Aluminum transmission case repair - rebuilding "ears"

I am very interesting how this project turns out. Is there some way you can take photos along the way. That would be great. Sorry, I cannot help you regarding your questions.

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Can you spell junk yard????

it is cast aluminum. clean it. grind the hell out of it all around to get surface aluminum where tranny fluid has soaked in. bevel the heck out of the pieces.

tig weld it back together. can't help with filler materials.

let it cool.

rebuild tranny which takes a day or 2.

well there is a less expensive and easier to do than tig welding have you ever tried alumiweld I was designed just for this sort of thing and it is stronger than the original aluminum ,a buddy had got some to try it and he told me it was fantastic he took an old tranny casting that the mounting tab was broken off (the tranny was a junker ) and then he tried to take a hammer to make it come off ,he said he broke the old case and knocked the alumiweld but it took a nice chunk of the original material with it ,so now he uses it to fix all the little aluminum repairs around his place and on his vehicles he says it's easier and cheaper to fix an engine bracket then to hunt one down at a junk yard , I researched it a lil bit here the military had used something very similar to it years ago for they needed something to do field repairs to fix minor failures like brackets and certain components getting cracked ,or broken off and they didn't like the idea of having a vehicle being pulled back to replace a minor part or to have a welding crew to get at it ,so they looked for something they can use quickly and easily and that anybody can do and this is what they got and they need a propane torch and a stainless steel wire brush to use it if you want the addy I believe it is alumiweld.com but if thats not it you should be able to find it in a search good luck

I don't like the classic "miracle rod" like alumiweld et al. The HTS2000 stuff looks interesting, testimonials are impressive. Note that these alloys tend to be somewhat brittle. It might be OK for some joint designs, but I'd expect joining a thick ear to a casting might not work well. It won't "wick" into the joint like brazing alloys do; you need full access to all surfaces so you can "scrub" the rod on the workpiece to break up oxides. This necessarily leaves a thick region of alloy because you'd have to V out the joint.

The site claims joints stronger than "heliarc" welds. I'd take that with a large grain of salt. There may be special cases where that is true, but I strongly doubt that it's true in general, or particularly in the case of joining an ear to a casting.

I'd TIG it with 4043 filler. See

an example of a somewhat similar repair. This repair has held up well in service, with a fair amount of stress on the pin.

4047 might be better, don't know. 4043 worked well for me. 4047 is a bit higher in silicon, has a slightly lower operating temperature. I might try that next time.