A professional weld

I think I found the best way to find a good welder, short of personal recommendations. I chucked the Lammy in the back of the car and drove round the corner to the nearest backstreet car workshop and asked them. They sent me round the corner to another workshop, and a guy called Gary. It was 9am, and he said he'd have it finished by 2pm and it would cost only fifteen quid.

I'm pleased to report he did an excellent job:






and he did my damper mounts at the same time:



Now I can start rebuilding!

Welding on the new cross member

Removing the old cross member revealed a little more about the history of the frame. A crack can just be seen just beyond the end of one of the repair welds, and this shows that the frame suffered a collapse at some point which necessitated a full circumferential weld and strengthening plates to the upper and lower sides. You can see the crack arrowed in this image:



I bought a new cross member and borrowed a MIG welder to enable me to fit it in exactly the right place prior to taking it to the local welder who can do a better job finishing it than I.

To place it properly I used a scaffolder's spirit level (they are magnetic) placed on the engine mount to get the frame perfectly vertical. The lens of the camera makes everything look a bit skew here. It isn't - the engine mount is perpendicular to the frame:



I had to modify the cross member to cater for the existing stengthening plate and welds:



After careful measurement and multiple checks here it is welded on by the front edge only:



Then I ran a final panel placement mock-up to check that everything fitted. You can see here everything fits straight and as expected:





Now I just need to take it to a professional to finish it off for me.