So the rear axle arm (see circled area in this pic) rests in a socket welded to the chassis.
The bracket that is bolted to this axle arm socket is also bolted to a support bracket by the rocker panel. So this brackets purpose is to reinforce this rocker panel? Im a bit confused on others explanation, what would happen if this bracket was removed?
If anyone knows any sources for blueprints / diagrams showing detailed diagrams of the Toyota Corolla chassis please share, I find this interesting.
The bracket that the axle attaches to handles all the suspension loads created by braking and cornering, and a good part of the bump loads; that bolted on strip is to further re-enforce it. With all that rust, no experience, and a bargain welder it’s doubtful you’ll be able to make it safe.
One consideration for OP, I purchased a cheapo MIG wire-flux welder a few years ago, but I’ve never turned it on a single time yet. Afraid … lol … If you are the extra cautious sort, suggest to just pay someone to do your welding for you. No opinion whether that car can be fixed by welding or otherwise.
I ordered that amazon welder, good reviews, and some E6011 Welding Rod 3/32-Inch. Gonna start grinding tonight, tomorrow will attempt to weld and start applying lanolin to the undercarriage
You ordered a cheap stick welder.
You can’t weld rusted sheet metal with even with an expensive stick welder, MIG welder, or TIG welder.
Tester
You’re putting words in my mouth saying Im going to weld rusted metal. Read my responses, im grinding the metal down first.
You don’t grind that type of rust out.
You cut it out.
Tester
Im aware, if its surface im grinding it out, if its bad, cutting it out.
Did you get a welding helmet, welding gloves… safety glasses and or face shield for grinding… flame resistant clothing???
Have you thought about the possibility of catching your carpet on fire??
Will you have something close by to put out a fire??
What are you going to do about the GAS TANK right beside where you are welding???
Have you thought about disconnecting the battery??
Yup, all has been accounted for
I can see it now!
Tester
Have you ever had formal education in welding or worked under a certified or experienced welder?
I have, but I’m not saying I know more than you. Welding rusted metal is not an issue ever seen in a commercial welding environment.
You would definitely brush off the loose rust before welding. But welding melts the metal and the rust would be mixed in with the weld metal, so you don’t “weld over rust”, the rust would be mixed with the metal and contaminate it. Welding, especially stick welding (SMAW) produces slag, which are oxides, which make their way to the surface of the weld.
Is it too late to cancel the order? An experienced stick welder would probably refuse to work with anything less than a good DC stick welder. AC “buzz boxes” as they call them are for producing time consuming lower quality welds on thick metal. I don’t know if this is an AC buzz box or something in between DC and AC. Even an experienced welder will struggle to get the arc started with with an AC welder. You can weld 1/16" steel with an AC welder. It is very time consuming and frustrating. You’ll spend 10 times as much time grinding out mistakes and trying to get the arc started than actual welding. Even with a quality DC stick welder welding 1/16" is not recommended. You would have to take multiple passes on one sheet by itself to build up enough metal to not burn through on your final weld.
Stick welding is not for thin stuff. I don’t know why you bought that machine. Typically stick is for 1/8" and thicker steel.
There are flux core “MIG” welders without the G since there is no Gas that are really cheap and even that would be better, but that would be frustrating too since they leave slag. You can’t weld over slag. So you could only do one pass and that’s it, unless you wire brush and chip it out, but sometimes those tools won’t fit in the work area.
I welded a thin metal leg on some furnature with my flux core “MIG” welder. I don’t have a formal education in MIG welding, and I only did it with a proper MIG welder doing thick stuff. It burned through furnature leg, but I developed a technique where I basically tack welded it a bunch of times all the way around so it wouldn’t have time to burn through. Literally 1/2" of welding and then waiting a moment for it to cool and then doing that again in the next spot.
What you want is a good MIG welder, or do TIG. Your car is not the place to learn welding. Unless you are going to spend a couple days practicing first with the same thickness sheet metal as your cas has then forget about this. Have an experienced welder do it. MIG welding is more about learning to set up the machine properly than actual welding, at least on the thicker stuff.
Oh yes and as someone mentioned you can set your carpet on fire. Anything on the other side of what you weld will get melted and may catch on fire. You have to pull the carpet up and you ideally would wire brush off the paint and repaint again afterward.
Do you have a grinder? Face shield? Ear plugs? All that stuff goes with being a welder! You’re not saving any money by doing this unless you actually want to teach yourself to weld and will continue to use this skill later.
You leave a gas tank partially full with fumes in it when welding on the outside, since fumes will not ignite. An empty tank that has mixed with air can explode.
No need to do that. On some heavy equipment you can damag things by running too much current through the frame and creating a ground imbalance. So there is a procedure to disconnect stuff before welding. I asked the guy at a muffler shop about this and he said it’s never been an issue with cars.
NEVER APPLY ELECTRICITY FROM A WELDER TO A MOVING PART LIKE A DRIVE SHAFT OR WHEEL HUB. It can arc over inside the oil separted bearing surface and damage the bearing. Then the whole thing has to come apart to replace the bearing. It’s especially a problem with a stick welder since they always hot. There is no button to press.
