View single post by Dan Eiland
 Posted: 07-24-2006 06:16 am
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Dan Eiland

 

Joined: 03-18-2005
Location: El Paso, Texas USA
Posts: 159
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 Hi Art, I am removing all the brackets from the firewall so I can have a flat surface when I go to put things back. Since my car is modified it really doesn't matter where I mount the items that were on the firewall. When I removed the bracket for the washer bottle I ended up with some holes in the firewall from the spot welds. On top of this I needed to cover up the hole for the heater hoses since I will not be using this location for my new climate control system hoses. There is also a drain hole on the passenger side that I no longer need since the boxed area inside the car has been removed from the interior. I had two holes on top of the bulkhead that were not needed so I closed these as well.

I have to admit that my welding is not the best, especially on sheetmetal. Second, my welder is not the best either. Put the two together and you have trouble. I welded all the holes closed and then ground things smooth again. Looks great from the outside but when I get under the dash on the inside I can see tiny little holes. Some of these no doubt are from my over zealous grinding to get things perfect. If I try using the welder to fill in the holes I end up making things worse before I finally find good metal to fill things back in. Right now things look pretty good, but I can still see some tiny little holes in the firewall. I thought about some filler since it wouldn't take much to take care of this problem and my second thought was to shoot the area with some weldable primer and weld a new piece over the old. This would give me a very nice flat surface to work with and it shouldn't be hard to seal the area once my spot welds are cooled. Should definitely help keep some of that engine heat out even though that is not my intention.

BTW, How did you know I was using a magnifying glass to do my welding. Problem is in my area, the magnifying glass is just too hot.