has anyone ever heard of seam welding a car?

I was told cause i doing a ca18 engine swap in my datsun 1200 coupe i need to get the car seam welded to pass engineering slip to be road worthy.

I doubt that the car will get any stronger.

Is this a true fact that it needs to be done.

has anyone needed to get it done before.

never heard of that one man, i would have thought seam welding isnt that strong

I have the front end of my 1200 seam welded. It wasnt required for engineering or rego just needed to strengthen the susspension points with race susspension ect.
It would be best to actually talk to an engineer before starting any conversion is its always easier to do things with a plan of attack and saves having to redo things. I talked to my engineer several times with what I had in mind he pointed my towards and away from certain things. Different engineers expect different things too. And most importantly must comply to the ADR's on your compliance plate
Good luck Andrew

To seem weld your whole car is not a small job, it strengthens your car heaps more than standard,.. Cos there is only small welds holding the whole car together by ''filling the gaps'' you could call it, strengthens it..

Hopefully someone could shed some more lite on the subject for us all... Cheers...

Boostin is correct in the sense that the car is held together by a few welds, spot welds. When they construct the car the Spot weld it which is a process that involves overlaping two sheets or pieces of metal and then passing a localized current through them and fusing them to gether in one spot - normally about the size of an m&m. if you look closely at you car you'll see the small m&m dents where the welds are. They are quite strong and are far apart to let the car flex and give a bit but were never intended for high hp and or track/rally conditions. So what people do is run a bead of weld along the seem where the two pannels meet, usually and inch of weld then two inch gap the an inch of weld etc. This stops the pannels and chassis from flexing and pulling apart but can make pannel damage a nightmare to fix as the pannels are ridged and cant be pulled apart. It would be smart to do it if you are going the turbo ca18 way but as for nessacery? you will have to check with the local laws and requirements.