Oh No ! - Where has the metal gone !
So in fitting the front winch I have been looking for a location for the second battery. Playing around with a battery showed that there is not really enough space under the bonnet. The problem is height rather than length. Anyway, the rear tray in the boot is an attractive location for the battery and it puts more weight over the rear wheels.
My car was converted to take a rear winch and this was fitted in the rear tray with a hole for the cable exit. This was letting water in now that the winch is not fitted so in order to fit the battery I needed to fill the hole.......
A quick probe around with a sharp knife to locate where there was metal to weld to revealled a small hole!
Ok - so I lied - its a large hole - no wonder water was coming in everywhere. This is a view through to the outside underneath you can see the winch mounting plate welded in across the rear crossmember and the rear exhaust box.
So its out with the welder to make it whole again :(
Originally I cut out a single sheet of metal with "tabs" to fold up and insert into the hole in the floor. This worked fine on the long edges but the angled ends were not good.
I then cut the end tabs off leaving me with a "U" shaped piece of metal. This fitted the hole well. I then welded the U shape into the hole.
The tabs that had earlier been cut off were then welded in place individually, leaving me with.....
