Hey all,

If i want to weld some small patches into the floor of my mini, what metal do I use?

Lucas

You can use more or less anything apart from stainless or galvanised. I prefer to go a little heaver at 1.0mm sheet, but 0.8mm is easier to cut to shape. You can use old panels from more or less any wrecked car; I've heard of using computer cases and so on, but I bought a 2.4 x 1.2m sheet of each gauge mentioned above. The advantage is it's clean, cheap and flat.

I would use lapped joins as well, because the metal you're joining to will most likely be pretty thin, and more or less impossible to butt-weld successfully to - lapped joins are much easier to get strength back into the shell.

Yeh I'd more or less agree with angusdog there, he should be more or less right, more or less anyway.

ha ha ha - here's me worrying about spelling. I won't use that phrase for another 6 months now (or thereabouts)

how do you plan on welding them in?
why not use gal?

Galv is a PITA to weld neatly, and you can get "zinc jitters" from the fumes
(can I have another glass of milk please)

If you want something with a bit of rust resistance, I use zincalume. The coating vapourises more easily when welding

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Too many cars, and too little time.

Galvanising gives off posionous fumes when welding. Given that you have to strip the existing metal to bare steel for welding, and thus coat it again afterwards with rust preventative paint etc etc, using galvanised steel is of no advantage.

EDIT: AWD, I'm not arguing with you, it's a simultaneous post Those zinc jitters getting the better of me...

But if you've got it lying around there is no harm in using it.

The fumes are not good for you. Grind the coating off before you weld it and you'll be golden.

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Metal to burn, sparks to fly...