i will attempt to show you how i rebuilt the drivers side rear buttress that had severely rotted,

first looks make you think this is one pressed piece of steel you would be wrong, the rear buttress is made of at least four different panels, welded together at the factory , this includes the section from the roof, the boot gutter, and the inner side is made of three sections welded and lead filled to make them look as one

firstly , the rust, the area around the aerial hole had completely rotted through , and the section up by the rear window one inch up from the boot gutter had also holed, this is due to the welded sections having an internal lip ( go ahead, have a feel in ur own car ) and this traps condensation, and rots from the inside out, so its always ten times worse than that small bubble you can see on the outside



i obtained two separate sections from different donor cars, the one was the whole rear buttress section from the back window to the rear light, the other was a small square section around the aerial hole
knowing what metal i had, i cut out all the rot so i could fit the repair sections



repair sections were carefully cut to size and test fitted prior to welding , the edges were ' joggled ' to give an overlap of metal to weld in places



continued on page two,

BB :wink:

 

page two,

once i was happy with the fit of the repair sections i used a combination of spot welding and puddle welding with a MIG to weld the repair sections in place, the main reason for spot welding is that it minimises heat distortion over large flat sections that can ripple if too much heat is present




once the welding was done i used a grinder to knock off any splatters and high spots, and dressed with a panel beating hammer and dolly till flat , this is done to minimise the amount of filler used to smooth the repair, the filler ads no structural strength , but is simply cosmetic for the application of paint





some primer is added for protection until the whole car is repainted in original white

i have attempted to repair this section while trying to keep the look and feel of the original panel sections by keeping the original gutter joints, and other features, this was helped by them already being on the repair sections

please bear in mind, i am not a professional welder or car body worker, this is my hobby and i'm a self taught welder , all the work is my own,

thanx for looking, and i hope it inspires some of you to have a go yourself,

BB

 

Looks good! I´m impressed, you have really saved the life of an XJS there!