Floorpan welding - part 1

This is the step that took most of my garage time if you were to track hours, even more than building up the engine. I discovered that my "small holes" in the floor was actually major rot. The driver's side floor was essentially only attached to the center of the car and not on the outside, and a large chunk of the floor was soft. I'm not 100% sure about this but I think the seam sealer used in the factory contained some kind of rust promoter. At least that's what it looks like.

Had I discovered all the rusty metal I needed to replace at once, I probably would have begun searching for another LeBaron and turned this one into a parts car. Fortunately for this particular LeBaron I did not. It wasn't until I had gone far into the welding that I discovered how much work I was looking at.

I set about cutting out the rusty steel. Once I started poking the little hole by the parking brake cable it turned into a large hole, then into a really big hole, then a Fred Flintstone-style hole.

The next step was to whip my welding skills back into shape. I last welded about 12 years ago, using a DC arc welder, on 1/8 to 1/4 inch mild steel. I picked up a portable MIG from Princess Auto for $129, and tried to re-learn how to weld on 22-gauge steel. A few evenings of blasting holes no matter how careful thought I was yielded a technique that worked for me. Very, very short blasts. For $129 you don't get the best welder out there, and all I had was a 70/90 amp switch. People will tell you 70A is far too much for 22 gauge steel, and they're probably right. I made it work.

I also invented a new art form. I call it "sheetmetaligami" where I fold complex shapes out of sheetmetal then weld them together to form a larger object.