while i was working on my car, i noticed that some points where "stamped" and some where welded. I was wondering how much of a improvment would i get with welding more points on the interior, exterior to add strength... i remmber seeing it on a option racing video where they built up a ae86.. what do you guys think ?

 

If you seem weld the car it will becomce vary stiff and you will certinely feel the difference.
I am going over all mine when I do a color change this winter.
I fugure I should do the whole car since I was originelly going to just fill the holes in the bay and weld and smooth the bay seems for a clean engine compartment.

 

Make sure to look into this more before going further. You have to be careful about the welded areas warping during the heating and cooling, otherwise you could have some serious alignment issues.


Modified by StyleTEG at 7:40 PM 8/26/2004

 

It is called seam welding and is very common of full race cars. You have to remove all signs of seam sealer before you weld or it will contaminate the weld pool.
It does stiffen a unibody chassis quite alot. Just make sure to pull the neg battery cable off while welding (or pull your ECM out).

An alternative is foam filling the sill rails with medium expansion two part foam

 

The frame filling foam they make is a cool idea but if you ever need to weld on it for a repair your screwed.

I plan on welding up the majority of my seams when I do an all over paint job as well. I would guess that if you had all the seams prepped that you were going to do and skipped around so no one part got really hot, you could avoid any warping problems. Maybe do 4-5" at a time?

 

I thinking of doing this too when I build my next car. I have disassembled my CRX one too many times.