Show us your welding projects

[hunter1151]

You could make that bracket out of a piece of tubing too couldn't you ZT, by just cutting out a little triangle and bending the portion left back into itself and welding that and adding the bottom piece...........absolutly the way to go and the best looking ZT....nice illustration.

[hunter1151]

I too have one of those to do on a lower unit of a volvo-penta drive..........do you guys worry about heating up the guts and seals in there??

[ZTFab]

Originally Posted by hunter1151

You could make that bracket out of a piece of tubing too couldn't you ZT, by just cutting out a little triangle and bending the portion left back into itself and welding that and adding the bottom piece...........absolutly the way to go and the best looking ZT....nice illustration.

Yes, you could use a piece of box tubing and form the mount but looking at the F100 frame and the new K-member there is potential for many different mounting planes and/or compound angles.

In order to get the most contact surface area and simplify the fabrication I would start with one piece at a time to ensure the best fit-up. Also, using individual pieces allows for the addition of internal ribs or gussets and any internal welding if necessary.

...but that is just how I would go about it. There's a million different ways to skin a cat.

[steel 35]

Mine was far enough away no worries pull the plugs drain the lube, and if it goes bad I can use the (it was like that when I used it) Glad mine is a jet sled...

[Jack Olsen]

This was in my 12-Gauge thread. But hey, it was this week's homeowner's welding project. And sometimes even mediocre fab work can produce a nice product.

These sconces came with the house. The wife thought they were too small, relative to the big sun face thing and other stuff in the room.



So I cut up some leftover material.



The plan was to re-use the arm part (although I would flip it, which meant tapping a new threaded hole), and also re-use the goofy old man face. Here was the test assembly.



Then the welding. And the grinding of the unsightly welds. I used flat Rustoleum, which does a nice job of hiding metal-working sins.

Here's a picture with an idea of the new 'proportion:'



And closer in:



The most expensive part of the project? The two $10 retro filament bulbs.

Nothing fancy, but I think they pass the 'you wouldn't notice that something on the wall was made in the garage if you just walked through the house' test.

[z28snksknr]

Originally Posted by charger891

I didn`t get back to you on your truck restore thread because i didn`t want to tick you off, i`ll try to explain the 2 ways i would have done it, depending on the ttruck height you want to achieve, if you want more ground clearance i`d leave it exhactly where you have it, take some cardboard and trace out the frame (horisontly) and contour the suspension, this then would be your side plate, i`d then substract the thickness of material your using and remove that along the suspension contour at the bottom of the plate, what i would do next is make a plate that contours the suspension top and is wide enough so it would lign up with the inner part of the frame,this plate would then get welded to the side plate, if you wan you can weld the side plates and box the inner part of the frame together then bolt the suspension to the bottom plate.

Throughout my thread, I call out the fact that I will post my triumphs AND failures because I think it should represent what I'm going through as a first build. I lean on the GJ community to help point things out and help me learn as I go - I think I requested that in my first post of the thread in fact. To be honest, I had a suspicion that my work was not up to par, but I didn't get any feedback on my thread. That's why I posted it here also.

I think with your input above and ZTFAB's help, I have a plan for what I'll be doing now. It's a one man show in my garage, and I need all the help I can get!

[charger891]

here`s a quick sketch i threw together, the first one is if you leave your suspension in the same location it is right now, the second one is if lower the suspension and graft it into the frame, kinda like doing the volare swap.

[superspec]

here was is my first welding project. i did a motor swap about 4 years ago. went from an I4 to a v6 in my DD sentra. the shorty headers never would seal up good with the y pipe and always blew gaskets and sounded like shit. sooo i did the next best thing considering nobody made a long tube and equal length y pipe for this car...i made my own.

started with this:



cut the 2 y pipes to make one and tacked everything under the car.

