Hi, guess who is in welding trouble again. Yep, the old dummy.

When I was taking the seats and floor console out of a 1992 Lincoln Mark 8 to install in my '56 Plymouth wagon I noticed that to use the Mark floor pan would save a lot of time fabricating mounting brackets. Well I was wrong, again, .The mark is a unit body car and the floor is double walled with a top and a bottom, took me almost a week to get it out.

So when installing the floor pan I cannot get even a bad MIG weld (only kind I can do) from the Mark floor pan to the mild steel Plymouth replacement floor and even worse from some repairs to zip wheel cuts on the mark floor pan.

When the arc strikes the flame is repelled from the floor pan back into the nozzole and it makes a burn through in the metal and a glob weld at best, I tried reversing the polarity but it was the same. When I was cutting the Mark pan out the metal had some weird smells.

After doing some research I found that this is common with galvanized metal, so I ground off a coating of some kind and it welds somewhat better.

Do you know if Ford used some kind of a coating or alloy ? Thanks.

Old Ray, the floor pan from the Mark is very likely galvanized, and the galvanized coating will be on both sides of the metal (the metal is either dipped or electrically coated (depending on how old the process was at the time it was coated), so unless you cleaned both sides, there is still a coating on the bottom side as well, if its not cleaned off, it will burn off and give off some gas that really bothers some people. Then you can add to that, when Ford welded those two floor pieces together, there is also likely some sort of sealer between the two pieces. That sealer would have to be cleaned off as well, or it too will burn off. The paint isn't helping either.

It also looks like your Plymouth floor pan has some paint, or other covering on it, that probably needs to be cleaned off in the areas your welding in, or it too will have to burn off. Someplace you need to get a ground to both pieces of metal to get a good weld, I usually grind a place clean to connect the ground clamp, and I usually clamp both pieces I want to weld together so I know I'm getting a good ground.

The 1st trick to good mig welds is to have clean shiny metal surfaces, top and bottom of both pieces. The 2nd trick is to have both surfaces you want to weld together tight against each other, any gap between them will either burn a hole, or the welding wire will have to fill the gap, either case results in a poor weld. Of course, the 3rd trick is lots of practice. Lots of light so you can see what your doing also helps, as does clean lenses on the welding helmet. Be sure the gas is turned on, and it can get through the nozzle, and that the tip isn't messed up slowing the wire down as it tries to get through the tip.

Probably not what you wanted to read, but I promise it helps with welding. Gene

Thanks Gene. I was not that surprised, kind of expected it. All great info. I liked the part about good light and a clean lens, It's damn dark inside that car so I have many auxiliary lights and I can't find my spare lens (but will) and really old eyes and a body that does'n bend like it used to. The problem is that when welding the lights are too bright for the auto sensing helmet and it darkens the lens so I have to move the lights away and now I can't see the weld. (It's never easy is it?)

Yes, the plymouth floor had some tar like stuff that even when remove left a little residue.

The good news is that with the help of some pop rivets and screws and crappy welds, it is done. (I'm going to cover it with sound deader and carpet).

Thanks again.

I understand the "its done." part all too well. I get there doing body work way too fast. My old knees don't like doing much floor work on car floorboards very much any more either, it was one of the reasons for retiring at 62.

Just for additional info, I've found that the old short florescent 12" long lights with a magnet work very well when welding. They give off enough light to see through the auto-darkening helmet to be able to see where the wire end is in relation to the place that needs to be welded. I have also heard of many guys that will put one of those LED headlight things on their helmets for welding. You just don't want the light to be behind your head, having the light above the weld line actually works the best, and if its bright enough you can still see the weld line through the dark helmet, all the better.

The idea is to provide enough light through the darkened helmet to still be able to see where the weld line has to be. Turn on the light, get things where you need them, flip down the helmet and still see where to point the mig guy. The helmet is already dark, and the lens still does its job, but when you let go of the trigger, you can see where to start welding again. It takes a little practice, but it works for me. Gene

Thanks again Gene.

UPDATE : So I ground the galvanization off and we are good to go, all fixed. (.... or maybe i just covered it up. )

I learnt something about un-molding factory molded carpet, it's made on a heat press so I slowly heated it on the back side with my 1000 degree heat gun.







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those seats look GREAT in there !
your carpet trick worked as well !
good job.

