Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello all! This is my first post here and am thankful for such a great resource! Anyway, I'm beautifying some Harley narrow glide trees. They are cast aluminum and the welds are going in/on just fine, but ,after I clean them up and polish them, I have a slight discoloration strictly where the weld material is. Not in the heat affected areas. They smooth out beautifully and look great save for the discoloration. I'm using 4043 filler and running about 230amps at 25 cfm with a #10 cup, gas lense, 1/8 ceriated electrode. My guess is the parent metal has a slightly different composition than the filler as the welds come out fine and polish out great. We also have a set of Shovlehead cast aluminum rockers we have split and don't have the same discoloration. I'm assuming Harley changed the casting material between the time the rockers were manufactured and the time the narrow glide trees were.

Completely different alloys in the trees, rockers and filler wire. Discoloration can’t be avoided.

Thank you. I thought as much. Just wanted some verification.

Next time, try some 4943 filler wire. It tends to be easier to blend to these older cast parts as it has more “sheen” after welding.

I will. Thanks for your input!!!