Welding Tips and Tricks

1989 F-450 housing was damaged during removal. Something about bolts with the heads broken off and corroded to the aluminum. Then they attached a come a long to the tailshaft housing and pulled until it broke.
Housing view to give you an idea on how much actually broke off.

This is a Crack around the starter snout area. I drilled the end of the crack.

Curtis

Another view of the starter snout area, you can see the drilled hole better here.

Curtis

Broken piece after bead blasting.

Curtis

Kinda tacked up, man is this some NASTY cast.

Curtis

OK guys, go easy on me. This is some of the dirtiest cast I have welded.

Curtis

This grove was about 3/4 the way thru to help get full penetration.

Curtis

GFab70 wrote:Another view of the starter snout area, you can see the drilled hole better here.

Curtis

Epic repair!

This looks like a spider web of stress fractures though. If that is isolated to this area, I wonder if running a bead across them would keep it from shattering down the line.

-Sandow

Thank you Sandow, only if it holds will it be epic. I haven't noticed stress cracks in any welds or I would have stopped immediately. I am going to build up and smooth out the factory ribs to help prevent failure. I will say the thing that helps the most is its huge heatsink and it allows for me to weld as much and as fast as I can. My FlexLoc uses the time I'm on the carbide burr to cool down.

Curtis

I was thinking more of these:
My experience repairing castings is limited to fixing crap around the track so maybe I've just never come across it before but these look like partial thickness stress fractures. No idea if they really matter or if they are just a common casting imperfection. Wondered if it might have been hit by a rock there or something like that.

-Sandow

The bellhousing bolts were seized in the aluminum with corrosion and he pulled straight back with a come a long until it broke/came out. What you see in that picture is the only area to have broke in 2 directions.

Curtis

Sandow wrote:

GFab70 wrote:Another view of the starter snout area, you can see the drilled hole better here.

Curtis

Epic repair!

This looks like a spider web of stress fractures though. If that is isolated to this area, I wonder if running a bead across them would keep it from shattering down the line.

-Sandow

Howdy Nick here .Aussie . Just viewing fotos re housing I noticed tacking parts together etc. You probably know that it has to be properly aligned . But have had experience with a lot of these over time. The rejoining as you may know has to be ' V'd " both sides . A very important note also is to make sure the housing and ALL PARTS has to be contaminate FREE !! Over time oil etc DOES penetrate into the aluminium and when one goes to weld there becomes all sorts of problems. I used to generally start with heat all parts over an old bbQ unit and let it simmer ha ha . It did work without any damage to housing parts. It did eventually get rid of ant contaminates.. Just thought I would pass on a bit of info .Maybe of some help in future then may get some do's and dont's but been in the game for 50yrs ..retired now .Good luck ................

Nick I bead blasted the smaller pieces and used aluminum acid on the rest of the case. I did the cleanest prep work possible, no other way to weld cast. As you know it's very dirty on its own. I did fuse the inside and then ground down to clean metal, then welded a small root bead followed by a cap. Then groved the inside down to clean metal and only had to do a single pass since I got 75% penetration from the outside. It has been back in service for several days. Owner said the alignment was correct and all is well. This was a 10 hour job.

Curtis

Any high torque applications, I'll weld the cracks, grind them flush other than leaving the zipper bead on the inside provided there is clearance, and then fit and weld plates on the exterior, such as in between those fins. Adding extra fins made of plate works as well in some situations also. Either way, you made a nice repair on an otherwise trashed part.

Here was a thin part that was spider cracked in a bunch of different directions over that uppermost bore, so I annealed a section of 3/16 plate and formed it well past the damage being that one of the main pivot tubes was going to load this area. Often times, an exterior treatment like this will change the direction of the added weld stresses to where it will not distort the part in a critical direction. If I had welded that crack with a full penetration weld, it would have shrunken the bore and I did not want to have to grind it by hand and keep test fitting it.




These reinforcement repairs work on cast more often than not. Especially those that have absorbed contaminants. As trained welders, we are often naturally inclined to fill instead of patch. Some annealed sheet or flat stock, a ball peen hammer and some patience, and one can make some really artful (which the above photos are not!) repairs on cast parts. All the different stops at the corners are because I cross alternated the welds and let them draw a bit before continuing on to avoid hearing that dreaded *tink*.