So you’ll probably try the sticke welder since you already bought it. Your welds will burn through and then you’ll manage to get some that don’t but the whole project will turn in to a huge slag inclusion. It will hold together sort of, but the final result will look just as horrible as the rust does, and probably not any stronger. The big slag inclusion of a weld will trap water inside and rust out quickly. Okay so you’ll paint it. I’m not sure you’ll even get past the burn through part. With an AC welder with the arc taking forever to start it’ll take you forever to get one pass done. You’ll need to be down at 30 Amps to do that thin stuff. Now a car is even thinner than 1/16" so I don’t think this is even possible for a skilled welder!
I’m not trying to discourage you from fixing it. Just GET THE PROPER TOOLS and the proper training.
Oh yes there is!
Unless you disconnect the battery or attach one of these to the battery,
https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/BK_7003129
it can damage sensitive electronic components in a vehicle.
I know someone who welded on a vehicle without doing either and destroyed the fuel pump.
Tester
The battery itself is a surge protector. No need for that thing. The issue with welding is creating a ground imbalance. It can damage electronics but disconnecting the battery won’t help in most cases.
Imagine your rear radio amp unit ground being 4 Volts higher than your radio ground! That’s how electronics get damaged. All the circuits connecting those units together now have 4 Volts applied to the wires. Happens because you attached your welder ground to the back and you were welding up in the front.
No!
When you strike and arc with a welder, the welder is going to seek the closest ground for that arc to occur.
And sometimes that ground it seeks doesn’t occur at the battery,.and the surge from the welder happens in components that can’t handle it.
Tester
That small bracket reinforces the rocker panel in a side collision, this protects the fuel tank fill tube. That strap with two bolts does not hold the axle mount in place.
Look at the rocker panels on the car in the video, bubbled paint covering rust that you could kick holes in. His car is not much better than yours.
Before you begin cutting or welding you will need to remove the fuel tank and fill tube, you are going to wish you had replaced the car instead.
I don’t know who is the bigger fool the [THE SNOWMAN ] for spouting nonsense or the [ OP ] for keeping up the arquing to convince everyone he knows what he is talking about. 
I’ve been welding off and on for most of my adult life, yes I have worked with some great welders, one was a body man and fabricator from Dearborn Michigan where if I remember right they get a little bit of snow and might just happen to have a few vehicles with a little bit of rust on them… 
I also worked with a guy that can weld anything from aluminum foil to Ships and everything in between, he is a master welder and often does welding on skyscrapers, hospitals to Fort Campbell (and there people take samples and check everything) and is one of the go to guys in and around the Nashville area for commercial and industrial welding… I have welds that passed the Fort Campbell structure police also as well as Welds on the Nashville Regions Bank Center 28-story skyscraper downtown Nashville in the parking garage holding up the trust…
I did a lot of welding for a commercial/industrial masonry company having to fabricate a lot of different things including design and make, then mass produce hundreds of safety gates after a worker fell and was killed and another fell and was paralyzed, both from other company’s, I also worked on everything from mortar mixers, partner saws, hydraulics, 25’ mask forklifts to 30,000 pound Lull 1044’s with a 65’ reach with the transfer extended and every single piece of equipment that a large commercial/industrial masonry company has and all by myself, so I also had to design and fabricate all kinds of things to be able to do the work that sometimes rewuired more then one person by myself… Oh yeah, I also designed and bult jack stands for the 30K forklift…
So I might have done a little welding before… anymore questions???
And when welding already thin gauge metal that is already mostly rusted away, all you will do is blow through it or it will be so thin by the time it is ground down enough to weld, it will be very unsafe… Aren’t you the one on here talking and making all kinds of post about vehicles NOT BEING SAFE???
And NO, I could not teach a class on welding with all the technical teaching stuff, but I damn sure can melt two pieces of metal together and make it hold… My only problem now is I can’t see were I am welding now, and even though it may be pretty it is in the wrong place… lol
So I have to do a lot of small welds and look to make sure I am still on track…
And you can throw a lit cigarette into a full bucket of gas, but stand over it closely with a open flame and see what happens to you… It is the fumes that ignite and don’t think for a minute that any gas does not have fumes, WTH do you think the evap system is for on a vehicle??? It is not the liquid stuff going to the engine…
And I have filled a bottle with gas, shoved a rag in it and lit it, multiple times… NO explosion, it just burns really high, it take pressure to make it explode…I think you are watching to many movies, BTW they use explosives or propane tanks to make those cars explode, it is not the gas…That is why it takes fuel, ignition and wait for it, compression to make an ICE to run, engines don’t run with very low or no compression… I have seen as well as had a lot of cars back fire through the carb, it just burns and most of the time you can blow it out with your breath, again no explosions…
And yes it was on a dead end street in a very large turnaround and nothing even close around to hurt at the time… It was very anticlimactic at the time… lol
BTW: I was never ASE certified in automatic transmissions, but I still build them… 
Agree with most of your post but this is just too much risk. You can damage ECUs this way. And I would ignore what a muffler jockey from Midas says.
Since topic has moved into general welding , one question I’ve always wondered about is why is there a bias towards using a butt joint when joining two pieces of sheet metal? I can see the logic a pro-welder might decide to do it that way, they have all the clamps & extras to get to two pieces to align exactly and stay in place during the weld, and only one seam to weld. But for a diy’er welder, seems easier to over-lap the two pieces of metal, pop-rivet them together to hold them in place, then weld each seam.