Where would a guy get a 1000 degree heat gun? The only thing I have that can reach 1,000 degrees is a torch, and I suspect the outcome wouldn't be what I would be looking for.
When you heat up the carpet, will it follow the "new" floor pan, or do you have to help it follow the floor? Gene

From the website;

"SPECIFICATIONS DEWALT D26950 Heat Gun AMPS 13 AMPS CORD LENGTH 10 FT. POWER TOOL TYPE CORDED TEMPERATURE 120 TO 1100 DEGREE F WATTS 1550 W WEIGHT 2.1 LBS."

There seems, as usual, to be some discrepancy between degrees, and BTU, and the Chinese translation, but the led readout is in degrees and does go to 1000. If or if not this is a true temperature I don know and in this case I don't care as it did what I wanted it to do. I didn't know that you could technically get 1000 degrees from 115 volts AC ?

This was a gamble and a experiment and I started from the top of the carpet just to see what it would do, not such a good idea, it started to burn the carpet. (surprise there) so I switched to the back side. To answer your question, it depends on how much heat you apply time wise, a moderate amount of time and it becomes pliable with gloves on, more heat time and it droops and bends on its own and can be forced into a new shape. Some of the sharp molds require reheating and pressing with a heavy weight until cool.

How well does the heat gun work, I left it running to go get a tool to come back to a melted gas petal. Pilot error / pictures available.

I will have to look into this one, Thanks.
I would guess by your explanation that its probably not a good idea to leave it turned on unattended because it does indeed get hot. Thanks for that warning as well.
Now I wished you would have been a day earlier with the heat gun idea, I just earlier that day cut about a foot off the back end of a very nice carpet out of an extended cab Dakota so I could put in my coupe that had a standard cab floor pan. I might have been able to flatten out the rear end of the carpet then bend it to conform to the back of my coupe floor pan. As it is, I ended cutting the "new" carpet just behind the seat brackets. Not all is lost, I may pickup the heat gun and try to make the piece I cut off conform to my floor, then I can tape the two pieces back together, the area I want to cover back there is just an out of site place to store stuff.

I have an old in build photo (from 8 years ago!) of the place I want to cover with the extra carpet. The carpet will cover the floor behind the seat, and that 8" high vertical wall (the ribbed box floor). On the flat area behind the 8" wall now has a lockable enclosed storage box. I need to take new pictures! Gene

The 8 " storage box area very much resembles, it's almost identical, as the molded carpet uplift / up-kick for the rear seat in the Lincoln and that was the area that I had to flatten the most.

Your Dakota carpet will bend just fine with heat and with the tape only you will know. I originally got the idea after heat forming some seat belt retractors pockets in aftermarket ABS interior panels.

So two other ridiculous suggestions: 1. get a carpet from a Lincoln 2 . I have the black carpet from my extended cab Dakota donor, it's yours for free with around $ 500.00 in shipping.

Have fun.

Hey thanks, but for that $500 shipping, I think I'm going to pass.
So I took a few pictures this afternoon.

Pic 1) This would be the storage box behind the seat. The white part of the floor, just behind the grey carpet is the floor from the original Dakota that i used to build the coupe. The black strip above the white floor is the 8" rise in the floor, its the different height between the Dakota cab floor pan and the Dakota box's floor that is the trunk floor pan. That rise is covered with a Bute- peal, stick, and roll down tight sound deadener & insulation. The brown pieces are 1/4" plywood lockable doors. Those doors have been in the car 8 years, I will likely be covering them with cheap carpet, but I have to decide on black or grey carpet.
Pic2) Same area with the cut off extra piece of Dakota carpet laid over the white floor pan. This piece is the part I would like to heat up and get to conform to the floor better then it does now. All of this area is behind the seat, and very little was visible with the old bench seat, but the new seats have the center fold down arm rest that will probably be folded down most of the time, so more of it will probably be visible.
Pic 3) This is what the car looked like in mid December 2019.
Pic 4) This is what the car looked like a couple weeks ago. Currently, the wheels and rear bumper is getting painted the cream color, and the front bumper is the red. I really am hoping to driver the car this coming weekend! Gene

At risk of giving bad advice I can see no reason why the carpet will not mold into that space. It becomes really flexible when warm. Put some weight on as it cools.
The difficult ones to flatten were where two 90 degree bends were close together, the excess melted rubber / tar folded over and balled up.
You do not have any big bends to flatten that I can see. Do a small test slowly in the most hidden place (or with a scrap piece).
The rubber / plastic that was on the back of my carpet would sweat just a bit and maybe change color a little bit when it was ready.
Good luck.

Thanks Old Ray. As soon as I get a heat gun, I'm going to give it a try. The worst thing I can do is ruin that small piece, the big chunk matches up perfectly. Gene