This repair is what I did last week

Have you tried methods other than gas welding? Like, nickel rods with a stick welder, or anything else?

The subject interests me a lot, although I think I'll probably remain an observer. I don't play with engines like I used to.

Yep. Gas, stick, MIG. High nickel rods, cast rods, brass, even used mild steel rod on one. All depends on the size of the casting, location of the damage and the actual stress on the area.

Something like a freeze crack in the side of a block where the only stress is from cooling water and no real stress then a simple clean up and braze works. Just be sure you stop drill the cracks and clean it well then overlay the repair well past the damage to catch that hairline fracture you don't see with the dye..

Cylinder heads or block webs are the fun ones. Large castings are generally not real bad with a stick machine and the correct rod IF you can get them above operating temps so the casting and weld can expand/contract equally during normal use.

I tried TIG a few times but due to the concentrated heat it doesn't work well for castings. The localized HAZ is so small that it is hard to equalize the stresses even with pre-heating to equal temps.

Well, you have experience with the whole gamut. Did you just learn it all on the job, or did you go for some training? It seems like learning to weld c.i. must involve some testing to destruction, or maybe just seeing what holds together?

Im not just a pretty face.

Thought some of you might find that interesting.

Glad you enjoyed it.

I actually enjoy repairing machines, unfortunately with the economy being what it is....shrug...not so much of it anymore. I could never work as a production guy..be bored out of my skull in short order.

That gentleman Jim I mentioned...does most of his work as "one offs" and is one of the finest, sharpest guys Ive ever met. Every time I go into his shop..I learn Stuff that Id never learn anywhere else. Not so much the grand plan..but how to do the detail stuff that actually works.

I was in there one day when he was making 20' gears. In 5 segments.

For a rock crusher of some sort IRRC.

Fascinating work

Gunner

I have an uncle who was a GE turbine welder. He taught me some of the tricks for odd alloys with stick and MIG. A few odd classes here and there plus a lot of trial and error learning what really works versus what the "experts" say works. Plus I listen real close when I'm around the folks who did this stuff for 30 years. Add in being a gear-head from day one, more than willing to cut up something to test it or see how it was originally put together and a weird innate mechanical ability to see and understand how and why things work.

I am also one of those folks who will look something over and say, well it's already broke, let's see if I can fix it.

Got my medical instructors during EMT classes all upset when I started comparing the human body with a car...

I'll bet. I'll guess that quite a few folks here find they have difficult-to-explain insights into mechanical things. I used to try to explain a feeling I had racing, or in any car, by which I felt like I had dissolved into it and could feel things like they were happening inside of me, instead of to the car.

It's helpful in understanding structures, too. I can feel them absorbing their loads. It's weird.

Anyway, to something more serious: Someone should write an article about your experience, how you learned, what it takes, and so on. I mean that seriously. If I wrote for any magazines that covered manual welding, I'd want to do it myself, like I wrote an article some years about about Dobbie Dave and his screw machines.

Those things are pretty rare and an important part of documenting facets of the trade and the craft.

He STILL had luck! ...along with the "knack".

I'll have to check but I wonder if I have a single staple-set brush machine out of 11 that DOESN'T have a repaired casting. Even though all the parts are still available from the manufacturer, my previous generation repaired stuff rather than replacing. Not so much cracks but clean breaks...which are a hell of a lot easier to repair than cracks.

Ah, the liar returns.

Welcome back, but as yet you haven't answered my post asking whether you were in Bangor Maine in the 1960's so you actually know whether the little savings and loan I mentioned had $2,000 in their till the day I called in, or not, or whether you just told a lie?

I suspect the latter as most people in Maine are fairly logical, down to earth.

Your signature is quite revealing, isn't it. It appears that you went out and bought a lot of cheap Harbor Freight tools and after you got them home discovered that you didn't know how to use them, thus Too Many Tools.

I have no idea what the f*ck you are talking about.

Obviously you have me mistaken for someone else.

I'm from Wa.

You are a clueless f****it.

Obviously I did and my humble apologies.