Well the console is shaping up nicely. I really love having a well functioning sandblaster. Hard to beat fresh clean metal
Sprayed the inside faces of the panels with some weld-thru primer to hopefully prevent any corrosion. Though with it assembled now it wouldn't be as hard to paint as I thought
I put some 3/4" dimple dies on the bolt flanges of the panels, don't think it strengthened anything too much, but I like the way they look
Got to work tacking it all together. The spacer I milled helped a lot as the frame of the winters shifter isn't parallel, it's tapered, so hopefully having the walls parallel might prevent some rattles.
I had drilled .109" holes every inch or two along the edges of the front and back pieces where they would overlay the bent flanges on the side pieces. It worked decent for tacking it together, though bigger holes might have been better. If the mig wire wasn't aimed perfect it tended to fill the hole before welding to the flange behind it.
I picked up some .023 wire instead of the .030 I used on the tunnel piece and it made a big difference in the fill and smoothness of the arc.
Did a nice test weld on some scrap
Then I put the first shitty weld on the actual console. Something something about a grinder and paint...
Got my rhythm figured out a bit more and the rest went pretty well, hardly had any craters to go back and fill after grinding
After some personal time with a 120 grit flap disc it was looking good. I wanted it to have nice rounded corners and a seamless look to it, which is why I bent all of the flanges on the side pieces. Having that bend radius already there and not having an open corner weld to go back and round off worked really well and I was pretty happy with how it worked out.
Once I got it all welded I realized I had neglected to ever sit it on the tunnel to see how it would fit. Had a nice happy accident there lol, the back is sitting up just a hair, but I need to remove some material there anyways for the cable to exit out the back, so it will fit on my base plate just right, exactly how I planned...
And you know if I never thought to test it on the tunnel I definitely didn't think to see how it fits in the truck lol. Another happy accident I guess
It's a bit close to the dash, but once I clearance the back it should angle back towards the seat some more... Perfect
If anyone has any tips or critiques on it I'd love to hear them, this is kind of my first sheet metal project. There's definitely a lot of though process that goes into it, and so far I haven't screwed it up and I've learned a few things. One thing being that I need some more cool tools