These were starting to look very second hand. We tend to Jack the car on the Sump/Diff guard then put the axle stands under the Jack points. My jack, unless you are used to it, goes down on freefall, so these Jack points can take a battering form this, and also the weight of the car sat on them. They had started to move up into the sill, which didn’t bode well, so we decided to investigate. You do need to have a sense of adventure to do this, or at least with the way we did it.

We took the M3 sill covers off, supported the car on some suspension parts, and then took the angle grinder with thin cutting discs and cut either side of the jack points vertically about 200mm, then pealed the steel work back.

This allowed the corroded stanchion to be fully seen, and also to give access to weld the repairs in place. A sort of box was fabricated, slipped over the existing stanchion and then welded in place everywhere we could reach. Once in place a thick piece of steel was welded onto the bottom of this repair to spread any loads imparted by Jacks or Axle stands.

The sides were then bent back down and stitch welded as they were put back. To do this you bend the metal down until a short section is in the correct place, then weld this up, then start bending the metal down again until another short section is in place, and continue until all is finished. If you try and bend it all in one go then some parts will bend too far, and others not enough.

After all this was finished the corroded steel from the bottom of the sill was removed, a card template made which was then used to mark the steel sheet before cutting it out. This sheet was then welded in place.

Before this was put in I sprayed anti rust around. Now I know this stuff is flammable, and I fully expected a few small fires. What happened was that the small fire produced heat, which melted more of the rust treatment, which fed the fire etc etc. Very quickly a few small flames became a reasonable fire. Quick squirt of the extinguisher, which must of course be kept handy when welding, and all was well. I carried on and then wondered why rust treatment was running out of the front of the sill. Another fire had spread along the sill, and even started to melt the door instep plates. Another squirt of the extinguisher and that was also cured.

On a competion car these fires are not too serious as there is little to burn, but if you were doing a road car with fuel lines, carpets and wires around then things are much more serious.