Next we ground the welds down and cleaned things up a bit.
Okay, here is the outside of the frame rail. Because this is an airbag install we need to make sure this part of the frame rail is smooth too. Because the plasma was on the fritz we used the cut off wheel again. Typically I like to smooth the entire outside of the rail, but it’s not necessary, so we opted to just cut out the detents and weld in some plate.
Again, it’s a good practice to clean things up after you cut them out. If you start clean, your piece will fit clean, and it’ll finish clean.
This is kind of a combo shot. You can see here where the patch is stitched in, but also a plumb bob is hanging to get the centerline of the wheels that was marked on the table. There are several ways to get the centerline marked so I won’t go too deep into it, but I do want to point out that it is very important that even when welding on plate to not let it get too hot. Just like sheetmetal, plate and frames can warp very easy. So stitch pieces into place and weld them in a bit at a time.
