Greetings all.
Turning once again to the wisdom of the group for advice on a peripherally metalworking topic:
Does anyone have any experience/advice dewarping a cast-iron casting?
I have a cast iron part (radiator bolster from a Farmall cub) that had water freeze in it and bulge & crack it (previous owner's indiscretion). He also brazed up the crack, but didn't work the bulge back out. The problem with the bulge, is that it throws the mounting surface for the radiator out of plane. If there was a little more meat there, I'd just mill the mounting surface down and be done with it, but that would leave very little metal in the mounting flange at the peak of the bulge.
So... I know one can shrink sheet metal a couple different ways, and I seem to remember seeing someone bend an I-beam by placing periodic welds along the flanges and letting the weld shrinkage pull a radius into it. I'm wondering if I can play a similar game with cast iron. The radiator mounting flange requires little structural strength, so I don't have to worry too much about weakening it by heating/local heating differential.
If there's no success to be had along those lines, my fallback is to mill it down, then braze on a .25in raiser flange that will put the entire radiator .25 too high, but at least leave enough metal to seal, and be properly aligned.
Any thoughs/ideas/suggestions most greatly appreciated, Will Ray