[superspec]

i had some serious problems when i got it out from under the car and welding in the open. it kept blowing holes through the material. i tried eveyrhting to fix it and then i realized that the wind was blowing really hard that day. i closed the garage door and everything was better. it aint pretty but its been doing the job for a year or so now.

[Cheap5.0]

Looks good, how about a pic of the car or vid of it running?

[superspec]

my twins, good is on the left and evil is on the right



all of the exhaust work will be redone soon on this car

[USMCdodge]

heres a rust repair job i did yesterday. cut rusted area out w/plasma, found some angle iron for the flush patch, welded it back and cold welded handrails back on.

[CAOS]

So I was at the local Princess Auto looking through the "random bin" and came across a 1" box end wrench for $1.00! I know its "china made garbage" but for this purpose it was perfect.

Ive wanted to make a tig torch holder for awhile now, this is mine. Used half of a box end wrench, magnetic base, two nylon washers with a 1/2" o.d, 5/32 set screw and some 1/2" cold roll. Oh ya, 1/4" bolt to mount the base to the cold rolled. The washers insulate the wrench from the base so there is no arcing out! The initial idea was to tap the wrench and use the set screw to push against the cold roll, but who would have thought even a POS wrench would be too hard to tap. Anyways here are a few pics, please take in account all holes were drilled with a basic drill press so the holes are not perfect.

[PCO6]

Nice job CAOS. That's better than what Princess Auto sells as a "real" tig/mig torch welder stand ... and I bought. I buy a lot of cheap wrenches from PA. I use them for dedicated tools for my cut off saw, drill press, polisher/buffer, tool stands, etc. I usually cut one end off and dip the "handle end" in Plasti-dip.

[Krokodil]

Nice torch holder!

[z28snksknr]

Here's Round 3...



I ran out of wire when I completed the fronts (I was using Lincoln's 0.35 wire). I ran out to Sears Hardware and bought some no-name crap - I couldn't get a good weld for the rest of the job - I'll be trashing this stuff ASAP. Here's the rear mounts, with 3/8" plates to reinforce where I cut in the tubing for "round 2":


I was pissed how bad my vertical welds looked with the new wire. Same prep, welder settings, etc. Oh well - just more grinding for me before paint.

How's this look? I have to make 2 more mounts for the rear bolts, but that should be easy.

[sberry]

They call them gorilla welds. they ain't pretty but look strong. I have seen worse in service and they held just fine.
First, I cant recall everyones details but I would say you could become a pretty decent welder for that type of stuff with a little help. What machine are you using?
A lot of this work can be done vert down, poor ragged fit up and gaps can be your friend in many cases, with small machines 030 wire. With a 250 class 035 turned up about 3/4 throttle most structural to a truck could be down. I am not at my old computer and need to load some files on a new unit.

[sberry]

Here is a little frame repair, ripped a couple factory rivets out, I didn't patch the frame really, just blew the busted bent out so it was flat and I could work on it, welded around the shock mount, at first I went, oh shit then simply clamp up and weld all around. I don't worry much about welding on these frames, its already busted and it was done by engineers, ha. I ran a big ole fatty on after to cover up some spiderweb cracks, hasn't give any trouble since.

[z28snksknr]

Originally Posted by sberry

They call them gorilla welds. they ain't pretty but look strong. I have seen worse in service and they held just fine.
First, I cant recall everyones details but I would say you could become a pretty decent welder for that type of stuff with a little help. What machine are you using?
A lot of this work can be done vert down, poor ragged fit up and gaps can be your friend in many cases, with small machines 030 wire. With a 250 class 035 turned up about 3/4 throttle most structural to a truck could be down. I am not at my old computer and need to load some files on a new unit.

Most of those welds were awkward positioning and poor visibility due to the struts being in the way, so I made sure there was plenty of material there .

I'm using an Eastwood 175 MIG. On the rare occaisions that the stars align for me, I can get some nice looking welds out of it, but I'm learning every time I pull the trigger, so I struggle for consistency.

[JayL]

My first Mig Welding build ........