Friday, July 3, 2020

Customization

Removing parts and welding shut the excessive holes on a car body like trim holes, antenna holes and what not is probably one the most common and old modification methods around.

The donor car was a Dodge Dart 170, the base model but I want to make the couch look as it is of a Dart GT! So as a small side project to the ongoing rust repairs I decided to weld the trim holes on the sides shut as those don't exist on the GT model.

Dart GT


Dart 170




I tried a couple of different techniques to weld the trim holes shut.



What worked best for me was to have a small piece of sheet metal in the hole and welding that in place that gave least distortion and required least grinding.



Some pictures where I tried to catch the shrinking that has happened when welding holes shut.



Unfortunately I ended up making an unplanned patch during this job as the metal was so thin so I only burned holes in it when trying to weld.





The patch was made on an dent I had tried to straighten out already earlier so the shape of the metal was not optimal from start and adding a lot of heat to the area didn't improve the situation.



Now the trim holes on both sides are welded shut!




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Final details done and the project is now ready!

 Here are some pictures of how it turned out.