FYI: Some welding tips Car related, Feel free to add yours Options

[rick 918-S]

Lots of you guys will know this stuff but some may find it helpful. Here are a couple of photos of a Mercedes I'm working on for a friend. This car was butched back in the 70's. I'm trying to put it back together. All the spot weld flanges are damaged with brazing. The brass needs to be removed and replaced with steel so I can spot weld the car back together.

Some of the flanges are good for the most part, So I'm not cutting them off completely and making new ones. Were I can, I use a piece of copper and simply run a couple beads of weld across the copper and then grind/file the weld back to the thickness of the metal.

Your wire feed will actually arc on the copper. So you can even start your arc just off the edge of the metal your repairing and then move into the damaged edge.

This also works good for a backer on small holes. The copper will pull some of the heat out of the weld causing a rapid cooling effect.

A simple source for copper flatbar is soft copper tubing. If you've done any home plumbing repair you probably have a piece of copper tubing under the work bench. Just hammer it flat and your in business.

[thesey914]

Thanks for the tip Rick - I could've used that a few times. How do you tell if your spot welds are good? cut one out and inspect for penetration?

[rick 918-S]

Thanks for the tip Rick - I could've used that a few times. How do you tell if your spot welds are good? cut one out and inspect for penetration?

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I was just having that conversation with the owner. I ran a destructive test on some heavy gauge steel. The welder with clean tips would take 3-5 seconds to get a good spot. I could only weld about 12" before the spotter was really hot. I would let it cool down for about an hour, clean the tips and start again. I added a 1/4" plug weld with the mig about every 18", used the copper backer and ground it flush. Then put the spot welder over the plug weld and camoflaged it. For this car it's all about the look of the factory. There will be plenty of places where were not concerned about perfect replication but the obvious stuff were spending the time on.