Front Jacking Point Replacement (Part 3) - Left Hand Side

With the tips I picked up while replacing the right hand jacking point, I moved on and replaced the one on the left side. While the jacking point itself looked deceptively sturdy, the closing panel behind was clearly in a poor state. In for a penny, in for a pound.....

The rust was hidden under the underseal

The three screw holes you can see in a horizontal row in the photo above, are the mounting point for mudflap. Those mudflaps mask the jacking point areas and you don't realise how bad they can get until you look really closely....

I proceeded as I did for the right hand side. The welds were exposed......

Welds Exposed

......and I used the spot weld drill to drill them out. I only drilled an initial pilot dimple to steady the drill and took things slowly to avoid drilling too deeply and into the underlying flanges.

The jacking point on this side was very stubborn and I had to remove it in pieces to give me access to the diagonal flange.

Some bits practically fell off......

....others had to be surgically removed

Overall things worked well and there was less damage.

Less damage this time.......

The flanges tidied up quite nicely

Inside, the box sections were in very good order and a testament to the Waxoyl I applied back in the mid 1990s. Though after 20+ years it was dried, curling and cracking on the bases - so I scraped that out and will apply some more wayoyl or Dinitrol in due course.

Box sections look good inside

Disassembly went well then. Reassembly, on the other hand was far trickier than on the right hand side. The panel was a poor fit to the flanges that it needed to be welded to. In particular, there was no contact with the the two angled faces of the diagonal flange and also along the top horizontal flange at the footwell edge. Taken together, it meant that I would not be able to get adequate welds  on a significant proportion of the panel. Something that was not going to be acceptable (or safe) for a jacking point. The old panel I had removed made contact in these parts, but it was now too damaged, twisted and cut-up to reveal any of it's secrets. 

It all came off like a jigsaw

I spent quite a long time gently coaxing the replacement panel and flanges together where I could. In other areasI resorted to a hammer to encourage the panel to meet the flange.

One of many trial fits

I was more careful in removing paint only around the plug weld holes. I drill a mix of 5mm where the weld would be to a fairly flimsy flange and 6.5mm holes where the weld would be around the edge of the panel and to more substantial flanges.

Weld-thru primer over the plug weld holes

A much better fit now

My plug welding needs to improve. I was still leaving significant domed heads on the welds through my efforts to pour heat into the weld to ensure the metal fused. My penance would come later with the much-loathed grinding off of the welds......

Nearly there......

It all seems to have worked out okay in the end. I had used weld-through primer on the surfaces before I welded. As well as smelling foul when it burns, I 'm also convinced that stuff causes the MIG welder to spit more. What's that they say about a workman blaming his tools?

Grinding back the welds. I HATE that job.....

Now that it was all back together, and the welds were ground down, I thinned some zinc primer and liberally painted that on the seams and joins in the hope that it would wick into the gaps. That's just for now. I will eventually get around to sealing the seams, painting and finishing with either undersea or schutz.

A thing of beauty!

Front Jacking Point Replacement (Part 2) - Refitting

I finally found some time to finish replacing the right hand jacking point.

The jacking point had come off the car reluctantly and in several pieces.

VICTORY! But at a price.....

My efforts to remove the rusty one had left the underlying super-structure looking a little battle-scarred….The flanges were twisted and had some holes from drilling.

Collateral damage

In some cases the spot removal drill had done what I expected: top layers of spot-welded steel were cut-through, to leave a 'button' of weld on the bottom panel.

'Button' of weld left on the bottom layer

In other cases there was no 'button' - meaning the panels had separated. meaning the initial weld must have been weak.

No 'button'.....

In many cases the new repair panel would needed to be welded at the same points as it’s predecessor, so I felt it was important to make sure the flanges were in as good a shape as possible. It was comforting to know that even the Citroen factory repair manual acknowledges that there is an element of "making good" before the panel is replaced. Or as they call it, "planishing, grinding or welding".

