Mine had failed on
'suspension mountings' but the MOT guy told me that all that meant, was that the corrosion he found was within 30cm of a suspension mount.
When I got it all opened up, wheels off etc it turned out that some of the rot was really quite close to various parts of the suspension mounts, but I still managed 90% of the job okay without removing the struts, springs and major arms.
With a bit of practise it's amazing just how intricately you can weld in relatively tight spots with a MIG.
Orders of magnitude easier than a stick welder.
It's almost like very hot, violent soldering.
The most involved it got, was when I took it for it's retest, and it failed because I hadn't seen some rot above the front radiator hoses.
For that, I found it easiest to remove the front struts and suspension
'cradles', but they came off okay without having to meddle with the rest of the suspension.
I'd imagine they could be a bit of a pig if you went in half-assed with make do
& mend tools; but IMOC forewarned me so I went in with a decent set of heavy duty tools
& it was a cinch.
The main thing to watch out for is fire.
Can't stress that enough, despite reading repeated warnings I still nearly managed to incinerate the whole car through pure thoughtlessness.
Just keep all burnable stuff well away
& don't, as I did, think it's a good idea to waxoyl a panel before welding the hole shut
It's safe as long as you keep your wits about you 100% of the time
& avoid silliness.
I started the whole welding job with scrap bits and bobs of steel and tin snips for making the patches, but there turned out to be quite a lot of patches needed to do a good, rather than just scrape-it-through, job so I ended up buying a plasma cutter off the aforementioned guy up by spaghetti junction.
That plus an old Nova bonnet bought for a fiver from a local scrappy finished the job off in short order.
A tin of paint stripper was handy for getting the old paint off the patches.
Plasma cutter by no means essential though, tin snips would suffice for most jobs.
You start off buying a classic sports car on a whim, you end up opening a garage business LOL
