have learnt my lesson this time.

Inner B pillar 4 + C pillar

The last entry finished with me saying I had completed the B pillar and was ready to move on to the C pillar. I have been talking with the company who is going to product the roll cage and they suggest welding the frame to all the pillars, to make this that little bit easier I decided to add a plate on top of the B pillar I had already done so and extra skin if you will.

The plate was tacked in each corner and then was heated with a blow torch and gently persuaded to fit the profile of the B pillar, the next step was to weld the plate in place, I was very pleased on how easy this was to do and also how neat it was.







With the plate on the B pillar I then moved to the C pillar, being at the back of the car this caused many issues for me because the cage currently in there is just in the way ~ I even managed to get trapped with my feet in the battery box and wedged in under the frame... next time I will not try and squeeze through a gap.

I decided that the best plan to build the C pillar would be to do it in sections as there are many shapes and with the plates being smaller I could bend the plate to suite the current profiles. The first plate went in well and the blow torch was used to shape the metal as required. Then cutting two strips of sheet I managed to bend the material to match the profiles, the last part was to join all the sections together and hey presto. I plan to clean all the welds and sheet metal next week and if there is any extra work to clean it up. Overall I am happy with the outcome.