I found that WD40 does pretty well on cleaning up the sealant left behind from removing the rubber seals. It takes a little elbow grease, but it seemed to work quicker than other solutions I tried.

 

Pics or gtfo.

 

I am still working on my ghetto engine bay.

 

Thread revival!

What did you use for Seam welding your racecar? Mig, tig, rods or semi...

I have some time to work on the tub and will attack this while the wiring is out.

 

Mig.
It's as easy as laying down caulk.

I couldn't imagine tig welding all the seams, could take weeks, or even months.

Stick welding would be to messy.

 

LOL.

I could TIG it just as fast as a mig. No need for filler material, just melt down the hip to the point they bond. Being that your welding mild steel, you don't need to wait for a purge or postflow.

Being that the parts your welding here are all protruding with factory tack welds your not compromising anything with autogenously welding TIG.

 

I will probably be tig welding my seams sometime in the near future. I will let you know how it goes, I really expect that I will spend more money on prep time, then the actual welding.

 

The plus side of tig welding everything is not having to do all the post work. So that right there alone makes it worth it to use the tig process. A lot of times where i work i'll tig parts together even if there is 100 of them because that's 100 parts i don't have to grind down had i used the mig.

I know for a fact mig welding would be faster though. You can simply move the gun faster, it's easier to manuver and you don't have to stick your head right down next to it and worry about dipping the tip.

Pre prep always takes longest and costs the most.
But like i said, post prep and not having to grind out welds to make things look decent is key.

 

Honestly for me, I only own a TIG welder, so that is why I am doing it that way. I have only used a mig welder once in my life, and that was trying to seam weld a friends car. I did not care for it at all, but then again I was given no directions. Basically handed the mig welder and said go for it.

 

Tig FTW. This is from the local Miata forum: NorCal Rotary and Roadsters • View topic - WTB: seam welding the door openings

Twibs is on here somewhere I believe? He may be willing to chime in if he sees this.

 

Is it that much different than my flux core welding?



I even painted mine too.



Just less mess?

 

That's nice Curly, I have access to flux core too. I'll give it a shot. Used MIG for trailer building and didn't like the mess it does and all the grinding needed.

Nice work BTW.

 

Soo iv mig'd and tig'd miatas. And by far its much nicer to tig the door seams. Its the little things that add up that make it worth while. no possible spatter hitting the windshield or windows causing burn sports on the glass, no spatter hitting anything (carpet, dash, etc) cause there is virtually none. The door seals continue to fit as they should without a heaping mess of hot glue gun style weld behind them.

On the door seams not much filler is needed only on a few sections where there is a large gap.

For the rest of the car its MUCH MUCH faster to mig weld. I have tig'd behind the fender area which wasn't to bad but the worst was behind the dash. ill probably never do that again.


On my personal car, i originally mig'd it then i got my tig so i ground off all the old welds and re did them. Much cleaner but a bunch of work.

 

Mig = some mess
flux core = more mess

Either will make a good seam weld.

You guys talking about your tigs.... most tig machines will stick weld as well :P Stick with HF start ftw.

 

I have a cone shaped wire wheel and a standard wire wheel in my DeWalt drill. They made all the difference. It really is a colossal mess, just be ready to wire wheel and vacuum once you're done. And make sure you're ready to do all of it at once, if you go back to do more, you'll recreate the mess within minutes.

 

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run a switch instead of a pedal. You can sit cross legged on the floor and weld away.

set the panel proper and running a switch is great. I use a switch for almost everything that isn't aluminum.

 

Arc control wasnt the issue. The issue was there is so much god damn sealer.

 

I also used a wire wheel, and it cleaned the surface like squeaky. It was less of a hassle for me since my tub was bare. Definitely the way to go here.

 

I recognize those photos! My old silver car!

Does anyone have advice on how to clean between the layers? I can clean the outside well enough with flapper disks, I'm sick of making booger welds from contamination and want to try and make these welds as pretty as I can with my mig.

Anyone remember what voltage and wire feed settings they used?