Hey welcome back everyone! After a long non-vacation we can finally continue to work on our S14 restoration. Admittedly I've been kind of hesitant to start out of fear of cutting our good car apart but we gotta start somewhere. In this video we are going to be cutting out all the damaged portions of our trunk and prepping them for the replacement panels. From there we will be spot welding in our not so new panels and trying to line everything back up in the process. Like with most projects nothing ever goes exactly to plan so we end up having to get a little creative to make things work.
Hope you enjoy and please Subscribe for more Content. Thanks! Arigato! Gracias! Merci!
----- Contents In This Video -----
00:00 Take Apart Trunk for Rear End Repair
4:43 Spot Welding 240sx Nissan
7:51 Pulling out the Rear End
10:30 Rear end Collision Repair 240sx Nissan
12:20 Spot Weld Removal 240sx Nissan
13:29 Replacing Crashed Trunk Floor 240sx Nissan
17:12 Spot Welding Trunk Floor 240sx Nissan
23:11 Trunk Latch Repair Nissan
27:40 Outro
-----Materials Used -----
Blair Solid Boron Spot weld Cutter: https://amzn.to/3B7INxx
Neiko Spot Weld Drill Bit Cheap: https://amzn.to/3QbMI0y
Automatic Center Punch: https://amzn.to/3RydIbM
Spot Weld Cutter Drill Bit 3 piece set: https://amzn.to/3ehIiZ4
Milwaukee 18V Cordless SAWZALL: https://amzn.to/3eiWO2L
----- My Film Gear -----
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Rode VideoMic Camera Microphone: https://amzn.to/3tz5yGV
DJI Ronin-SC - Camera Stabilizer: https://amzn.to/352wF3w
----- Apparel -----
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Hat https://kopimart.com/
----- Music Used -----
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Alright that's enough procrastinating all right so we've been kind of
putting this off just because yeah I'm not really sure if I want to start
cutting into this car but it's kind of holding up a lot of other projects at the moment so I need to
get this done and also we've been busy with like random other things but yeah I need to get this
out of the way so let's just start taking it apart I'm gonna take this little trim piece off and
be extra careful trying to get these little Clips off be
cause I was going to order some
more and apparently they're $30 so don't break these now the weather stripping you know there's a whole wiring harness
for the tail lights coming back here so we got to get that out of the way so
you don't want to cut through that this one's probably gonna be more tedious
because we have to reuse everything just notice that there's like a huge gash in
the panel here we hadn't even noticed that all right now we got to get the tail light out and
there's this l
ike gross black silicone junk that Nissan puts around the housing they're like
seal it from water I guess I don't know but it's pain in the ass so you can try to like I'm
gonna use this and just try to like cut some of it as far around as I can if that doesn't work I
think you can also use a heat gun and like soften it up and that should make it easier which we
might have to do since it's kind of cold in here all right now for the fun part fun and scary part SHEESH that cuts very easily Well
no turning back now taking the heat shield off Alright this kind of thing doesn't usually bother me but this is really freaking loud and like physically
hurts your eardrums so protection and so this is there's a better look
at what exactly is wrong with this one you can compare it to the nice straight one so another thing we can see now is that the back
end of the quarter panel isn't straight anymore either it's got a little curve to it that along
with the the floor section here is pushed u
p so this would have been why the side of the corner
panel had a Buckle in it because this was not in the original position it just kind of makes makes
me think back that I shouldn't have messed with that in the first place at all because just from
fixing this that probably would have fixed itself because when you cut all the stuff that's like
keeping the panel in tension once that tension is released the panel will tend to like go back
to its original shape but a little late for that okay
I think that's about all we can cut off
without ruining stuff I mean kind of got carried away a little bit already in a couple spots it'll
be fine uh now we just gotta get a wire brush and start grinding away all the seam sealer
so we can see all the spot welds and then drill out a Bazillion spot welds but hey
at least it's not 2 bazillion spot welds because we've got most of the other stuff
out so that's a plus so let's get started okay that's pretty much it for all the seam sealer
here w
e got everything ground away so now just back to the hole punch and spot weld drilling
for probably the next couple hours okay these spot welds aren't nearly as fun as they
were when we started uh I got all the pieces of the the floor drilled out and it's all pretty
much clear I still got to take off the pieces of the frame rails that are left but we
