Welding Tips: Floorpan Lap and Butt Welds

Piece by piece, you just work it all together. We're getting ready to do the lap welds now, and the reason I did the little butt weld right down here was to fill up the void and then I could reprime it, and then I could make sure I didn't have anything to catch water and debris later on. You're beginning to see the versatility of the mig welder right now, but you can't weld if it has the metal off of the other metal, it has to be tight. And that's what I'm trying to reinforce with the clamping here and showing you in the car to help you along. This is the real McCoy, right?

It's where the rubber meets the road. The project's coming ahead for me. I really liked the way this fits, but clamped. I want it to be, it's got a little thing that registers right here in the floor for me. And You see how you can adjust stuff, stop thinking about what you're doing.

I want you to have fun building your project, this is when you can blow off some steam so that you're building a better car. Okay? Just like the coupons on the bench for the lap world. What you can see if you look right down in here, you see that I'm using the edge of the tunnel as the guide for the wire, making the bead about four beats long. And that's a good little skip weld.

It's lapped, but called a skip weld because it's short and only in a few areas. This is how the factory built the car. If you can look where I have the primer ground back, those are the areas that the factory had welded the car already and we're just going to go ahead and attach it in the same areas. Making, basically the same look as they had in the car. Right down the edge, this is the guide.

Tell you what we'll do, we'll do this weld, we'll flip on the helmet cam, because I love the helmet cam, you can really get a little better vision. What it does it loses the blue light. It goes green, but it gives you all of the vision that you need to see the world perfectly. And again, this is the beauty of our DVD is it allows you to get right inside the helmet with me. And then you're going to weld.

This is the next best thing to you pulling the trigger. This is a real environment. It's exactly what you see. There's the beat, there's the pedal, there's the push. It's all in here.

And when you begin to practice this method, you're going to be welding your car, just like this. Before I forget. Cool it down. It's not that hard. Practice, it is a skill set, but you're going to enjoy it.

I don't think you can just beat everything into place with a hammer. Watch the clamp do the work for me. Tight is right, there it goes down just like that. It's going to be another great look through the helmet cam. At the lap weld, what I want you to look at this time, as I strike this arc is how much I'm pushing the wire and the one direction.

This is the push wire, now watch it push right here. There it goes. One more time, that's about five beats down there and cool it down. It's a great lap weld. Oh we did use a clamp in the corner, but we can't clamp everything.

So be prepared to have those self tapping sheet metal screws on hand, and drive them in. Here's an area I can't clamp, but I use a screw that works well. It's not something I go to all the time. What I've done is put both pins down for my butt weld. Now watch this butt weld, it's a little different, I'm gonna tap the cross member and if you watch the wire moving a little see action right there.

And I'm able to close up that large cap right down onto the cross member. Se the tip move just like that. Again, it's all technique, don't forget to cool down. You'll be making beads exactly like this.