Whoo new gear knob arrived today straight from Japan. Swapped my s4 for an 02 corolla on the weekend should be quite easy to sell and that's going to fund the rest of my rebuild. So hopefully I can stop posting pics of small things and get some real progress happening

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/013-1.jpg

Engine leaves me tomorrow car should run in a month!

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/IMG_0541.jpg

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/IMG_0542.jpg

So with the engine now away and 2 long weekends in a row due to easter over here I figured I had better get started on getting the car ready. Jacked her up today to inspect the damage to the floor pan where the seat had pulled a bolt through when I was ass fucked by an FB on a cruise. Although I'm an aircraft sheety I've never done a repair using a weld before so this is going to be interesting. Will look at trying to fabricate some sort of doubler to weld on tomorrow as I'm out of time for the day but going to be hard with my limited tools in my shed.

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/007-3.jpg

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/004-2.jpg

On a side note I finished this project yesterday, my mates evo 3's turbo seized while he was running down the strip. I modified the water pipe to clear the new turbo and fabricated the inlet and intercooler piping (excuse the amount of silicone he insisted on using it over me making proper pipes, although the inlet sort of has to be there given that the AFM is a funny oval shape)

And I thought our engine bays were cramped, fuck this thing.

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...abater/001.jpg

Fuck me the floor pans in these cars are thin! No wonder it tore there. I've managed to repair it but it was a bit above my level of skill with the TIG lol. I might take a pic later. Was using stainless filler wire and every time I put a little heat on the floor it would just melt away. Ah well learnt a bit doing it and it's stronger then it was before =D

Did some work on the exhaust today. Am changing all my IC piping so I had all the old stuff there, figured I would recycle the bends and fix up the rear half of my exhaust thats mild steel. Considering I've only been TIG welding for a short time now (cant mig or stick weld either) (around 2 months) and am self taught I'm pretty stoked with it. Going to do from the cat to the muffler section tomorrow

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/004-3.jpg

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/005-3.jpg

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/006-2.jpg

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/007-4.jpg

Those are pretty damn nice looking tig welds for teaching yourself and only having a couple of months under your belt.

Yeah, going to be nice when I get them looking neater. I feel like I'm learning something with every job I'm doing at the moment =D main thing seems to be getting comfortable with something to lean my arm on.. Been reading some books and YouTube on it. Hopefully starting a night course next month

I wish i could tig, but i wouldn't even call myself passable at it, even though i had instrucion and about 20 hours in practice.

Did a little bit more today. Not much because the missus was home but she is out again tomorrow so I got some more time to play with it. Realised though I'm probably going to mess it up without the engine being back in so I don't think I'll end up finishing all of it =/

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/001-1.jpg

http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/a...ater/002-1.jpg

You wont learn much in a basic welding course, but I can tell you this, its practice that makes you good.

You will get there mate ;) and what you have done so far is good an shows you have the ability, the neatness will come with time and a few bottles of gas!!!!!

Yeah it's not going to bad when I have decent access, take that away from me and the look alot worse. But I still think I should do a course as I'm not sure how much penetration I should have etc.

WOW that 4g needs some work! Hey let me grab the CAS off of it :p. welds look good for a rookie!

Without back purging this is how much penetration you should have (my flange weld for my own exhaust) see pic. It should just start to mushroom the mating pipe and be even, this takes a fair bit of practice and experience without over heating the filler or the pipe or distorting the fuck out of the job......... its not as easy as some cunts claim.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8611/tig6.jpg

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/7853/tig5.jpg

This is a pipe joint, these are real easy to over heat (like you have) all it is just practice and stainless is real easy to over cook

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/6061/tig4.jpg

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7581/tig1s.jpg

Turbo support fixing

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3847/support1w.jpg

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7444/support2.jpg

You can make some cool shit once you get a handle on it :)

P.S. I am self taught with TIG, it was just practice, there is lots of good info from Miller on how to do it, they even sent me some literature free when I asked them on-line!