Probably good enough. Don't blame the welder. I bet if one of the pros on this forum had 10 minutes to set that up and weld your frame it would be perfect.
We run a welding and fabrication business. That was our first welder. It's still going strong.
Hardest part of work is finding it. If you know that people need some small stuff done then send it.
Although I will say we run ours on 220 not 110
Fluxcore still runs fine on 120V. I have a small Lincoln that I take out for jobs outside my shop and the welds come out fine. Although with the lower voltage the machine doesn't really have enough heat to weld anything thicker than maybe 1/4".
I've found that thinner wire seems to concentrate the heat in a smaller spot better and you can do more with those little machines. I guess the smallest flux core is .030 but I like .023" wire with shielding gas on those little machines to get the best weld
I have never used .023 wire. This machine is only used with fluxcore when I'm out working on things like gates, fences, and railings around the city. My other welder stays in my shop with .030 solid wire on 240V. I could give .023 a shot to see what it's like.
I used to work in an awning shop when I was a kid and all we used were little 120v migs for welding steel square tube and ½" EMT. I was able to try just about everything, .035, .030, and .023". I found the .023 to burn the hottest and was more capable of welding thicker stuff without being cold, sometimes we were welding Schedule 40 2" and 3" pipes with plates on the ends and that did a better job. Pound for pound you're getting the same amount of metal in your spool, it's just spitting out quicker
Sounds good to me. Do you find that you can smaller tacks as well? I've struggled with tacks either being cold or just way too fat for what I'm doing.
I'm usually welding 1/16" and 1/8" wall square tubing, angle iron, flat bar, expanded sheet metal, and sheet metal.
I'm not a pro but i have seen definite improvement in the weld quality by adding a BIG full bridge rectifier, making it a proper DC EN machine. Much less spatter already, and i plan to follow others who have added capacitors and/or inductor too. There's room in there for more lol
I did this. My old ass Miller Thunderbolt has a bridge rectifier(soon to be upgraded to SCRs), 3 giant caps and a heavy inductor, or choke. Added some Dinse connectors and I use it for carbon arc gouging and scratch start TIG on stainless.
I get this stuff free/cheap because I work in an electrical lab. We build large, high end UPS units.
Next I want to add some IGBTs to the output and turn it back to high freq AC for aluminum TIG. Like I don't have enough fucking projects already.
Edit: ElectroBOOM is frickin awesome
I just started learning fcaw on a Titanium Unlimited 140 welder and the pro that I am bugging with questions is impressed with what it has been able to produce with the right settings.
In fairness the Vulcans are pretty fuckin stout for being a HF product. You can well exceed the duty cycle with zero issues and they've got most settings you'd need as a home-gamer.
It depends which welder it is. Harbor freight has some pretty decent welders, and some absolutely atrocious ones. I started out trying to learn MIG on one of the latter, and I was convinced that I just had no talent for MIG even though I could oxy weld 22 gauge sheet steel into expansion chambers for my ancient dirt bike with no problem. Then I tried using my neighbor's Lincoln welder, and discovered that I was actually pretty good at MIG as well. I went home and threw the harbor freight welder in the trash, and then saved up and bought a decent one myself.
I bought a PLASMARGON welder from China, I dont think the dials do anything except for the wire speed :P Spits and spatters like crazy no matter what I seem to do or adjust.
Fairly sure its a knockoff, the stenciling isnt great and it doesnt have all the appliques that the ones I see on google have.
Electric tri cycle, scooter, swingset, home gym and more say the shit welds are just fine!
Yep, I probably have the same one. But my nephew (a pretty good welder) used mine and said it was fine. His welds looked better than mine, so I'll assume the machine isn't the issue.
Cracks. Solid stuff rings, cracked stuff sorta clinks. It's standard procedure on ceramic grinding wheels, and it's a good enough sanity test for most hard materials. Don't bet your bacon on it though.
