Hey guys just been reading through this thread from last year because I just bought myself a welder, and I'm planning to attempt some panel work on my 1600. I recently did a short 1 day course that was just a basic intro to welding, apart from that I have no previous experience welding.
I initially looked at the supercheap auto cigweld 135 (because its on sale atm for about 299$), but ended up spending about $550 and got a uni-mig viper 182. It's 180amp gas/gasless and can do arc for thicker stuff. At the moment i'm still mucking around with tweaking the settings before I go near the car. I'm using gasless 0.8mm wire at the moment to practice before I hook up the gas.
When i go down to 1mm sheet metal I struggle with blow through at the moment. but hopefully with a bit more practice I can improve this. I haven't hooked up the gas or tried 0.6mm wire yet, so hopefully that improves things. Once I get on top of using the mig with better control, I plan to remove the front apron/beaver panel and weld in a new replacement I bought from Australian Panel Craft.
I'm hoping to cut out the old, and replace them with these new panels:
before photo front apron:
If that goes well I'll have a crack at the rear beaver also. It looks like a much bigger job, there looks like a fair bit of work undoing that fold that runs along below the rear numberplate. seems to be a stack of spot welds that run along there.
I've read through alot of the old build threads on here, and I've seen similar work completed by a few guys on here before. Most of these threads are from years ago, but they have given me the idea to have a crack at this.