shock tower replacement?????

[VT-MKJett]

Did I miss it in the thread...how much was that bad larry? Drivers side is cheaper yes?

[bomberbob]

"how much was that" apron assembly $553.48. Yes, I think the drivers side is a bit cheaper. I do not know why, unless its because drivers side does not have this extra bracket piece on it.

"Do you have a pic of the area with the shock tower removed?" Yes, I have taken a lot of pics. What area are you interested in, and i will put photobucket them and post a link.

"What areas are different?" I have a gap between part of the new apron, and the chassis. Trying to determine how to narrow that gap. See photo.


"How are you ensuring that the strut top is in the same place? Measure the gap between strut towers?"
I would not say its foolproof, but the factory gave me some help. See areas circled on the photos below. At the front, there is an alignment tab, with a square hole. Piece goes in, you push it into place, and bend the tab over. Also at the rear there is a post coming out of the door jam area, and the new apron has a semi-circle cut out of it to go around the post. I also line up the line in the sealant where the old apron edges were, with the new apron. Its very clear. Up on top, the apron overlaps a chassis piece, and the hood hinge has two holes, one goes into the old chassis, the other goes into the new apron. Circles in the paint clearly show where the bolt heads used to be. With all these "landmarks" to go by, I don't see how I could screw up. Up and down, back and forth, and side to side, the new one goes exactly where the old one went. At this point I really have only two concerns. Closing the gap between the apron and the chassis in those areas (photo above), and then controlling the fires that will start when I light off the welder and sparks fly.

[bomberbob]

Sorry, forgot to mention something. I circled the area where the rain tray drain is. That area does not match up at all. I will have to weld in some more metal, and do something about that. This is not a structural piece, it just holds the rain tray to the apron. This appeared to be very weak, very little factory welding, and a whole lot of seam sealer. I wonder if this might be the entry point for the water, which rots out the tower.

[16vtblackjetta]

Man i must be a nice guy, my buddy had both sides rust threw he bought a cheap shell for parts we cut them out and i welded the new used towers in for $100 bucks.

[bomberbob]

You are a nice guy.

Shot of mine before I started


Shots of what it looks like with the apron removed.

[bomberbob]

Good news is the new apron assembly is bolted in place to hold it stationary, will start welding this week. I will post a couple of photos.
Bad news is that I gave the drivers side a detailed examination now that I know what to look for, and it is rusted too (but not as bad). I am not replacing the apron on the drivers side. I will cut out the rotten metal and do a repair similar to what others have done and posted on the internet.
As a side note I think I have found the root cause of the rust through (if anybody is interested). The point where the rain tray feeds the water out the opening, and into the fender area. I will also post a photo of that area on the old apron. The interface was not designed well. VW put a very small (inadequate) weld in that area, and then depended on the seam sealer to glue it together and keep the water going where it was supposed to. When the seam sealer cracks or leaks, the water goes right into the seams of the tower and eats it up like cancer.
As a second side note, I am unhappy about the spot welds on the brand new factory piece I bought. There is a small bracket that is up on the front of the apron, where a air conditioning component bolts to. That bracket fell off. I looked at the spot welds holding it on, and they were very very poor. The replacement was made in Mexico. With all the other work I am doing rewelding that bracket is no big deal. However, if the spot welds on the rest of the apron are that poor, I spent a lot of money for very poor workmanship. Shame on you VW.

[VDub2625]

That is interesting. i wonder if the gap between the frame rail and strut tower is supposed to be pulled together, sort of like pretensioned. The water drain hole being in the wrong place, I have no explanation for. That is very odd.

[heerschap]

for progress. For that gap, what if you started welding from the outsides alternating side to side tacking it and working your way to the middle where the gap. would that make a diffrence?
either that or what vdub said. have some one push on it from the inside with there feet or whatever as you weld it.

[vura6]

i got the same problem but not as bad as everyone else. im just gonna weld in a little square piece from each side then call it done.

[vura6]

[bomberbob]

Shot of the area that is ruining our cars. The area where the raintray drain meets the fender, very poor design. Almost no thought went into this at all. I will post a photo of what I am doing to fix this on my apron. Rusty area you see to the right, is actually down when installed on car.