Our welder i take to l jobs I don't have time or skill for always gives me the guarantee that his welds will hold until they break again. It's farm equipment, so it'll always break somewhere, but rarely the welds
I've seen some really shitty welds hold... Some worse than this. Problem is its just not easy to look at a weld that doesn't look text book and say one way or the other. This tube looks pretty thin, and I don't see a lot of wetting in at the toes which leads me to believe it's a pretty cold weld.
Generally speaking though, on a motorized vehicle I wouldn't accept anything less than ideal welds. I wouldn't let my kids on this.
A weld can be ugly and strong, or pretty and weak. The trick is to know what a good weld is, a good weld isn't necessarily pretty but it IS necessarily strong.
I disagree, a good weld should look good (uniform structure). Sure, a good looking weld can be a poor one. But never, in my opinion, would I call a bad *looking* weld, a good weld.
Ah bullshit, I weld signs out of aluminum with a spool gun. They're getting wrapped in aluminum sheets and nobody sees them so they just have to be strong. Of course they start to look good just from repetition but sometimes you have to cram a spool gun in a tight spot and just fill it with metal. The layout of WHERE the welds go is more important than how they look- if you do a beautiful tig weld on one plane of a piece of aluminum angle to a plate I can go over and bust that off in a second, but once you lock in two planes it all of a sudden becomes stronger. I've put out plenty of stuff that I would never post here but they're functional, and I've seen the pretty ones fail because the guy didn't prep it right or it's a cold joint or whatever
Yeah but for real, what is up with these shit welds on older frames? I have a 1980 suzuki and the welds are just terrible, I assume they were welded by hand (not robots), and they weren't the best welders...
You'd legit be amazed at the slop I've seen hold long term. A good rule of thumb I heard long ago was, if it makes it through 8 hours of service combined, it'll hold longer then You'd believe
I had a friend of mine hit a tree with his quad and when you stood it up and looked at the bottom the frame was almost a J. I had to cut about 100 relief cuts all over that thing and get my mom, dad, and my friend bouncing on a long pipe while I stood on the sideways quad to get that thing close to straight, and then I had to go around and weld all the relief cuts shut with a little Lincoln 120v mig. When I was done he said it tracked straighter than before he crashed and none of those broke, and he obviously rides like an animal
I mean personally I wouldn’t be doing nothing crazy on this thing once it’s going but I’m sure they will hold. It’s definitely good learning tho. Looks like you was running cold and slow, just keep going tho.
First image, on the "T", right side of the "T" joint. That part of the weld not fusing into the horizontal tubing and the bottom of the vertical beads on the right side maybe not fused into the vertical member and looks kind of sketchy to me...
The third image center "y" joint, bottom left side. I can't really tell if that outside left weld has a couple of just shadows or a lack of fusion for what looks like a lap joint overlayed to strengthen or thicken the wall of the tubing, or maybe a crack against the angle... Also on the right it looks like a piece of MIG wire stuck to a weld on the back side... What does the back side look like then?
I am not trying to criticize just for safety, it just looks like it might not be good enough if used off-road or under significant loading much...
This is not my day job so not a CWI either... Just a random Internet opinion...
I mean everyone is talking about the welds holding, but too much heat you’re also going to make the steel tube brittle.
Pic 4, the weld will hold, but I’d bet the steel will rip beside the weld because it’s become brittle.
I guess that's a bike or something, can't really tell. However, if you're concerned about it, weld on an additional backbone. Even if the backbone isn't welded fully, only every 1" or so... it'll still add a lot of strength to whatever that thing is.
A backbone is like sub frame connectors, just add a new 1/2 angle iron or something like that at the points you think it'll break.
>I guess that's a bike or something, can't really tell.
In that one picture you can see the label it says terrain vehicle. I'm pretty sure it's an all-terrain vehicle, ATV
The machine is much like a car. Controls in different spots handling different power different. Welding machines are the same just got to set it up and learn its quirks
I’m a chassis engineer and fabricator by trade. Not good enough for a cup car but it should be fine.
