I am new to welding and today was the first bodywork welding that I have tried to do....I suck!!!!

I practiced on some scrap and it appeared that I was getting sorta OK penetration so I progressed to the real thing. All I did was blow blooming holes and have hot welder wire spit in my lap .

Can somebody suggest some solutions for me please? I am welding fresh metal on the rear panel at the point where it joins to the bracket that is on the boot floor. My new metal is 1.0mm. The welder is a 150amp affair and I have just put in a new spool of 0.6mm wire. The settings are shown here (pretty much I have tried several settings but even as low as it goes is blowing holes);



Following is a gallery of my inability. It's my first car restoration and as I said my first welding but I have read every thread on here and thought I might have half a chance.......

The gap around the new metal varies between 0.5mm to 1.5mm.





The next 2 from inside the boot didn't come out all that well so you cannot see the penetration I got on the tiny blob of weld that didn't blow.



Some thoughts I had as to reasons;

- I suck
- Insufficient earth. It splattered alot and stop-started. The bolt in the picture is there to hold the plate in place but also to provide an earth
- I had sprayed some weld through primer onto all surfaces before welding but I just could not get a decent earth (this was before I added the bolt). I cleaned it all off with a flat wheel. Maybe there was sufficient residue left to cause the spitting. I had already cleaned off all the etch primer that was applied after sand blasting.
- The gap between the panels is too large?
- I suck
- The wire feed was a little irregular. I think it was not coping with the weight of the new wire spool.

The weld thru primer that Adelaide Crash Suppliers sold me is;


Any help or ideas you can offer are greatly appreciated. There is only so much rear panel so I have to limit my hole blowing!!!!!!

were are my sodding pictures???????

uploaded/mk1_oz/201029181158_Plate1.jpg

uploaded/mk1_oz/201029181247_Plate2.jpg

uploaded/mk1_oz/20102918139_Plate3.jpg

uploaded/mk1_oz/201029181352_Plate4_inside_boot.jpg

uploaded/mk1_oz/201029181421_Plate5_inside_boot.jpg

uploaded/mk1_oz/201029181450_Welder_Settings.jpg

uploaded/mk1_oz/201029181524_Weld_Thru_Primer.JPG

see if that works.....

ok...how do i do this again??????

quote:

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Originally posted by MK1_Oz














see if that works.....

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From my welding, i've found that it spits when you haven't got the metal as clean as it should be. Blowing holes happens when either you leave the gun in one spot for too long or you have found a very thin piece of metal. The idea is to creat a small pool of liquid metal and drag it along the gap. The more constant you can keep the size of the pool, the better the weld.

I can't really help with the setting on your welder although it does look about right for what you're aiming for.

The settings on my welder look like this

thanks fordsy. maybe the 40 degree weather today played a part?

any Adelaide blokes bored and wanna give a lesson hehe

how did you get the pics to show???

mate with my knowlege your wire speed is way to high and same with your amps 1.5mm gap is to large to, by the looks you have been spot welding witch is what you want, try do a fillet and you will most likly blow it out, what lenght is your stick out? (how much wire to you have out of the gun) theres ALOT of things that come into i sugest in rolling in a cert 2 engineering course its only about 350 bucks for the year and you learn alot of basic welding skills

cheers luke

Have a search on Youtube for welding vids.

There's quite a few on there and should help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWoMat8nfbs&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDxqb2p5OM

http://howtoasap.com/mig%20_weld%20_automotive_sheet_medal.html

And this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9kiEdvuReM&feature=channel