Instructions for repair

All three would be needed! I temporarily wrapped the internal pipework in some heatproof plumbers matting to protect it from grinding and welding sparks. I put some weld over the holes, carefully ground them back (I didn’t want to take any more metal off the flanges) and flattened them out to make good/ better contact with the replacement jacking point piece. I reasoned that "less was more" here and didn't want to melt or grind away what precious flange was left.

Cleaning up the damage

One part needed a little more attention. The top edge of the jacking panel is sandwiched in place over the flange of the sill and behind the edge of the footwell wall. I had to cut open the wall to get access to the weld points.

I had to cut and fold the wall to get access to the spots on the flange

By the time I'd removed the old jacking point, I could see outside the car from the footwell!

The view of the garage floor. From the footwell......

A small length of the flange on the sill was also lost in the battle and need to be replaced to give me an edge to weld my new panel to.

I had to patch one of the flanges

I fashioned up a teeny, tiny repair piece and welded it in to the flange. With that done, I gave the flanges a protective coat of weld-through primer. 

Repaired flanges

The flanges still looked a little rough but better than they had been. I made a trial fit of my replacement jacking point panel. The replacement piece needed a bit or encouragement with several pairs of mole grips to take the necessary shape of the chassis.

It would be possible to spot weld the new piece around it’s outer edges and limit plug-welding to little more than the diagonal line that matched the internal spar. However I didn’t have access to a spot welder so the whole lot was going to need plug welding. That would man drilling holes in the replacement piece.

First of many test fits

I used an abrasive pad wheel to remove the paint from the new panel. With the piece now fitting quite snuggly, I began marking up the weld points with a Sharpie. Where there was scope to do so, I moved these marked points so as to avoid any areas of pox-marked or repaired flange underneath. To be honest, there wasn’t much scope for that anyway. The hardest part was working out where the weld points needed to be to align to the diagonal spar behind.

With my weld points marked. I needed to drill plug-welding holes through my lovely new part. I have a Tama joggler tool that includes a hole punch for plug-welding purpose. The holes it makes are 5mm diameter. That being so, I centre-punched my intended welding points and went at my part with a 5mm drill.

Holes drilled for plug welding. Note the diagonal line of holes

The very top edge of the replacement part is sandwiched between two other layers where it meets the footwell, so in some places did not need holes drilling through it - as it formed the base panel for plug welding. Glad I remembered that one!

All the holes aligned to flange with the exception of one of my holes on the crease of the diagonal flange. I drilled out the remaining holes - together with those on the small square closing panel behind the jacking panel……..

With the holes drilled, I sprayed up the panel with some weld-through primer to protect and went for another trial fit.

Checking the weld hole alignment

Not bad at all. In some places on the new panel I had had to drill through the jacking reinforcement plate as well as the plate behind. That meant I would be plug-welding three layers back together. I was a little nervous about whether I was capable of producing a strong weld. I needed to pre-check my welder settings anyway (wire size, feed speed and current setting), so I set up some triple-layer test pieces and got to it. If I’m honest, the results were mixed. After each experiment I clamped the pieces in a vice and then tried to split the welded layers.The first couple were encouraging – with the metal sandwich bending but holding. Then I had two ‘fails’ where the layers pulled apart very easily indeed. That shocked me.  I put it down to a failure to adequately prepare the surfaces in my haste. 

Test results: good welds and failed welds

Based on the results of my trial welds, I used an abrasive pad on a grinder to clean up and de-rust the chassis flange weld points and did the same to both sides of the new panels, and then gave everything a quick squirt of weld-through primer.

Rather than plug weld sequentially around the perimeter of the replacement panel, I did the odd weld in different places to tack the panel on, then gradually filled in the gaps. This meant I could be sure that the panel remained lined-up and fitted, and it also meant that I reduced the risk of any panel warping from excessive heat in any one area.

Main welding on front panel underway.....

Weld is harder than the base steel it is put on and it took forever to grind the buggers down. It was also very fiddly getting an angle grinder onto some of the welds without risking grind the edge of an adjacent panel - and this was quite an open and accessible area. It was particularly hard to get to the welds in/ under the top folded panel edge. I needed to remove this before I could fold the panel back down and finish spot welding it.