can at least test fit the trunk floor now or now we can test fit the trunk floor headphone users cover your ears Okay we have a problem It's ki
nd of what I was afraid of this side is still damaged so you can see we
still have a good I don't know 1/2 inch 3/4 inch gap there and all
the way out here to the end of the quarter panel and we really don't have any further to move up on the left side looks fine so that tells me that with the impact that
pushed the entire quarter panel forward which explains why we had such a big you know buckle in
the middle of the quarter panel but uh we're not gonna be able to put this on until we try an
d
get this closer to where it's supposed to be got to get creative with this one so we basically need to pull
this whole section this way so what I'm thinking is we're trying to clamp
something to this piece and see if we can pull it with our frame puller aka the Armada I think that might work so this is just a like a bench vise but for a drill press I think this is the only thing I have that might
work to actually get this done because you don't want to necessarily like just bolt a chain to
the
sheet metal because it's so thin you'll probably just rip the bolt out along with part of the
sheet metal so you want something that can grab a larger area so I'm thinking if we try and
pull this whole edge we might pull this with it From here okay you have a chain that may or may not work so This feels like a very YouTube thing to do it's like either this whole section is going to
come ripping off or this whole bumper is going to fall off yeah place your bets this means stop and go lik
e this that means keep going and stop slowly Rey oh my God NO Okay Go It would help if the car had the handbrake on Again Whoa hold on okay so it really comes in handy that
we have a whole other car that isn't crashed so we can make sure stuff is in
the right place so what I'm going to try to do is just measure from somewhere and
see if we can compare it to the other car so I think most of this was compromised so I need
to pick something a little further away so I'm gonna try and go from the
edge of this grommet
to the edge of the over Fender or quarter panel and we have about 27" 5/8 or 3/4
somewhere around there let's check the other one okay so edge of this grommet to the edge of
the quarter panel we have a little over 27" 3/4 so that means we still got a little
bit more to go on that one it's a little bit more so from here to here should measure 54. and that's bang on 54. and here
should be 51. we're bang on 51 so that meant that there was something else wrong and
then I r
emember that I bent this piece to get out of the way but that actually bent it more in the
way and this is what wasn't letting the trunk sit flush this way because this was pushing it that
way so we should probably finish taking these off saving these for a special occasion it's different size drill bits if you go through drilling all these out you'll
notice some of them are a little larger than others and some are smaller so there's actually
a 6.5 millimeter and 8 millimeter and a 10 millim
eter and that's this should
pretty much cover all the different sizes I like this larger 10 mil one because then if it
walks a little bit which all these that's my one complaint with all these drill bits is that
the point after a while starts to dull and then the whole drill bit will walk a little bit and
then part of your spot weld won't get drilled out and then it's hard to get it apart but if
you oversize it a little bit then even if it walks you have a better chance of getting the
whol
e spot weld so this has helped a little bit okay we got everything mocked up again and
it looks a lot better it's still a little bit off which I now I still can't really
figure out why everything measures out like it's supposed to compared to the not
so crash car but we're still like I don't know quarter inch off which I'm hoping I'm
able to like just stretch into place as we go or something but I mean it looks
like a floor again so that's a plus So the other issue is that I'm not sure if t
he frame rails are supposed to go in
first because I mean that would make more sense to me because then you can weld the
spot welds in more easily but to put the floor in I've been having to like like angle it
from underneath and get it into place and back up so if I had the frame rails in place
when I do that I wouldn't be able to get the floor in at least I don't think I would
there's a chance it might just like slide in but I'm not sure because if I put the floor in
first and then try t
o put the frame rails I don't think I'd be able to weld the these side spot
welds because the floor would be in the way which leads me to think that this isn't the way this
car went together initially like there's probably none of the side stuff in the way when they first
make this but we're gonna have to figure it out so another issue that I've noticed is that when
you're putting this back together you tend to want to match the spot welds back up to each
other and I don't think that's the
correct way to do it because all the spot welds are in really
