Updatesss!!
Rear driver side inner fender area
Rear passenger side inner fender area. There was a lot of water in there, had to remove the rubber plug (lower left hole).
Welded some angle iron to keep the front members straight.
Removed the front member closing plate.
-_-
The squares are the pieces I cut out with a dremel because the spot welds for the inner brace and bracket were oval shaped.
No coating from the factory where the two pieces were welded together.
This is the bracket/brace thing that gets welded to the inside of the frame member and where the tension control rod brackets bolt on to.
Again no coating, some weird oily residue.
Sanded some of the paint off.
Factory spot weld locations
Another brace in there that needs to get taken apart and checked for rust.
Started to work on the braces/brackets.
More cutting and welding.
Tack welded to keep it from warping.
Welded and grinded smooth.
A few more small sections.
And the top part as well.
Had to weld in smaller sections in order to prevent warping.
Now to the middle frame members. The undercoated member is the one I will be replacing, it's the front driver side one. Only 2 spot welds on the bottom of it lol.
And it's off!
The dark, brownish spot is another bad factory spot weld!
Without the driver side frame rail.
Decided to remove the whole frame rail/member assembly since there was a bit of rust in there.
I'm going to weld the rail and the member together and then weld it to the car. Makes it easier for me to paint the welded areas in the rail. You could actually buy the passenger side from Nissan as a whole assembly.
Lines up perfectly.
Driver side frame member closing plate. That bracket you see on the middle of the plate is where the bolts go for the cross member.
Flipped around.
Welds drilled out.
After some careful prying, it came off =)
Now to deal with those squares I cut out.
Backside pic, looks like some areas didn't fully penetrate.
Grinded smooth
Drilled out 1/4" holes for the plug welds. According to the S13 Body repair manual, they want you to drill out the holes to 5-6mm...close enough.
Dealing with the other side of the plate, gotta make sure to keep the alignments holes there.
Galvanneal sure does weld nice and easy.
Grinded it a bit and drilled out the holes for the plug welds.
Old metal on top. Used it to mark the locations for the plug welds.
Here's the old rotten frame rail.
Looks like the iron is going back to it's natural state.
So I found a supplier for high strength sheet metal and bought some metal. Turns out there was a supplier 5 minutes away, spent a lot of time trying to find stuff online. It's high strength Galvanneal, around 50-60 ksi tensile strength according to the salesman. However, I had to buy 4x8 sheets
, but I was able to get the sheets sheared down to 1x2's. Each stack is a different grade, from 16Ga-22Ga.
Sitting on top of the braces that run from sill to sill.
Also cut out the rusted section on the lower firewall.
This is the top of the driver side frame member, where the wheel well is. Those spot welds are for the brace that has the bolts for the tension control rod bracket, look at how close they are to the edge
I had to grind the welds off with a dremel from the inside, not fun.
Decided to fill the smaller holes with weld and used an old computer heatsink as a backing pad. The weld won't stick to the aluminum.
I also stripped the paint off the strut tower assembly.
Now back to the lower firewall rust I cut out.
Backside of the clamp.
Slowly tack welded it and clamped it at various locations in order to bend it to the right shape.
Cut out another section above the section I just welded.
Grinded the weld beads with a dremel.
I had to remove this piece as well to work on the other sections of the firewall, just 5 spot welds.
Sound deadner in there, no wonder it wouldn't come off lol.