Welding Tips and Tricks

Quick question for y’all, the shop where I do maintenance work in winter, on one of their forklifts one of the main hydraulic lines has a pinhole that occasionally squirts out oil. It’s not a worn down patch, just a single pinhole so a quick Mig weld I’m hoping should plug it. But the problem is, the line is on the main lifting cylinder, and it’s welded on, I can’t take it off. And it’s a 10’ long by 10” diameter cylinder, taking that out of the machine, getting all the oil out would be a 2 day job. All for a tiny pinhole.

Would it be possible to try and weld over the pinhole as is, on the machine? Get all the paint off around it, acetone rub it etc first of course.

Thanks

As soon as you weld on it it’s either going to blow a hole, or the oil on the inside is going to blow out at you.

Poland308 wrote:As soon as you weld on it it’s either going to blow a hole, or the oil on the inside is going to blow out at you.

i dont know why this turned into 2 posts, but i added a picture in the first post, "Hydraulic Line repair" in "Mig and Flux Core"

it turned out a bit easier than i thought, it was the actual fillet weld where the line goes into the cylinder that pinholed, i was able to Mig over it. But man i hate work like that. I want to do it right and take my time. They wouldnt even wash all the oil sprayed all over the machine for me. "nah, come on just weld it!" yeah sure. and then im the moron when it fails again. Or catches on fire.

Not doing it half assed is hard enough on a rig like that without help from being rushed. Maybe they would appreciate that after it cuts loose and sprays them with scalding hot hydraulic oil sometime later on.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk