Got my welder out and practiced running some beads on 22Ga sheet then
proceeded to weld the patch panel in place where I cut out the rusted metal.
I had to do a bunch of tack welds until I got it solid, boy that auto
darkening helment is great, first time I ever used one. All these little
tacks and filling in holes with short bursts left me a good bit of weld to
grind. My patch panel didn't match up perfectly at a bend so I tacked the
top and then finish formed the panel in place, it didn't need to be perfect
but did need to be below the surface to be built up with bondo.

After welding and grinding I built up with bondo and inline sanded, built up
with bondo again, inline sanded again, and a couple times again! I had to
weld up a thin place in the metal that showed up when trying to inline sand
the repair flat. The last time I bondo'd I didn't use quite enough hardner
and maybe it will be ready for sanding tomorrow after work. The previous
time I bondo'd it started looking real good, sandpaper made contact with the
whole surface except an angled part I think will take some hand work.

At first I set my welder to feed about 10" of wire in 6 seconds, I saw this
recommended to set 100"/min feed for auto body welding with 0.023" wire. My
preliminary heat setting caused surging, the wire would start an arc, burn
back too far, stop, and repeat. After some trial and error I found out
turning the heat down a little more gave me a more continuous weld.

At first attempt it seems my Century welder should do the job for auto body
welding. After some more practice I would like to go to the Lincoln dealer
and see if they have a Power Mig 140C demonstrator I could try and compare
it to my old Century. I see what you guys mean about the continuous heat
adjustment, I was able to fine tune the heat and wire to run a nice bead,
but the adjustments were tiny.

RogerN