Harold of the Rocks

[chedisme]

ok cool.

 

[chedisme]

UUUGGGHHHHH I should have bought the bigger welder when I had the chance. I so sick of this one. I weld for like 5 min and it over heats and lays down shit for beads.

 

[chedisme]

and again its the operator letting the machine down. turns out I was plugged into the wrong extension cord. they both look the same but one is 25' the other is 100'.

I guess the 100' cord couldn't handle the draw the welder was producing.

 

[Jlanesey]

What do you have for a welder

 

[chedisme]

its a fourney 135. its a 110v. its pretty good for its price range and voltage. but its just not enough for what Im building. Im pushing it waaayy too hard.

 

[Jlanesey]

Yeah, I bought the Hobart 140 and it welds 1/8 perfect anything thicker is tough without perfect conditions.

Making a cord out of some solid wire from Home Depot would work if you have any trouble with the extension cord.

 

[Jlanesey]

Flux cored or gas?

 

[chedisme]

Gas. And thats a good idea. The cord i use i cut out of a 12ga 100' that work threw out because of the brake in the case.

And yea its hard to get perfect conditions upside down under the jeep.

 

[Jlanesey]

Welding overhead sucks, I had to weld the bottom seam of my 2x4 rockers upside down on a windy day outside. I had to crank the gas way up and use super fast wire speed to get any kind of a weld.

 

[kastein]

My least favorite part of that project is getting a solid weld between 22ga cheap ass rocker sheetmetal (full of rust pockmarks) and 1/4 box tubing. It's like trying to nail toilet paper to a cement block.

 

[Jlanesey]

Couldn't put it better myself. I did 2" stitches (boogers) and seam sealed the rest of the bottom welds.

 

[chedisme]

I actuly did really well there at least where my cuts were nice and sat tight upto the 1/4. But i wanted to weld the whole way and after the 3rd set of stitiches it started to get ugly. Now it looks like shit.

 

[kastein]

I did it (not on my jeep) by c-clamping the metal tightly, tack welding every 3/4" or so, then peening the sheetmetal down in between the spotwelds until it was fully in contact with the box tube for like 1/4" back from the weld. Then aimed the welder as far away from the sheetmetal as I could (so like the opposite angle from where you'd normally point for a lap joint) and moved fast/tack-tack-tacked it to let it cool down.

It still sucked.

 

[chedisme]

When i did it i did 1.5 in stitches. I started the puddle about 3/16 away from the sheet then moved in slightly and just angled the gun towards the sheet and let the puddle wick to it.

It worked pretty well if i had a steadyer hand and a better welder i bet i could have done the whole thing in one pass.

 

[Jlanesey]

Weekend update?

 

[chedisme]

unfortunately nothing yet. I had to go to a grad party in Long Island. I just got home. I'm going to try to go back finish up the rocker in a little bit.

 

[Jlanesey]

I did my rockers in two long days. They took a lot longer than I expected. I welded the whole top seam which took some time. When I was done I primed it all and painted with undercoating. I'm pretty happy with the results.

Tomorrow hopefully I will be able to pull it into my neighbors garage and do some investigating. I think my ball joints on the drivers side are shot, it looks like the tire is leaning in to me. Jeep has 90k on original joints so I guess it's time anyways.

I also have a bad shock on my passenger side that I think may have contributed to my scary highway ride this morning and drag link.

Zzzzzzzzz

 

[chedisme]

yea 2 of my 4 shocks are shot. one is bent into a z and the other one blew out and lost its charge. but I dont drive it on the street so Im not going to bother with them for a while.

 

[Jlanesey]

Yeah turns at around 40-50 are interesting with a dead shock.

 

[chedisme]

rock rail is done. going back to working on the hydro.