Photo of apron ready to weld. I installed a few bolts to pull it in until I weld the crap out of it. Bolts will then come out and I will weld in the holes. Weld thru primer is sprayed on.



Remember after the apron goes on, there are still two more pieces (reinforcements) that need to go on.

[bomberbob]

First attempt at welding is not going well. The cheap harbor freight welder only has two temps, low and high. Variable wire feed speed, but I cannot get it to weld without blowing holes in the new apron. Frustrating to watch holes open up, I might as well shoot it with a 22 rifle.

My plan: make my own copper backer plate to stick behind the sheet metal. I will hit the local hardware store tomorrow and buy some copper pipe. Slice it down the middle, and split it open and pound it out flat. Then a couple of magnets out of some old dead computer hard drives, and I am in business. I could buy something like it but why spend 30 bucks for something I can make for almost nothing....

[jaystone]

Jesus man. The amount of time and effort going into this and you can't buy a halfway decent 120 volt MIG welder?

Do yourself a favor and pickup a Hobart Handler 120, get a damn bottle of shielding gas and appropriate filler wire, and DO IT RIGHT.

Why trust your life and the longevity of a this repair to a crap-tastic Harbor Fright flux core MIG?

edit; Also make sure all your joints are tight and bare metal. I see primer in the photos above, and unless it's weld through primer, your going to have one helluva time getting a clean weld. Better yet, get some scrap metal and practice on it to get the wire feed and voltage settings correct.

[Bariman82]

As someone who put probably 5 miles of wire on his mk3 over the past year, I will say that you need a real welder. You need to be able to dial in a full range of speed and heat. You shouldn't need any copper backing. Welding sheet metal is tricky. You will have to practice. You won't be able to lay a bead as it gets too hot. It will be a long series of tacks. The tacks need to be hot, but short, then you cool them, and keep going. Get your panel gaps as tight as possible. Don't count on the bead being able to bridge a panel. Practice on clean scrap. "Clean" means either a wire wheel on an angle grinder or a grinding disc.

If you want to take a look at my thread, you can see what a patch welded in with a series of tacks looks like. Probably pages 3-8. I started welding about a year ago.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...ta-restoration

I'm not flaming you at all. Particularly for something as structural as this, you need solid, penetrating welds, and I don't think you're going to get that with your current setup.

[heerschap]

a good welder is worth the investment imo. I got a good one off local classifieds for a decent price.

http://youtu.be/kw4W28teHyk

[Harmony27]

bump

[bomberbob]

Thread is not dead, and neither is the car. I am taking your advice. I have a friend who has a Lincoln welder, and he welds for a living (builds trailers). He came over this weekend and surveyed my handiwork and said I gotta grind all my old weld off so we can do this right. I don't think he has any gas, I will need to rent one of those.

So some grinder work to erase my previous mistakes, and I will attack this with a nice welder and somebody who knows how to use it as a mentor.

[bomberbob]

Car is sitting on all four wheels now. Ran out of welding gas, went back to flux core. Its slow going now because I did all the easy stuff first, now I have welding inside the car, some of it I almost have to stand on my head to reach under the dash. Weld a little bit, then stop and put out the fire. Using cardboard and wet T shirts as shields to protect as much as I can.
I estimate I have about 12 to 14 inches of weld to go, and then I am calling it done. I have bounced up and down on the strut housing and it seems to hold.
The weld is ugly as sin, however its going to be undercoated so nobody will know.
Even after I put the welder down, I still have a lot to do. Re-install the dash, seats, everything inside. I have the front of the car pulled off to replace the hoses on the oil cooler, the crackpipe, thermostat housing gasket, seal on the oil filter housing, inner tie rod end, etc etc. And I think the throttle body is bad, and I got an O2 sensor fault. Looks like a VW bomb went off inside my garage.

http://i1219.photobucket.com/albums/...5/HPIM0869.jpg

[bomberbob]

Probably the end of this post. Car is back together, took it in and had the front end re-aligned, so it goes back on the road tomorrow. Iowa winter is on the way, so the 04 GLI goes in storage.
Only had one fairly serious fire. I cut back as much of the insulation inside the car as I could reach. Was doing some welding inside the car and smoke started rolling out from behind the heat/air conditioning area. Some sparks must have caught the insulation on fire. Didn't have to use the fire extinguisher, but I was close to pulling the pin on it.