Ford 9" axle

Might be a good idea to look for a replacement housing - otherwise I'd stick weld the whole thing. It's going to be a real bugger with all the oil in the cracks any way you cut it - but stick is the most forgiving.

We considered sourcing another housing , but this one has been narrowed . I'm not set up to do that . And the oil problem is why I considered stick . I guess I could burn a few sticks and get my hand back . Thing about MIG is that it's so easy to just pick up the stinger and burn a few beads , stick needs a little more coordination . The welds where they attached the flanges to the tubes are so purty , I'm betting those are subarc welds .

Perhaps, but I've seen (and done) some real pretty welds with a stick on heavier guage stuff.

How much has it been narrowed? What's the rear track? Would an 8.5 inch axle from an explorer/Ranger fit? Virtually as strong as a 9 inch if you get the HD one from an explorer SportTrac - and you get disk brakes as well.

Switch to 4-link to help spread the stress?

I was pleasantly surprised at how much polyurethane bushings stiffened up my rear leaf suspension in my old '90 F-150. Less side movement for better handling. I _like_ corners. ;)

That'd be ideal, but most people want a $ fix, not a ChaCHING $$$ fix. Snag would know which.

A spray can of B-12 Chemtool is your friend. I'd pull everything (axles, bearings, nut, lines) and steam clean the beastie with degreasers, then preclean the weld areas once more with Berryman's.

MIG with an unpracticed hand is what got him in this situation in the first place, isn't it?

_There_ is something worth looking into.

We don't know the provenance of this axle , it was on the car when the customer brought it in . The welds look more like stick than MIG . I don't know for sure , but I suspect the owner brought the car in to correct this and other problems . I think he bought the car as-is . Axle has been chromed , but it won't be when we get finished . Well , parts of it won't , gotta grind it and the copper underplating off where we weld .

Greetings Terry, If it was me I would TIG the thing. Are the axles going to be in the housing when the welding is being done? If so it will be harder to keep oil from trying to get back into the crack. If you can remove the axles then you should be able to use brake cleaner to wash the oil out of the crack and from the surrounding area before welding. I would wash the crackmout, then grind, then wash again. I would use the 70S2 rod or the 308SS rod. The 308 will be a little more ductile than the

70S2. I wouldn't bother with stick or MIG. Tif will probably be a little more work to get it clean enough for a good weld but you will know that it is a good weld when you are done. Eric

It's stripped to the bare housing , and has been "degreased" with a water-based solution . It's actually pretty clean except what's trapped in the cracks and in the porous welds . If I use a brake cleaner it'll be a non-chlorinated one , I've read about the potential to produce phosgene gas under the right conditions . More likely I'll use carb spray as someone upthread suggested .

Try using some paint thinner and lots of paper towels. You do not need a s pray can to get the solvent to the crack. You do need something like the p aper towels to get the solvent out of the crack by capillary action. Maybe some compressed air would help get the solvent out of the crack.

Dan

Chroming a steel diff housing isn't a real good idea anyway due to "hydrogen embrittlement" from the plating process.

Bake it with a big rosebud torch untill no more oil boils out of the cracks, then clean it again, and bake it again. Stick weld while still hot to limit the extra stress from welding.

Hot air gun?

It is not what I would use. My thoughts are to dilute the oil with the pai nt thinner and then to adsorb the paint thinner with paper towels. Heating the part with a hot air gun would evaporate the paint thinner , but would leave any contaminants in the crack.

Dan

It is not what I would use. My thoughts are to dilute the oil with the paint thinner and then to adsorb the paint thinner with paper towels. Heating the part with a hot air gun would evaporate the paint thinner , but would leave any contaminants in the crack.

Dan

Cracks need to be ground out and re-welded. Even one ignored crack could be 'bad news' ....

Just general comments. You use what you have available. Tig and Mig requi re getting the metal clean. There is no flux to get rid of any oxides. In the best of all possible worlds, you would use dual shield. That is a wir e for a Mig welder that has some flux in the core. But you use it with a s hielding gas. So dual shield. Best of all possible worlds where you have almost clean metal.

Now for wild ideas. Worked with a guy that had a 110 volt mig welder and a stick welder. He was not all that great with the stick welder so when he had something to weld that really needed more power than his mig welder wou ld provide, he disconnected the leads on the mig welder and connected his s tick welder to the wire gun in his mig welder.

Now this meant he was using a constant current supply instead of a constant voltage supply. And that meant he was welding in spray mode. But it work ed.

Next wild idea. Have not tried this, but you should be able to use dual sh ield wire with your Tig welder. I have not tried that, but it ought to wor k and give you a little flux to help with metal that is not perfectly clean . It may play hell with your tungstens. The dual shield that I have used worked well with CO2 shielding gas and spray mode. But you would want to u se argon with your tig.

I have used mig wire with a tig welder when I wanted a smaller diameter ro d than the tig rods I had on hand.

I do have some dual shield wire if you want to try using it with your tig w elder. I know some of it is .030 dia. Not sure if the other reel is the s ame size. It may be bigger. I am sure you will be done with this job by t he time any package would get to you. But if you want some. let me know. I got it at Boeing Surplus before they closed up. I have several lifetimes supply.

Dan

I was talking about how to clean and certainly not suggesting any cracks be ignored. Depending on the thickness of the metal, I might not grind all t he way thru the metal. Say if the metal was 3/16 thick , I might grind out an eighth leaving a 1/16th ( or less ).

Dan

I do have a roll of .030 flux core MIG wire , and could use it with C25/Ar/CO2 , I have all 3 on hand . That would work on the cracks in the axle tube itself , it's within the thickness limitations of my little 110 MIG machine - especially with the flux core , it burns hotter than solid wire .

Couldn't do that with my arc welder , it's AC only . Might figure out something that uses the TIG as a power source though .

I think the TIG swings both ways , CC and CV since it's for arc welding too - and even has spot welding settings .

I've used 2-3-4 strands of .025 mig wire when I needed something finer than the TIG filler II had on hand . Works swell . I never considered using the flux core wire though . It's pretty brittle , might have fun trying to twist a couple of them together - maybe some solid and some flux core ...

The good thing is that I have options . Probably not a bad idea to burn a few sticks of rod with the tombstone , there was a time when I was a fair hand . Of course at that time it was my only option too . This isn't a definite thing , but since he has no cheaper options I think I'll be doing the repairs . Something else I've been thinking about , I wonder if there was supposed to be a strip to double up the axle tube wall where the brackets are welded on . Sure looks like a good idea to me , with little weight penalty .

Why would that prevent you from using your arc welder?

Arc welding and Tig welding both use CC . Mig uses CV .