similar places but they're not in the exact same places I mean these are all I'm pretty sure these
were all just hand done and whoever did these is just you know going more or less along where
they're supposed to go but they're not in exactly the same spot every time so that keep having to
remind myself not to try and match these two up because it doesn't seem like that's where they're
supposed to go if obviously if we're trying
to put the same panel back in then yeah that would be
the perfect way to get it lined back up because the original panel would match up but since this
is from another car they don't really match up so it's one thing to keep in mind okay so I had the floor in here all stretched out and like into place and all the dowels where they needed to go and
everything because I was pretty sure I could weld the frame in that position and then I realized
I couldn't weld the frame in that position um part
ially because the frame rail um I
needed to put a clamp on it to get this side to like hug the frame rail coming out
of the car tightly and with the clamp there I mean it was going to be a stretch to try
and get to these two top spots anyway but with the clamp there it just wasn't going to
happen so and I figured if I only do one side and if I can slide the floor out with the frame
rail in this position then it should be okay and yeah I managed to slide the the floor out
with the frame rai
l there so it shouldn't be too big of a pain in the ass to slide it back
in once those are welded up because the other side I for sure can weld it with the floor
there because there's a lot more space next to that frame rail than there is over here
because the spare tire sits like literally like right next to this frame rail whereas on
that side you have the exhaust and it kind of like tapers more gradually so you have more room
to weld on that side but yeah should work if we do it this way
so I lined it up I put the back panel
back in place so I can get the frame rail in like a close enough area so that's about where it
goes and I have it supported with the Jack so that way when we weld it on that side it's
not going to be like way off or something all right so now we can start welding that
section I don't really know why you have to disconnect the battery I mean it kind of makes
sense if you're like welding on the chassis of a car the chassis is the ground to the electrical
circuit of the car but I mean the current from the welder is like self-contained because it's going
from the welding gun to the welder's ground so it shouldn't interfere I don't know if you guys ever
had any issues welding on a car like that like does it actually fry the ECU or something because
I've never heard about it but I always heard from everyone that you're supposed to disconnect the
battery so I figured it's got to be for a reason even better we don't have a
battery at all so we'
re gonna go Just need to attach our ground to somewhere I'm gonna try and pick
a spot that has no paint or something I hate these gloves I don't usually wear
gloves when I'm welding because I don't weld for very long or that often then I always
end up getting sunburned even though I'm only welding for like a few seconds at a time and
also your hands stink like argon and according to my my wife here I smell like old swing sets
that have been sitting out in the sun so yeah all right a little
ugly but that'll do should probably try and clean off more of
the paint and underbody coating and junk hopefully we can get the floor back in place this takes a really long time to get all this lined up because well nothing's like secured in place so
everything still kind of moves around a bit so I got all four dowels screwed into each corner so
that's basically holding the trunk floor where it's supposed to go now I'm trying
to line up the frame rails with the holes in the that we drilled o
ut from the other car because
these these two should line up the frame rails and the floor pan should line up because they came
out of the same car they were you know one piece before but we had to weld this side from that back
section and it's close but it it doesn't line up perfectly with everything loose so I think what
I'm gonna try to do is tack this side in place and then try and like pry this one in position because
it doesn't move a whole lot anymore obviously we welded the back sec
tion or we started started
to weld the back section so I need to like pry this and get it into position but if I do that now
it would move everything else out of position so I'm gonna try and tack this one and probably
just start tacking the whole thing and then come back to this one because this one the part
that helps with this one is that it has screws um built into it so I don't know why the other
side doesn't have these but this really helps to like keep it in place before you weld it
but unfortunately this side doesn't have that so I think that's what we're gonna have to do
and another thing I want to talk about is the welder that we're using this isn't a particularly
fancy welder or anything I think this is like a super entry-level Lincoln it's a Pro Mig 140. I