With the necessary spot welds ground back, I was able to fold the panel back down and shut daylight off from the footwell. Folding it down showed the two rows of holes left by the spot weld drill. If the 5mm holes I drilled in the new panel looked too small for plug welding, those 10mm holes looked too big! I guess that, in the majority of situations, the aim is to drill those big 10mm holes in the rusty panel you intend to discard and replace. I didn't have that luxury in this instance.

Big 10mm battle scars

To get a good weld, it's important that the two layers to be joined are held in contact with one another. Around the edges of the panel I'd used welding clamps and mole grips. That wasn't going to be possible in this area. With my 'peeled' panel now folded back, I drilled a few small holes along the weld line and used 'Cleco' fasteners to pull the layers together.

'Cleco' fastener and applicator tool

As well as finishing the top edge, I welded in place the square closing panel behind the main jacking point. Again, I used 'Cleco' fasteners to pull the layers together.

Rear closing panel in place

As I feared, I found plug welding through those large 10mm holes along the top edge quite tricky......To prevent burn through, I resorted to stitching around the edges of the holes to make the hole smaller, then filling in. This seemed to be at odd with my fears about only capping plug welds - leaving them weak - but in this case there was already an underlying of row plug welds. I reasoned that this second row played less of a structural role and that my repair was more cosmetic. Though the end result wasn't that pretty!

Nearly there

Again, more grinding of welds and the job was all but done.....at this stage I've just left everything coated in a layer of primer. I've got more painting to do so will spray the jacking point black at that time. There are also a couple of small gaps between the panels that need plugging with some kind of mastic. That's not my poor work - the panels on the other side have mastic plugging gaps in the same places. The will also get a coat of 'schutz' after painting and I will apply fresh Waxoyl or similar to the inside of the box sections.

Coated with primer. Waiting

In hindsight I’m a little concerned about the size of the plug-welding holes. 5mm looks awfully small. A good plug weld will be fairly quick, fill the plug hole from the centre out and leave little more than a slight dome on the top surface.

As I'm an inexperienced welder - and only once I'd started to the job - I began to wonder whether my welds were simply filling the 5mm hole in the top layer without fully penetrating through to the bottom layer. To get rid of these nagging doubts I spent longer on each weld and poured more heat in - my idea being to increase the likelihood that the molten metal pool included the bottom panel. The downside of this is that each of my welds had more added metal and tended to have a very definite domed crown to them. Making an effective weld was a key learning point and one I will remember based on the amount of time I then had to spend grinding those weld heads off! I think for the other jacking point (yes - I've got to do it all over again) I will maybe drill 7mm holes.

The other key learning point was not to go too deep with the spot weld cutter. I don't think pre-drilling a hole to guide the cutter (a 'tip' from a Youtube video) was such a good idea as I lost a sense of how deep I was cutting and damaged underlying flanges. instead I think I will drill no more than a guide 'dimple' to steady the cutter and rely on the spring loaded tip to help me keep more of a sense of how hard/ deep I am drilling. And if I could find a spot weld drill of less than 10mm, I would give that a go.

Front Jacking Point Replacement (Part 1) - Removal

Or........"Man Versus Jacking Point"

or........."Square Pegs And Round Holes"?

Most people seem to assume that the odd, but convenient, oblong posts that sticks out of the chassis approximately below the ‘A’ posts are supports for jacking the car and for axle stands. If you’ve read my post of 15 February 2018, you’ll know that that while that’s not entirely wrong,  they are actually part of a more elegant solution: the  tube is intended to hold a ‘paddle’ (Citroen tool number 2505T) which then form the intended jacking pad.

Citroen jacking pad inserted in the jacking point

Being low down and just behind the front wheels, those oblong jacking points pick up a lot of spray and dirt and the tubes themselves are major rust traps: you often find cars with those tubes completely clogged with dried mud or, worse, wet mud.

Rusted jacking point (photo copyright: Colin Smith)

Very early on in my restoration, while my car was still languishing up at the barn, I was preparing to jack it up to remove the exhaust or something.  The jacking points looked a bit crusty and, as a preliminary  precaution I had a prod around with a screwdriver (like you do). To my alarm, it went through the top buttress of one of the oblong tube sections!

