Citroën 2CV Restoration, welding the body shell

2cv body I already concluded that the bottom foot-plates had to be replaced and suspected the sills. Close examination showed that the sills were much worse than initially seen. The mounting points of the sills (A and C post) were far-gone too.
These areas need to be quit strong to support the sills mounting and therefor I replaced these areas using home made repair panels which took some time to get in the right shape. The repair as performed near the C post is shown in the pictures below.

2cv body detail

At the front of the car the plate supporting the pedals was also replaced because water in the interior did some devastating work at the front of the car (common known weak spot of the 2CV). Also the hinge of the hood was replaced and some patches of steel which contain the holes for the screen wipers. These holes were enlarged in the past to be able to fit the electrical screen wipers, which were installed when I bought the car. Also the rear wheel arches needed some work in the area of the rubber support.

One of my major concerns when replacing all these body elements was to make sure no unwanted twists were made and that all major distances were as before. This of course is very important in order to be able to mount the bodywork on the chassis and to mount the other body panels like doors and boot. I did take some precise measurements in advance and worked my way through in the following order;

I had to start with replacing the low end of the front ''side plates'' being the plates which support the lowest mounting point of the front wings. These were heavily corroded and had to be replaced to be able to be used as a mounting point for the sill later.
Putting in place the new pedal supporting plate in the front. Make sure the low part of this plate is correctly aligned with the bottom of the left and right side panels. Later this plate is functioning as mounting point for the front of the floor plates and the front of the sills. The reproduction pedal plate did not have some of the required mounting points for the gas pedal rubber hose so some nuts were welded on to be able to mount this afterwards. The reinforcement plates between this pedal plate and the plate supporting the dashboard were welded again. The finishing touch was to dress down the welds and to fold the surrounding plate (panel beating with a hammer and dolly) over the repaired panel to reflect the original way the plate was mounted.
A and C post reinforcements as mentioned above with replacing also some of the surrounding plates like the filler plate in the wheel arch, next to the C post.
Placing the sills between the A and C post, taking care the overall measure was correct. TIP: I fitted the doors to be able to adjust the sill and to fine-tune the location of the B post on the newly placed sills. This step was finished with replacing the bottom filler plate attached to the sill below the C post. All this was more work than expected.
Put in place the two floor plates which are mounted each side of the chassis. On these floor plates some reinforcements were welded at the locations of the front outriggers as was done on the original floor plates.

After welding in all this new steel it was time for the final check of the bodywork on the chassis to see if the holes for the M7 bolds matched the holes in the chassis. In general it was OK although the holes in the obtained reproduction floor plates were not placed very accurately.

TIP: One thing I noticed in this trail fitting was that the rear brake pipe running in front of the rear axle touched the bodywork. I corrected this by bending the pipe closer to the rear axle. Be aware this might happen after you installed a new pipe as it might produce a hole in the brake pipe very fast!

2cv body This phase took quit some time but was very rewarding. Initially I even thought about scrapping this body shell and buying a second hand good one. However I liked the challenge (and it turned out that ''good'' secondhand body shells also needed work).So now it was time to start doing the paint work on the body.