Rus too suffers from SOS(strong opinion syndrome)

it is possible to weld with gasless. gassless welds should be as strong as gas shielded.

trouble is its smoky messy and its difficult to see what the weld pool is doing so other than tacking its not ideal for thin stuff

ive used it to shrink an eye for a kingpin whre the main concern was getting the maximum heat into the job very difficult to even try to keep the weld in the gound out groove as it was so difficult to see what was going on

so for thin work it scores 0
for precision 0

so that kind of rules it out of 2cv work for me too

Sean

If learning to weld it's about the worst thing to use. You want something controllable and neat, so as to know when you're doing it right. Such a spattery shitty mess, anybody in the welding game laughs at gasless for perfectly good reasons.

Why laugh? all welding spots need treatment anyway so you won't see them

Spot welding doesn't. Citroen never had to clean it up. A decent plug weld with a decent MIG doesn't need cleaning up either.

If I told my boss we should bin the MIG and TIG sets to buy a £99 Aldi gasless set he'd probably sack me or punch me. Rightfully so.

Spot welder are limited in their use on 2cv bodies. Decent plug welds still needs cleaning, bog, gab sealer and paint.
Have no doubt your boss would sack you but we are talking 2cv body work, nothing else, right

a decent spot technique with a shitty welder( i bought a sip years ago before they invented the tinternet- for advice i had the likes of craptical plastics)

sean

I can think of a million places on a 2cv body you can use a spot welder, and have used one. With perfectly good results. Gasless MIG is not the way of the professional welder. Regardless of what they are welding.

And as a little challenge, to prove gasless is as good, let's see you do a weld that looks like this WITHOUT gas.

a sence a dual

I'd also go with Russell's advice. Go out and buy a decent quality used welder rather than a cheap new one. Cebora, BOC, Oxford et al work well. The price difference is largely in the quality of the transformer, and that shows when welding thin steel. A cheap piece of junk will happily weld a thick piece of steel. Welding thin stuff is where it gets tricky.

The better welders are way better at getting turned down low. I'd also look for a Euro torch, being able to service the torch makes a big difference.

Invest in a block of brass to use as a heat soak. You'll find it far easier to do stuff like weld patches in the bulkhead if there is a heat soak behind it. It prevents you from blowing holes.

Getting good results is about patience, Weld short runs. The more heat you throw into the panel the more distortion you'll get.