May 2015: Rusty jacking point....

Disaster! Firstly because it meant that the jacking point might collapse if I tried to use it. Secondly because it was clearly an MOT failure and would ned to be fixed before the car could go back on the road. At the time I had no welding equipment – not to mention a lack of welding skills (or confidence), so I’d either need to get the car to a garage or get a welder out to the car. Both sounded inconvenient and, although the need seemed a very long way off, I put the job on my ‘to do’ list.

Up Close: corroded and weakened.....

I'd gone as far as buying a repair panel from the Citromobile event back in 2015. The only problem with this replacement part is that the oblong tube part has the wrong dimensions and is too tight to comfortably take the 2505T paddles. My paddles shown signs of previously having been hammered in, but I think that's to do with dirty and clogged tubes, rather than an intended tight fit. I'd hate to hammer them in and not be able to remove them!

Fast forward several years and I have now acquired a welder and have made some use of it. In short I’m more confident with welding, even if I’m not exactly apprentice of the year. I’ve recently started the job of cleaning the engine bay ready to receive my rebuilt engine and, as that will involve some chassis painting, turned my thoughts back to a repair of that jacking point. 

I did some online research on removing spot welds and repairing using plug welds. It seemed to be the kind of thing that should be within my capabilities – especially if I had any serious intentions of getting around to replacing my door bottoms. Replacing a jacking point would be good practice. 

The procedure for replacing the jacking point (or to give it's proper title, the "front side member closing panel" and "front unit closing panel and body siderail") is covered by Operations D.741-7 and D.741-7a in manual 471. Now manual 471 is quite old - 1964 in fact - but the main components of the body changed little and so the repair techniques therein still apply.

Illustration from Manual 471

As well as the illustration, the manual includes step by step instructions. The replacement panel I'd bought was helpful for understanding how everything was fitted together. 

Repair panel. Can you see where it goes?

With the wing, door, suspension dust shield and mudflap removed, I could see that the rot was worse than I'd initially discovered and extended to the flat plate behind the jacking point. Again, it’s readily available as a replacement panel and so seems to be a fairly typical repair that might need doing on most cars.

Nice big holes......

I began to size-up how to do the job. I’d previously seen posts on Colin Smith’s blog where he had replaced his jacking point  (see HERE and HERE) and, more recently, had followed a thread on Aussiefrogs by Sven (aka'Bluedanube') that included some very handy photos - see post 147 in that thread. I invested in some additional tools. This was a tactical decision: they would give me something to blame if it all went horribly wrong!

I bought an ‘L’ shaped seam splitter (not cheap but already a firm favourite of mine) and some spot weld removal drills. 

New Toy: Seam Seperator

The principle behind removing a spot weld is to release only the small area of the front layer that is joined to the layer behind. You could try chiselling between the two, but this is very destructive and ends up tearing the back layer. You could mill out the welded portion of the front layer with a drill to completely grind away the welded spot, but the angle of the cutting face means that you are likely to be penetrating the back layer of metal before you fully penetrate and free-up the front layer.

I opted for a drill that cuts a ring around the weld to free-up the top layer of metal. A disc of top metal remains welded to the lower layer of metal. All you do then is carefully grind off that disc to give yourself a clean, flat surface to plug weld the replacement part on to. That’s the theory anyway. The drill also has a spring-loaded retractable tip to centre and guide the drill. 

Spotweld Removal Drill

The teeth are very sharp and, as the drills are made of hardened steel, are more brittle. I was warned that I should expect to lose some drill teeth along the way. The heads are reversible so can be used twice and the set I bought included six of these. With six double-ended drills the set seemed to represent value for money and should keep me going for a while. 

I needed to find the spot welds that were holding the rusty panel in place. I cleaned up the area with a scraper then a wire wheel and/ or cup on a drill. With the Schutz, paint and sealer removed, these revealed themselves as subtle circular indentations in the surface of the metal – maybe 5mm or 6mm across. I used a Sharpie pen to mark these. In some cases, the panel was rusted and pitted along the spotweld line and I couldn’t see exactly where the weld points were. I reasoned that these would become apparent as I began to release the panel. More on that later......