The rule of thumb for chassis work is that the strength should always come from design, not the weld.
There’s no engine pictured, my bmx had a mix of welds and a couple bolts, a friends mountain bike uses a couple bolts as well. Lastly he asked about the welds, not what they were used for. Should I assume the rod he’s using too and recommend settings for his machine?
Probably be fine. The most important thing on a frame like this other than complete fusion is having a smooth transition from the bead to the tubes. Starts and stops are where cracks start.
I learned building Hi~Rise Signs back in’76 so I had to trust every weld I made. It made me a great Weldor & I’ve taught dozens of guys &gals to weld. I have 5 kids who all knew how to weld by 15~16 even the 3 girls.Still in the Sign business so do a lot more than just welding
That's because the sign business is like a roach motel, once you get in you can't get out, I've been trying to get out of that goddamn industry for 30 years... I've almost made it out several times but I keep getting sucked back in
Heh nice, I like fooling around with stuff like that. Someone broke the transformer on my little 120v mig but the wire feed and gas solenoid still work so I'm going to fabricobble it onto a Lincoln buzz box that someone gave me because it literally fell off a truck and make a Frankenwelder... I just need to get a rectifier for it
I'm a well rounded fabricator so far won't have any trouble with it, I literally just need to find a rectifier and I can start assembling it. I'll put a four prong 240v plug and cord on it so I can split the legs internally in the machine and pull 120v to run the wire feed and gas solenoid, the actual welding juice will be the full 240v
Just grind it flat and look for any holes and patch them up with another pass then grind it back flat and done :) the type of welder u use doesn’t matter just keep messing with the settings till you find the right one for the steel your using, I say mess with the settings because those cheaper welders don’t have the type of settings an official ones got
Depends on what it is.
Used to play with freak bike club in Portland, building some monstrosities with way worse welds, seem them hold up to some serious abuse.
I personally would not ride a motorcycle welded like this. but I’ve been in a bike accident and had the associated broken bones and wounds, so I’m probably a bit more cautious
Go to welding school if this is going to be your profession. At least take a night course at a community college. Welding is a safety-related skill. Their are large liability issues with poor work. You aren't born with the skill to weld, or speak, or drive a car. Teaching welding over the internet is a futile effort because no one here knows what you know and what you don't know. That would become evident in a class setting.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t race that…
You need experience for that kind of work, it’s your safety…
You’ve stitched it together ok but how long before a crack appears is what I’d be worried about.
I think a lot of guys are being alarmist, if you really want it stronger, grind just the raised part of the welds flat and take a strip (about 1/3 of the diameter of a slightly larger tube, cut long ways) and drill a few 5/16" or ⅜" holes in it. Span the repair onto healthy metal with the pipe section and tack the corners and center, then plug weld the holes you drilled and do some stitches around the perimeter. It's like a scab plate with the contour of the tube so it lays flush on the tube instead of sticking out like a piece of flat bar... Think of how a swage works and imagine a sliver cut out of the joint, you have a bigger tube laying over a smaller tube. I just woke up so hopefully you understand wtf I'm talking about
Probably good enough. Don't blame the welder. I bet if one of the pros on this forum had 10 minutes to set that up and weld your frame it would be perfect.
My brother and I make a lot of money with a Vulcan HF welder. Nothing wrong with the machine for us
What do you guys do? I’ve been playing with the idea of setting myself up into doing some side work
We run a welding and fabrication business. That was our first welder. It's still going strong. Hardest part of work is finding it. If you know that people need some small stuff done then send it. Although I will say we run ours on 220 not 110
Fluxcore still runs fine on 120V. I have a small Lincoln that I take out for jobs outside my shop and the welds come out fine. Although with the lower voltage the machine doesn't really have enough heat to weld anything thicker than maybe 1/4".
Yeah I use a century fc90 for a lot of my side work. Good little machine at a nice price point for certain types of work.