just bought this for $200 bucks off of Az240 local forum like years ago and that's what I've been
using um you just want something that can accept gas so like a shielding gas like this one uses
um c25 I think s
o argon CO2 mix and I'm using 0.025 wire because all the sheet metal on
this thing is like 18 to 20 gauge I think and that's about what we're gonna We want to use I
had o30 wire in here before and if you look at the recommended size for that gauge it's like with
the 30000 wire it was like the speed at 0.5 and the Heat at C and like ah probably
just gonna melt through everything so we decided to step down to o25 and
that gives us the higher wire speed at the same heat so it seemed to work al
l right in
the on the frame rail so we'll give it a shot behold all the boogers so I'm pretty much done welding up the trunk
floor but if you guys will recall from the disassembly video the blue S14 there's a few spots
where we ended up drilling all the way through and I was trying to figure out what the best way
to fill those is and thanks to our buddy John he suggested that I use a block of aluminum and
hold that up against the underside of the hole and that gives you a surface to support
the
weld as you're trying to close up the hole and that'll keep it from just dropping out from
under you so that works phenomenally so really recommend that so we're gonna do that method
on these two right here then we'll be done yeah you can let go now okay so putting the trunk latch back on just so we can get an idea of
if the panel's in the right place or not the last thing we want is to weld this whole thing
like half an inch that way and have the trunk not line up at all and both uh t
he latch and the other
latch I don't know they both have a little bit of adjustment but not a whole lot so we needed
we need it to be in the ballpark to begin with which one's the latch they're both latches I
don't know but this is the original one that was on the car and that was damaged because
of the whole accident so it's a little beat up I think that might have been part of the
problem originally too is that this thing was getting kind of stuck because I didn't
notice some of the meta
l under here was like touching the linkage and so that
wasn't letting it release consistently and I just straightened this out a bit
and also the trunk I noticed the Gap was way closer on this side so that
was pushing the whole panel this way so then I bent the whole trunk to the
right a little bit try and Center it and it looks better now as you can see
the Gap is more even on both sides and that latches is okay now I've just noticed that so any anyone else that's ever had an S14 I know th
at you've noticed that your trunk never fits
absolutely perfectly to your quarter panels and I've just realized that this it's because
of this panel because I've always tried to like even on my other one and my friend's S14 I try to
like adjust the little stop but they don't really have any adjustment they just they're just kind
of there and then the trunk latch I would Max up the adjustment on that to put it lower but
it still wouldn't let it sit lower than here and it's because this whole
panel needs to
be brought down to hold the trunk flush with the quarter panel when it's closed so I'm
definitely going to pay extra attention to that and make sure I weld it a little lower so
that when it latches the body lines are actually perfect because that's always bothered me on these
cars so it'll be better than stock when we're done so I got it more or less lined up and
I tacked it in a couple places and put our little bar at the bottom where it
fit and I think we got it working n
ow so as you can see body lines are perfect panel gaps perfect and it opens I think I'll call that a win so now we
just gotta finish holding it up everywhere like I said these these spots aren't going
to match up to the previous spot welds but as long as like the main things
match up I mean mainly the trunk closing everything else doesn't really matter I mean at
the factory they just literally just grab it and generally the right area and just weld it in so
I guess back to welding for anoth
er couple hours okay I got the whole thing boogered up
now let's see if everything still fits It's like nothing ever happened all right that's gonna do it for this
episode obviously it's still a little ugly under all this so in the next episode we're
going to be doing all the Bodywork side of this because it's obviously I don't want to leave
the trunk floor and stuff that we just put on all rusty and ugly we're probably going to be
sanding down all these boogers that I put on it and then pu
tting some seam sealer sanding
it painting it with something so yeah that's gonna be the next episode which hopefully
won't be in another month or will it? I don't know but thank you guys for almost getting
us to a thousand subscribers we only got a little bit left to go so thank you guys so much
thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time
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