Crikey its the sills ! £19.95 repair

[peanut]

My car failed the MOT last week on 'loss of structural integrity 300mm from seat belt fixing'

I can't think why .....theres still plenty of paint holding the sill together.[]

First of all I'd like to thank the previous owner Paul for an undisclosed but excellent bodyfilla and spray job on the sills before I unwittingly bought the car back in 2007.
The sills have lasted 10 years so I can't complain I suppose.
What shook me was how paper thin they were. I literally poked my finger through yet it sailed through the last 2x MOT Tests.

The new sill is a modified van sill and cost just £19.95 .......not bad for a Porsche sill eh .! New sill is now fitted , I just need to plug weld it in place .
Its not what you would call a pukka job but its structurally sound ,indistinquishable from the original sill and will pass the MOT and will last another 10 years at least, by which time I'll not be interested in the cars fate. I'll stick up some images when I get a chance .

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[robwright]

Alas this is inevitable mate. Mine looked sound but when it failed MOT i was amazed just how much filler was holding it all together. A good half inch in places. A quick air chisel to the outers also revealed the brown dust that was once the inners. Take the time and money to get it done properly right now.

 

[PSH]

Sorry to hear that john, it just goes to show that you never really know what lurks beneath, not unless you've had the car for a long time where such things would show themselves. Glad to hear you've found a cheap fix. Luckily I've had no hidden filler issues with my car but I did have the nearside sill changed about ten years ago, it was showing some signs of corrosion, annoyingly this was 5 years after it had a complete respray..lol...such is life. Today all is good...I hope..... you never know what's sneaking up on you?

hope she fighting fit again soon....

Pete

 

[944 man]

John? I though that Peanut's name was Nick?

 

[peanut]

yep tis I .......Nick [] also known as John (middle name) or Johnny .

I know I'm going to get a shedload of wailing and hand wringing from the well-healed purists on here but for all of those owners running on a shoestring like me , heres a cheap replacement sill option for under £20 quid .

The finished job is structurally sound and will look completely original once painted except for the jacking diamond .

it should certainly last another 20-30 years...... long after I'm gone anyway.

https://youtu.be/rdAb8p-cNvs

 

[944 man]

Wow - you had structural paint!

 

[peanut]

Wow - you had structural paint!

yep ! and I'm going to market it on ebay. []

 

[Dan944t]

Just watched your video......excellent mateWell done. I bought my turbo very cheap, as it had £13000 repair bill that went with it as the guys wife slid in the snow and hit the rear right arch into a fence post in a field, so the petrol cap side was caved in and all the lines were ruined.

I borriwed my mates ramp ramp where I used to work and cut the arch bowl out wrapped the petrol pipe and tank with soaking wet towels and then pannel beated the arch out to almost 99% perfect very minimal amounts of body filler was needed mainly to fill small indents that's it.

Then I bought a sheet of the appropriate metal sheet and cut to size and rewelded it back in and copied the speck on the opersit side. Shootzed it up and the same on the inside and sprayed the right colour match ontop.

All in all I spent £35 in material and done it all in a day along with filler and primer.

then took it to a sprayer and spent 800 getting the whole side and rear done as he said it will blend in better, and job was fantastic.

When end I showed him before and after photos he begged me to work for him! I laughed it off and pretended I thought he was joking, but I noticed he was totally serious

Good job

 

[OLD_ian]

very nice! I've got absolutely no skills when it comes to auto bodywork and always somewhat in awe of people who have the patience to do it.

 

[robdimond]

Credit to you for a) doing it yourself and b) keeping a 944 on the road.

I don't want to be the hand-wringer/wailer (I am genuinely trying to be helpful here as someone who's welded up several car sills) but shouldn't the join to the existing sill be fully seam welded in order to meet MOT requirements? Not that it's possible to tell when all filled and painted...

 

[peanut]

Just watched your video......excellent mateWell done. I bought my turbo very cheap, as it had £13000 repair bill that went with it as the guys wife slid in the snow and hit the rear right arch into a fence post in a field, so the petrol cap side was caved in and all the lines were ruined.

I borriwed my mates ramp ramp where I used to work and cut the arch bowl out wrapped the petrol pipe and tank with soaking wet towels and then pannel beated the arch out to almost 99% perfect very minimal amounts of body filler was needed mainly to fill small indents that's it.

Then I bought a sheet of the appropriate metal sheet and cut to size and rewelded it back in and copied the speck on the opersit side. Shootzed it up and the same on the inside and sprayed the right colour match ontop.

All in all I spent £35 in material and done it all in a day along with filler and primer.

then took it to a sprayer and spent 800 getting the whole side and rear done as he said it will blend in better, and job was fantastic.

When end I showed him before and after photos he begged me to work for him! I laughed it off and pretended I thought he was joking, but I noticed he was totally serious

Good job

nice job Dan ...[]

Its very satisfying to look at the finished job and know it was all your own work and you saved shed loads of money too.

 

[peanut]

Credit to you for a) doing it yourself and b) keeping a 944 on the road.

I don't want to be the hand-wringer/wailer (I am genuinely trying to be helpful here as someone who's welded up several car sills) but shouldn't the join to the existing sill be fully seam welded in order to meet MOT requirements? Not that it's possible to tell when all filled and painted...

no it shouldn't be seam welded Rob. []

The part you are suggesting seam welding the sill to is the bottom of the rear wing which is non structural.

If you look at some images of inner sills with the outer sill removed you will see that the S2 has a strengthening rib under the joint which supports the lower rear wing and closes the sill . The outer sills were spot welded as are all panels and structural elements of a Porsche. I don't believe there were any seam welds originally.

Not having a spot welder attachment I plug welded all round the cover sill which is if anything stronger than the original spot welds.

If you look through the images on the video you'll see exactly where I plug welded the sill

 

[peanut]

very nice! I've got absolutely no skills when it comes to auto bodywork and always somewhat in awe of people who have the patience to do it.

believe me Ian its very easy to do , much easier than it looks. just allow plenty of time to do the work and make sure you have somewhere under cover where you can work on it in your own time without time restraints.

Every job no matter how complicated looking can be broken down into smaller manageable parts and there is plenty of help on here and youtube tutorials as well.

 

[robdimond]

Hi Peanut,

Still not sure I agree but we could be talking about different seams I'm talking about the join all along the top of the sill underneath the door. Since this was originally solid metal and not a factory seam (the seam is about 3" further in), any patch over the top (a cover sill is just a big patch!) should be fully seam welded.

I agree that for any seam spot-welded at the factory (almost all seams on a 944 or any mass produced car) a plug weld is ideal.

Common sense says your repair is fine and will last 10 years, but this is what the MOT manual says:

the repair must appear to be virtually as strong as the original structure with only continuous seam welding being acceptable for patch repairs (even if the patch extends beyond the prescribed area).

spot welded joints are acceptable where the original panel has been replaced to an existing spot welded flange (provided the original defective panel flange has been removed). Stitch or plug welding is acceptable as an alternative to spot welding in these cases

Rob

 

[peanut]

Rob this is the only relevant information I have managed to find so far.

item 3. shows the sill to rear wing overlap junction which was originally spot welded and Porsche recommend plug welding for repair . This is the area I was referring to