Cleaning up the spot welds

The idea is to use a centre-punch to mark the centre of the weld and to provide a ‘footing’ for the retractable drill guide. In reality, the teeth of the drill are so sharp and pointed that they ‘snag’ pretty easily as you drill, and the drill tip can dance across your work piece - which is how it loses some of it's teeth.

Broken Teeth......

Following a tip in a video I used a centre punch, but then followed this up drilling a 2.5mm hole right through the metal. In some cases you can simply deepen the centre-punch mark, but on thin sheet it's very difficult to go deep enough, but not go all the way through. Why 2.5mm? The hole is the same size as the diameter of the retractable drill tip so, instead of retracting, it passes through the work piece. That might sound odd, but it then acts as a far more stable guide for drilling. Secondly I also have some silver ‘Cleco’ fasteners. These are used to align panels for cutting, or to hold over-lapped panels together for welding.

'Cleco' fastener - a spring-loaded gripper

My silver ones have 2.5mm pins, so any holes used to remove welds could potentially be used to fit ‘Cleco’ fasteners and so realign new panels to old, for welding.

'Cleco' fastener in it's applicator tool

There is a third reason. I didn’t want the hole to be any bigger than it needed to be. You just need to be careful when drilling these small pilot hole that you don’t puncture anything that lies unseen behind – such as a hydraulic line, fuel pipe of electrical cable…….

With pilot holes drilled, the spot-weld removal drill worked like a charm, chewing through the steel sheet quite happily with a satisfying grinding noise. The trick of course is not to get carried-away and drill too deeply and to only release the top sheet from the bottom. That’s pretty tricky as you can’t tell where the top layer ends and the bottom starts. If you are lucky, the top layer ‘pops’ off once you have cut through it so you know you need to stop drilling.  

'Button' of spot weld left on the base panel

Alternatively, you might notice a burst of rust spray liberated from between the two layers. If so, stop drilling and inspect progress. 

I've gone too deep with this one....

Ideally and wherever possible, you cut your weld out of the panel that you are going to remove, leaving the ‘base’ panel behind in good condition. However, in some places the jacking panel is tucked and welded behind other chassis panels: meaning I needed to cut through the panels I wanted to keep, in order to release the rusty jacking panel I wanted to get rid of. Now, the vast majority of these spot-weld drills are 3/8” diameter. This doesn’t sound a lot, but leaves quite a big looking hole to be plug-welded.

I gradually worked my way around the edges of the jacking panel. With a few welds removed, I thought the rusty panel would magically loosen up and begin to move out. No such luck. Having been welded in place more than 50 years ago when the car was assembled, it was in no hurry to move. With some judicious use of my seam splitter I was able to get behind an edge and bend it forwards.  In this way (where the front panel resisted and folded) I found several spot welds that I hadn’t noticed before. I also found a second line of welds at the top that I didn’t expect to be holding the jacking panel – but which were……. I guess, given it’s job (supporting significant weight) the panel is welded in very securely.

Swiss Cheese. Note two rows of weld holes along the top

It also looked as though the spot welds that held the buttress over the top of the square tube, penetrated the buttress, the jacking panel beneath and then went into some as yet unseen folded edge on the chassis. In other words three layers. That didn’t correspond with the photos I had found when carrying out research, but decided to cut those welds out as well (effectively dismantling the jacking panel) – just in case. The problem with that was twofold. Firstly, the flanged edge on the drill tip limited how deep the drill would penetrate. I could barely cut through two layers of thick steel. Maybe that’s the idea? Secondly, and if there were three layers spot-welded together, I wasn’t sure how I would plug weld them back together. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I discovered I would definitely need to cross that bridge several times over: despite freeing up the lower perimeter of the plate, it still stubbornly refused to come free. I discovered ANOTHER, hidden, layer of welds along the top horizontal line. The only way I could get anywhere near these was to cut-through, then bend up the outer flange that I had previously cut through and wanted to keep. The job was getting messy. Even then, I couldn't easily get to the spots, so had to resort to using the seam splitter. I realised that this join, the one I was trying to separate, joined the quarter panel to the 'A' post and passenger compartment. Sure enough, from inside the car footwell, and with the carpet removed, I could see daylight - or at least work lamp light.

