LEt things cool inbetween the spot welds! Take your time! :shrug:

 

I thought I took my time, but about 10 tack-welds in to it, I noticed a pretty serious warp, guess I learned a lesson for my door handles. Any advice on a fix?

 

The sheet medal on these truck is thin!

So, if the suface is still warm or hot, wait on welding more!

 

Yeah tell me about it, I guess I will try to cut a relief slot and work it out from there.

 

the sheet metal on these trucks is retarded thin.. my doors warped a little when i had my handles shaved, use a hammer and dolly and a slide hammer to smooth out the best u can.. then body filler.. it's about all u can do, unless u want to get a full skin

 

Yeah, I guess I am left with little to no options but to work with what I have, thanks:thumbup:

 

also make sure your welder amperage is adjusted for the thickness you're welding. spread your tacks as far apart and then close the gap. kind of stuck with what you got this time...fill and grind. but, next time you will know. I always, even being a welder for a living, pull out a piece of comparable scrap and run a bead on it to verify the machine is where I want it before starting.

 

A trick we used in school once or twice was to heat the warped area with a torch nice and warm and hit it with ice cold water the second you pull the torch off. It expands the metal and then the shock of cold water will shrink it instantly and could bring most of the low spot back up some

 

Really! that is seriously good advice, I have been searching the web for a fix and all I have got til now is out of my league, thanks!:thumbup:

 

I would be working it with the dolly while it is still being heated and then quench it. light taps though, heated metal is easier to move/fuck up

 

This is an indented warp...and it is on my tailgate just below the handle/filler...I am not sure how I would get to it with body tools

 

If its close enough to the opening, you can get some "duck bill" vise grips to try to get some of the low spots out. the straight edges on them will even out the surface

 

kool, I think I might go home and give it a go...might have to hit you up for some more pointers. Thanks for all your help

 

sure thing man, they also have dent pullers to at a auto parts store. you weld a rod in the affected area, and then *lightly* use the included slide hammer to make it less concave. You can weld as many of the rods on there as needed...then take some side cutters when you are done and grind them flush like it never happened.

 

its easier to put on a tailgate skin.

less time. way better looking.

 

What size mig wire are your running? It helps to run .025 wire, less heat to melt the wire you can damn near touch the panel right after you tack it with that

 

If you are going to use a wire machine, use a torch to preheat the entire area first. Being as thin as our body panels are, it doesn't take long. Easiest way to do all of this is to tig it. I have shaved multiple trucks using a tig and have never had any issues whatsoever. And it is nice cause you can run a continuious bead with no worries

 

My dad tried to tig weld my tailgate on my dime with I think nickel rod? So it would be a much cooler weld but with no preheat, it came out amazing until 15 minutes later it warped, I've never heard the preheat trick might try it sometime?

 

Preheat works especially well with aluminum...but good practice with any welding. After its warm it fuses better, and you can clean it with a wire brush before welding for less contamination. Wire size and wire feed is just as crucial as the proper amperage adjustment i talked about earlier too. You can also post heat with the torch too to ease the transition back to room temperature and stress relieve the HAZ (heat affected zone). TIG is the way to go if you have the $

 

I am wire welding with .035...i guess I ran the tacks to often and got it good, oh well I am gonna try to pull it up with a torch and cool it as fast as possible and see where that leaves me, if the result is bad, I'll buy a new gate

 

if the result is bad, I'll buy a new gate

Nah, we'll get it fixxed up...no need for that. Good thing about fab work is if you can fuck it up, you can fix it. Worst case cut out the bad section and graft in a replacement patch

 

when i shaved my cousins doors with my tig welder i didnt even used filler rod. we took our time cutting the fill plates to be PERFECT and then just did some metal fusion (welding without filler, basically just melting together) on the lowest setting with almost no pedal. worked like a champ

 

Has anyone every tried putting clay around the area they are welding to help absorb the heat and keep it from spreading out. I've heard about this quite abit but have never tried it before.

 

I heard of that after I made the warp... but when I do it again I might give it a try!

 

using a piece of copper will absorb the heat to help warping but if you pre heat you wont have to run as hot of a bead.... .035 is to big for sheet metal use .023 if you can that is for doin body work...

 

.035 isnt too big if you know what your doing and your set up and prep is right

 

No matter what your gunna warp the metal, you just gotta take a towel soak it in water then after you make a tack wait 4-6 seconds after the weld then rub the wet towel over the tack.

 

isn't .035 flux cored wire? the extra slag it puts out may be a problem for you also.

 

Holy shit its a ghost. Good to see you post Greg.

 

The problem with fluxcore is not the slag, but its a much hotter process lol you think you're warping it now. Your HAZ, while very important for structural work, isn't really going to do anything for sheet metal so don't bother heating it after. Heating with a torch after a weld also really isn't going to get material hot enough to temper unless its on the thin side < 1/8". I also noticed that noone mentioned you should work from opposite sides, so if its a circle put a tack on 0 then 180

 

Ya its very easy to warp and honestly will always warp a little no matter what you do. The .035 is too big and burns too hot, get some .023. Another tip is to grind the tacks down every few passes. If you wait til the end to grind it all down at once, the heat and pressure from the grinder will warp it easily, esp if its right on the verge from the welding.

 

I was reading through the posts and say tack one side and tack as far away from your last tack as you could but I'm too late lol. I was building a door for a payloader and quite going straight across instead of going side to side and it warped and I had to start over.