I was wondering about this, can and is a weld as strong as a piece of metal that's never ben welded before or is that the weak point? Like say you were doing repairs to the rocker panels on a car, by welding in pieces (ie rsut repair)would that weaken them? I'm not planning on doing this but I'd like to know. Thanks

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1970 Chevy Custom El Camino (http://www.dreamelectric.com)
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Short answer: Yes.

Good!

To answer your question, yes, welding does weaken the adjoining metal, but it's not enough to cause concern. The sheetmetal body panels do not suffer enough stress to cause the joint to fail. If you've ever seen a broken weld joint, you'll notice thatit breaks right next to the joint, not in the middle of the bead itself. There's nothing to worry about when doing sheetmetal repairs on older cars. The metal is nice and thick, relatively speaking. The only way you would have any problems is if the welding was done improperly by someone lacking the skill and/or experience.

Thanks for the info Randy, that's good to know for when I start repairing it. I know of one spot on my car that was welded up and had body filler put over it but it keeps cracking so I wondered about that. I dug it out and it looks like some type of gold material in there used to keep the seams together, what's that?

That would be brass. It was brazed at some point in the past. Brazing is similar to soldering. You heat the metal until it's hot enough to to melt the brass into it, but not to the point that you actually melt the parent metal. Mig welding is the prefered method. Brazed joints do sometimes tend to crack.

That's interesting, they put the whole quarter panel on with that except for the spot welds, is that ok? It doesn't matter anyway because I have to replace that whole side but I was curious if that's common practice. It's up in the sail panel, around the door jamb and on the back in spots holding the panel on.

[This message has been edited by Shawn (edited 07-29-2002).]

It sounds like this car has had previous body work. This was a common body shop repair method in the 70s.