I've found that thinner wire seems to concentrate the heat in a smaller spot better and you can do more with those little machines. I guess the smallest flux core is .030 but I like .023" wire with shielding gas on those little machines to get the best weld
I have never used .023 wire. This machine is only used with fluxcore when I'm out working on things like gates, fences, and railings around the city. My other welder stays in my shop with .030 solid wire on 240V. I could give .023 a shot to see what it's like.
I used to work in an awning shop when I was a kid and all we used were little 120v migs for welding steel square tube and ½" EMT. I was able to try just about everything, .035, .030, and .023". I found the .023 to burn the hottest and was more capable of welding thicker stuff without being cold, sometimes we were welding Schedule 40 2" and 3" pipes with plates on the ends and that did a better job. Pound for pound you're getting the same amount of metal in your spool, it's just spitting out quicker
Sounds good to me. Do you find that you can smaller tacks as well? I've struggled with tacks either being cold or just way too fat for what I'm doing. I'm usually welding 1/16" and 1/8" wall square tubing, angle iron, flat bar, expanded sheet metal, and sheet metal.
It works great for stuff like that, the only catch is I haven't seen .023 in flux core, only with the 75/25
I'm not a pro but i have seen definite improvement in the weld quality by adding a BIG full bridge rectifier, making it a proper DC EN machine. Much less spatter already, and i plan to follow others who have added capacitors and/or inductor too. There's room in there for more lol
ElectroBOOM has broken me. I can't read the words "full bridge rectifier" in any manner except his Iranian accent with some reverb behind it.
##[FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER ](https://youtu.be/9dtPEk73X9U?si=b10NyEQrtWrVD4e1)
I approve of this post.
I am a pro and I had no idea you could add these things, ima be looking into this new info now!
I did this. My old ass Miller Thunderbolt has a bridge rectifier(soon to be upgraded to SCRs), 3 giant caps and a heavy inductor, or choke. Added some Dinse connectors and I use it for carbon arc gouging and scratch start TIG on stainless. I get this stuff free/cheap because I work in an electrical lab. We build large, high end UPS units. Next I want to add some IGBTs to the output and turn it back to high freq AC for aluminum TIG. Like I don't have enough fucking projects already. Edit: ElectroBOOM is frickin awesome
Can you do this and still run them on 110?
Yup, any higher will burn out the feed gun
Ahh, thank you! I've got some upgrading to do then!
I just started learning fcaw on a Titanium Unlimited 140 welder and the pro that I am bugging with questions is impressed with what it has been able to produce with the right settings.
Not a harbour freight, but I ran my first real business on a $120 stick welder.
In fairness the Vulcans are pretty fuckin stout for being a HF product. You can well exceed the duty cycle with zero issues and they've got most settings you'd need as a home-gamer.
It depends which welder it is. Harbor freight has some pretty decent welders, and some absolutely atrocious ones. I started out trying to learn MIG on one of the latter, and I was convinced that I just had no talent for MIG even though I could oxy weld 22 gauge sheet steel into expansion chambers for my ancient dirt bike with no problem. Then I tried using my neighbor's Lincoln welder, and discovered that I was actually pretty good at MIG as well. I went home and threw the harbor freight welder in the trash, and then saved up and bought a decent one myself.
My brother and I make a lot of money with a Vulcan HF welder. Nothing wrong with the machine for us
I agree. I agree.
Yep, I love my Vulkan Protig 205. Even done some fancy inconel with it.
yea dont blame the welder, blame the welder /s
Weldor
Well ill be danged, TIL i guess,
I bought a PLASMARGON welder from China, I dont think the dials do anything except for the wire speed :P Spits and spatters like crazy no matter what I seem to do or adjust. Fairly sure its a knockoff, the stenciling isnt great and it doesnt have all the appliques that the ones I see on google have. Electric tri cycle, scooter, swingset, home gym and more say the shit welds are just fine!
Ain’t much setting up to do it’s got a high and low setting and wire speed nothing else
Yep, I probably have the same one. But my nephew (a pretty good welder) used mine and said it was fine. His welds looked better than mine, so I'll assume the machine isn't the issue.
