Welding lessons

colinthefox

colinthefox

0
The hinge for the back seat on my old Volvo 850 got detached from the inner wing, and the seat back is the seat belt anchorage, so a small repair was needed.

Soooo.........................

On removing the plastic wheel arch "protector", there was 22 years of damp muck behind it which had of course rotted through the inner wing. I had no idea until now that this was happening. How naiive.

Here's the new steel welded in. The other side was more or less the same, so that's a whole lot of welding. I forgot to take a pic until I'd started on the seam sealer.
IMG_2648.JPG

So nothing new really, just a normal welding job. Now for the welding lessons.

I had removed all the trim from inside the load bay and back seat area, but there was a small bit of foam rubber that had got stuck to the steel inside the car in an area I thought was clear. I was wrong. This caught alight, and withing 20 seconds I had a fire on my hands. By the time I had grabbed the big CO2 extinguisher that was at arms length, pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger, another bit of plastic was burning fiercely. Another 5 seconds and it was all put out. Nothing worse than a bit of scorching and some smuts on the headlining, but the whole incident shook me up a bit, and involved a lot of upholstery cleaning (no bad thing, it was last cleaned 16 years ago) and a long trip to a scrappie for a bit of replacement trim.

The lessons (I'm sure you will have more to add).
  • Park your other vehicles out of the workshop.
  • Remove every scrap of flammable material from the welding area, and a large safety margin around.
  • Check very often for burning (better still have a fire watcher).
  • Keep a garden hand spray with water handy for cooling things down.
  • Have a BIG fire extinguisher right by you and ready to go.
  • Half a minute is a very long time when you have a fire. Fire develops incredibly quickly.
  • It can happen to me.
I deliberately haven't said anything about fuel tanks. That's a whole other subject.

Happy welding y'all:oops:
 
Nice job Colin.
As for the fire - been there done that on the Mini a few years back. The rear seat belt caught alight as I was welding and the fire spread to the seat back very quickly while I was still underneath before I noticed the smoke billowing out of the window. A lungful of the fumes didn't do me much good either as I gave the flames a blast with the garden hose. Luckily a new seat belt and seat back were easily replaced but if it had been going for even a minute more........
 
A worthy note of caution I think. I always have a CO2 extinguisher, a foam and a water extinguisher when I am welding, but I am not sure that I always have them conveniently at hand. Sometimes when a quick welding job is required, do I know exactly where each extinguisher is? Probably not!
 
Lucky escape! I set fire to my mini years ago. Somebody told me to wax oil in the scuttle before I fitted the A panel..... Lucky I had an extinguisher to hand. Ever since then I've had a CO2 extinguisher on my welding trolley
 
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