Daylight!

With a bit of collateral damage to the flange, the main panel was finally removed. At that point, the jacking peg was still attached by its bracing panel that was fixed to the back of the main plate. 

Nearly done.......but jacking peg still attached.

With far better access now, that was easily removed - as were the remains of the flat panel behind the jacking panel.

So what did I learn? Firstly that while the principles of removal are straightforward, this was quite involved. These panels were not intended to be easily removed. The panels of a car are assembled in a particular order with some parts welded on top of others and other joins. I was effectively 'un-assembling' as much as 'removing'. Not only in terms of the rusty panels I removed.......

Remains of the removed panels

.......but also in terms of the panels around the rusty panel. "Un-assembling" was quite destructive, or if you prefer 'disruptive' (to those other panels). As well as a lot of careful cleaning up and re-bending of flanges, putting in the replacement panels would take a little thought in terms of the welding order. 

Finally got there! But a bit of collateral damage..........

Secondly I found that the spot weld drill I chose could be just as destructive to other panels as a standard spot removal drill. In a couple of places I had drilled right through layers I wanted to keep - leaving them looking like Swiss cheese. 

On the plus side, I was very, pleased to find that the Waxoyl I had added to the sills in about 1995 had done it's job. Although the outer plate was rusty, inside the box section was well coated and rust-free. 

Box sections are rust-free

So what's next? I need to straighten out some of the bent flanges and fill a few holes and - in the case of the top horizontal flange the footwell - maybe even find a way to replace a section of flange. That might not be straightforward as I think it will mean welding in the footwell corner. Looking back at some of the reference photos I had found on Aussiefrogs, I can see that others had similarly had to bend back that outer flange and butcher the inner one. It's given me some consolation at least! I've also discovered that one of the DS parts sellers sells two different kinds of patch panels. It's not clear what makes one better than the other. It could be thickness of the steel, it could be accuracy of the pressing. It could be a bit of both. Who knows - maybe the peg will be the same size as the original and enable me to use those jacking paddles as intended.

My DS Returns!

Quick update.

My DS is once more back in my garage. With assistance from the ever-helpful Richard Burch (again) and the generous loan of a trailer from Doug (again), it was back in the garage after 11 months away….. Almost three years to the day since it first made the same journey from barn to house.

Languishing back at the barn. Can you spot it?

Richard Works. I document it...... 

Ready for the journey home: loaded on Doug's trailer. Again......

Before the car came back I bit the bullet and painted the garage floor. I used epoxy. it’s expensive so I opted for a ’surplus to requirements’ blue colour that was half price. It’s made a world of difference to what was otherwise a dusty and gritty floor. I also painted the walls white to make it lighter and brighter. Again, also less dusty.

A Sea of blue

Since the return I’ve refitted racking and cupboards and re-stacked all my parts and spares. Though it feels cramped already: as a result of the house building work I've lost wall space so have fewer cupboards and racks.

Racking, cupboards and car parts all back in place

Even so, I've managed to do a few things: the bonnet is now off and the screen is out. All the seats came out. I had two interiors crammed inside for storage and that’s all now gone to the attic! Removing the seats revealed the “-15” heating system - long buried.

-15 rear heater

The roof is off again. It had been off in the mid 90s. I’d then removed it again back in 2001. The car has been off the road since then and partly because of that. Back then I had cleaned up all the crimped edging and the roof had only been loosely bolted back on ever since. There are a couple of tiny places on the inner gutter I may weld - but less is more.

Bonnet and roof off - more storage problems.

I’m struggling for storage room for the bonnet and roof. They are both standing in my workshop at the moment. Reluctantly, I may need to wrap them both in several layers of plastic sheeting and store them outside for the foreseeable. The storage problem will only get worse as I plan to remove the doors very soon. Partly because I need to tackle a front jacking point repair, but more because I need to replace the bottoms of the rear doors.