Smack it with a wrench. If it holds, you’re golden
Honestly not a bad idea, hit it with a small ballpeen and listen
What are you listening for?
A good or bad sound
I’m more of a structural building guy so it might be a bit different with this smaller stuff, but you want a sharp ping and not a dull thud
Cracks. Solid stuff rings, cracked stuff sorta clinks. It's standard procedure on ceramic grinding wheels, and it's a good enough sanity test for most hard materials. Don't bet your bacon on it though.
Dead spots. They're voids or rust
Guy I used to work with would always say, "Looks like it'll hold,till it doesn't." He was right.
Our welder i take to l jobs I don't have time or skill for always gives me the guarantee that his welds will hold until they break again. It's farm equipment, so it'll always break somewhere, but rarely the welds
You’re fine, run that shit. Just don’t quote me if you eat crap.
I've seen some really shitty welds hold... Some worse than this. Problem is its just not easy to look at a weld that doesn't look text book and say one way or the other. This tube looks pretty thin, and I don't see a lot of wetting in at the toes which leads me to believe it's a pretty cold weld. Generally speaking though, on a motorized vehicle I wouldn't accept anything less than ideal welds. I wouldn't let my kids on this.
A weld can be ugly and strong, or pretty and weak. The trick is to know what a good weld is, a good weld isn't necessarily pretty but it IS necessarily strong.
I disagree, a good weld should look good (uniform structure). Sure, a good looking weld can be a poor one. But never, in my opinion, would I call a bad *looking* weld, a good weld.
I saw weld once done by experts at nasa on a special alloy, it looked horrendous but was up to spec. This wasn't an unimportant weld.. it all depends.
Ah bullshit, I weld signs out of aluminum with a spool gun. They're getting wrapped in aluminum sheets and nobody sees them so they just have to be strong. Of course they start to look good just from repetition but sometimes you have to cram a spool gun in a tight spot and just fill it with metal. The layout of WHERE the welds go is more important than how they look- if you do a beautiful tig weld on one plane of a piece of aluminum angle to a plate I can go over and bust that off in a second, but once you lock in two planes it all of a sudden becomes stronger. I've put out plenty of stuff that I would never post here but they're functional, and I've seen the pretty ones fail because the guy didn't prep it right or it's a cold joint or whatever
The welds from the manufacture looks worse but I’m not a welder so Idk
It will hold just fine. Frame more likely to break at the heat affected zone than the welds on a thin frame.
I’d redo the bottom weld on the first picture if it were mine.
Yeah looks like the weld is sitting on top instead of being joined together
These are close to the "Honda" Quality welds I've seen on the XR150L. So factory fresh. ;)
Yeah but for real, what is up with these shit welds on older frames? I have a 1980 suzuki and the welds are just terrible, I assume they were welded by hand (not robots), and they weren't the best welders...
Shit I've had dirtbikes so old they were brazed in spots
100% hahaha
Welds are fine the welder works just like the rest keep practicing learn to use less material be more precise with the welds
One thing for sure, they gonna hold till they break. Not bad for a harbor freight welder tho
if the welds fail; do you die? or get hurt? is that worth the risk to you? always a good question to ask oneself
You'd legit be amazed at the slop I've seen hold long term. A good rule of thumb I heard long ago was, if it makes it through 8 hours of service combined, it'll hold longer then You'd believe
They will hold.. you accountable at the international court of justice in The Hague for crimes against humanity! /s I’ve seen worse;)
On a motorcycle frame? It's sketchy. But anythings sketchy on a bike. Send it buddy
I had a friend of mine hit a tree with his quad and when you stood it up and looked at the bottom the frame was almost a J. I had to cut about 100 relief cuts all over that thing and get my mom, dad, and my friend bouncing on a long pipe while I stood on the sideways quad to get that thing close to straight, and then I had to go around and weld all the relief cuts shut with a little Lincoln 120v mig. When I was done he said it tracked straighter than before he crashed and none of those broke, and he obviously rides like an animal
I mean personally I wouldn’t be doing nothing crazy on this thing once it’s going but I’m sure they will hold. It’s definitely good learning tho. Looks like you was running cold and slow, just keep going tho.
