i am in the process of removing unneeded brackets. i have most already removed but was curious about the big bracket between the b pillar and the wheel wells. it is covered by the rear plastics. are these pieces structural or can they be safely removed?

 

what spec is the cage? no 6point or SFC, I wouldn't cut all the metal out behind the speaker so you just had the outer quarter skin. Thats whats called the arm rest metal I htink your talking about, ya they are more for a crash. I took them out, with al the back seat, and setbelt stuff.
if its its over a 8.50, you could cut everything but the body shell off, and race the car.

 

yeah im not cutting any metal out yet. the brackets i'm talking about our what would be the arm rest though. i looked through your thread and seen that you took them out. thanks.

 

You have to remove those to put a mnitub in, or at least cut the hell out of them... I took mine out. There's a ton of spot welds there, so be ready to spend some time doing it.

 

yeah there are a bunch of welds plus some of them are covered with seam sealer. i guess thats next on the list.

 

what did they do shoot the seam sealer in there with a freakin' cannon. after grinding all of that off around the bracket i finally was able to remove it but not without producing around 5 more holes with the spot weld cutter! are there any alternatives to welding them all back up? epoxy maybe? or better yet i could take it back to Canada and they could give it the money shot with the seam sealer again!

 

no alternative to welding?

 

Tack weld them up.

That seam sealer, fwiw, if you're doing weight reduction, if you get in the car with a wire wheel, adn get all of it out, you will get about 17 lbs out of the car. That's all the sealer in the interior of the car. Pull the rear bumper cover and tail lights, and there's more. Pull the front fenders, and everything out of the engine bay, and there's more.

There's roughly 25 to 35 lbs in one of these cars, depending on how happy the guy was with the application when the car was built. I took 17 lbs out, just from the interior of my car. About 3 or 4 wire wheels, and about 6 or 7 hours to do all of it. And, my drill doesn't seem all too happy anymore LOL.

 

im going to do the interior. i have been using my 90* air die grinder with a 100 grit disk on it. it takes it off pretty fast and if not i have 40 grit too. i dont have 220 in my attached garage so i was thinking about just buying a 90A 110v mig welder. i can use my friends but i would rather take my time with it at my own pace at my house.

 

what exactly you will cut there? can you pot a pic for what you've done there?
thx

 

Another easy way to get the seam off is to heat it up with a mini torch and scrape it off with a metal putty knife.

 

when I weld up holes I have a bar of brass or alum. I put on the backside, so I mig I can fell the wire hit it, and its a heat sink a little. You kinda have to do little tachs around the hole to get the metal thicker before you try to close it up at all. then one bead in 3-4 spots around the hole 10-20secs apart untill the hole is closed. your figure out the heat it will take and were it gose.

 

Cutting will commense this weekend one my fab guy stops by and gives me the go ahead.... will post pic's when the cutting is completed. It will be more then most do.

 

Are you just building the welfare to cover the entire hole or are you welding a patch over it?

 

Haha that's what I get for posting from my phone. Not welfare. Supposed to be welds.

 

What are you all using or the best thing to use to cut/drill out the spot welds?

 

A spot-weld cutter (of course)

 

Spot weld cutter. I usually then grind the spot off, unless I go all the way thru, which I try to avoid as much as possible.

A wire fed mig, with quick tacks at a low power usually does the job of closing the hole up. If I have a couple holes, I'll go from one to another, allow the metal to cool between tacks, usually doesn't take long to close them up. Grind flat, retack, regrind if needed, wire wheel then paint over once it's done.

 

started welding these up today. i havent welded for about 10 years. i went and bought a cheap $100 flux core 90A welder from harbor freight. i sucessfully burned 3 additional holes in the floor before i managed to close the first one up. what a pain in the ***.

 

I have that welder too. It's not very forgiving when it comes to settings....or lack thereof. Now if only I had the Miller Millermatic 250 from work!