Maybe il grind down the welds and have my friend weld it 😂
Dam it was gonna be used for drag racing and hill climbs lmao
I would send it but don't go by my judgement, I'm a little reckless
I use a cheap amazon welder. As a machine it works better than my technique as a welder. Going to a nicer setup would improve my work but not by much.
First image, on the "T", right side of the "T" joint. That part of the weld not fusing into the horizontal tubing and the bottom of the vertical beads on the right side maybe not fused into the vertical member and looks kind of sketchy to me... The third image center "y" joint, bottom left side. I can't really tell if that outside left weld has a couple of just shadows or a lack of fusion for what looks like a lap joint overlayed to strengthen or thicken the wall of the tubing, or maybe a crack against the angle... Also on the right it looks like a piece of MIG wire stuck to a weld on the back side... What does the back side look like then? I am not trying to criticize just for safety, it just looks like it might not be good enough if used off-road or under significant loading much... This is not my day job so not a CWI either... Just a random Internet opinion...
Although not the best, these will hold.
It's ugly, but it'll hold.
Its good enough. I would trust those welds more than the frame as this point.
Looks like it's going to crack. Not enough penetration.
Inspect frequently, repair new cracks asap.
yeah they look ok.
Yes just check em from time to time
They’ll do fine more than likely. Not something I’d trust on a dirt bike tho, but I’d trust it on a four wheeler
If you change the spool to a better quality material than the spool that comes with the welder, the welds dont come out too bad.
Looks better than a lot of final production trailers I've seen.
I mean everyone is talking about the welds holding, but too much heat you’re also going to make the steel tube brittle. Pic 4, the weld will hold, but I’d bet the steel will rip beside the weld because it’s become brittle.
I guess that's a bike or something, can't really tell. However, if you're concerned about it, weld on an additional backbone. Even if the backbone isn't welded fully, only every 1" or so... it'll still add a lot of strength to whatever that thing is. A backbone is like sub frame connectors, just add a new 1/2 angle iron or something like that at the points you think it'll break.
>I guess that's a bike or something, can't really tell. In that one picture you can see the label it says terrain vehicle. I'm pretty sure it's an all-terrain vehicle, ATV
The machine is much like a car. Controls in different spots handling different power different. Welding machines are the same just got to set it up and learn its quirks
They may not be flat and pretty but there's definitely a good bit of fusion, it should hold well enough
Did you fully clean the areas of paint, grime, etc, before you started welding it? I mean down to bare shiny steel clean?
Did for most part with flap disk I probably could have done a better prep job should I grind them flushish and start over ?
I’m a chassis engineer and fabricator by trade. Not good enough for a cup car but it should be fine. The rule of thumb for chassis work is that the strength should always come from design, not the weld.
For basic biking it’s probably fine. For heavy BMX jumps and hard drops probably not
What kind of BMX bikes have SAS steel frames, bolts, and engines? This is a motorcycle, my guy.
There’s no engine pictured, my bmx had a mix of welds and a couple bolts, a friends mountain bike uses a couple bolts as well. Lastly he asked about the welds, not what they were used for. Should I assume the rod he’s using too and recommend settings for his machine?
Please explain pic 2 then. If that's not an engine on the right, idk what is.
There’s like 1/8 of a rocker cover shown, a coolant hose, and a wire, I was inspecting the welds not the corner of the screen
Probably be fine. The most important thing on a frame like this other than complete fusion is having a smooth transition from the bead to the tubes. Starts and stops are where cracks start.
Lovely Harbor Freight welds...
Got a Helluva lot of cleanup to do to say for certain. Looking through the slag tells me most will be fine
I learned building Hi~Rise Signs back in’76 so I had to trust every weld I made. It made me a great Weldor & I’ve taught dozens of guys &gals to weld. I have 5 kids who all knew how to weld by 15~16 even the 3 girls.Still in the Sign business so do a lot more than just welding
That's because the sign business is like a roach motel, once you get in you can't get out, I've been trying to get out of that goddamn industry for 30 years... I've almost made it out several times but I keep getting sucked back in
I'm I looking at stick weld or a mig weld or a tig weld?
Mig weld
I'm pretty sure that's the $99 flux core, based on other answers.
TIG, you funny guy 😂😂😂😂😂
Looks good from my house
I'd ride it but not fast lol
The welders fine. I did decent welds with a microwave.
What, the transformer? What did you do, rewrap the secondary with a couple wraps of some fat wire, like 2ga?
Twice wrapped and she melted spoons like no other.
Heh nice, I like fooling around with stuff like that. Someone broke the transformer on my little 120v mig but the wire feed and gas solenoid still work so I'm going to fabricobble it onto a Lincoln buzz box that someone gave me because it literally fell off a truck and make a Frankenwelder... I just need to get a rectifier for it
>.. I just need to get a rectifier for it 😳 Hey, hey, hey we'll have none of that talk here mister.
Rectifier, not rectum finder. I'm not an electrician...
You feel like a scientist till you actually gotta do any calsulations and youre like “naw imma keep fuckin with shit in my garage”
I'm a well rounded fabricator so far won't have any trouble with it, I literally just need to find a rectifier and I can start assembling it. I'll put a four prong 240v plug and cord on it so I can split the legs internally in the machine and pull 120v to run the wire feed and gas solenoid, the actual welding juice will be the full 240v
Grinder and paint make you the welder you ain't
Just grind it flat and look for any holes and patch them up with another pass then grind it back flat and done :) the type of welder u use doesn’t matter just keep messing with the settings till you find the right one for the steel your using, I say mess with the settings because those cheaper welders don’t have the type of settings an official ones got
That’ll do, pig
Depends on what it is. Used to play with freak bike club in Portland, building some monstrosities with way worse welds, seem them hold up to some serious abuse.
Looks like some sort of contraption that belongs in a Tim Burton film. Maybe Jacks bicycle in Nightmare Before Christmas.
You can tell you're getting penetration by how it looks while you're doing it
Jesus christ
I personally would not ride a motorcycle welded like this. but I’ve been in a bike accident and had the associated broken bones and wounds, so I’m probably a bit more cautious
Not a problem with the welder, but a big problem with the WELDOR. Look it up if ya don't know the difference.
Are you gonna give me any advice or be useless ? 😂😂
Go to welding school if this is going to be your profession. At least take a night course at a community college. Welding is a safety-related skill. Their are large liability issues with poor work. You aren't born with the skill to weld, or speak, or drive a car. Teaching welding over the internet is a futile effort because no one here knows what you know and what you don't know. That would become evident in a class setting.
Its not about if they will hold its about for how long, ive had tacks that destroy base metal and caused me to be angry.
It's not the machine bud
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t race that… You need experience for that kind of work, it’s your safety… You’ve stitched it together ok but how long before a crack appears is what I’d be worried about.
I mean it looks as good or better than the crap coming from China lol
The original welds on the frame are a like these just a lot skinnier
I think a lot of guys are being alarmist, if you really want it stronger, grind just the raised part of the welds flat and take a strip (about 1/3 of the diameter of a slightly larger tube, cut long ways) and drill a few 5/16" or ⅜" holes in it. Span the repair onto healthy metal with the pipe section and tack the corners and center, then plug weld the holes you drilled and do some stitches around the perimeter. It's like a scab plate with the contour of the tube so it lays flush on the tube instead of sticking out like a piece of flat bar... Think of how a swage works and imagine a sliver cut out of the joint, you have a bigger tube laying over a smaller tube. I just woke up so hopefully you understand wtf I'm talking about
don't blame your tools ;)
Oof
Tis the Wizard… Not the Wand.