Ok this week sucks for me. The governor gear on my Trailblazer flew apart the other day and now I have repair costs and down time that I cannot really afford at this point in my welding career. What engine drives do you guys run? And is there an engine drive out there more dependable than an old SA2...

Ok this week sucks for me. The governor gear on my Trailblazer flew apart the other day and now I have repair costs and down time that I cannot really afford at this point in my welding career. What engine drives do you guys run? And is there an engine drive out there more dependable than an old SA2...

Yeah including me... never heard of that before. Sorry for the misinformation. I just remember when i worked on sprint cars our crew chief blasting an oil pan with brake cleaner so he could weld a crack in it. Question though... would it make a difference if it was non chlorinated? Cuz i know they s...

They are much worse with rusty steel. Your best bet is to invest $10 in a good knotted wire wheel and brush off the rust scale before using the torch or plaz. A plaz needs a good ground and good contact from the gun to the base metal. Needs to be about as clean as you would need to have it to MIG we...

Brake cleaner or simple green (1:1 solution) and a hot water pressure washer. Outside of that make sure you use a flap disc for aluminum and/or a stainless steel wire brush/wheel.

.045 is bigger simply because it is a cored wire. It is as small of a flux cored wire as you can get (btw flux core will almost always not need sheilding gas). It will not burn any different than regular steel wire except for some very small differences in puddle and surrounding area appearance. Flu...

7018s are low hyrogen rods and (correct me if I'm wrong) the flux is rather susceptible to attracting moisture out of the air. Low hydrogen is of course refering to low moisture. Baking and using a rod oven for 7018s keeps the moisture out of the flux. You can rebake 7018s if they happen to get wet ...

The 9400i is a respirator helmet is it not? I guess if you need a respirator to weld pipe on a fixture I'm sure it would be fine. I have an Elite series and it works great. I'm just curious why anybody would spend the big bucks for a respirator helmet if you don't need the respirator. Outside of tha...

Those are hilarious! At my dads old shop we used to have a bathroom that would open directly into the shop and when somebody would go in to take a dump we would roll our iron shear over and tie a rope to the door and to the shear and block the wheels with steel. It was a lot of fun till dad caught u...

Even any union welders might help. Thanks!

I am looking to get into the 798 here in Ohio. Can anybody give me some advice or answer any questions about being a 798er? Past or present members.

Thanks, its good to hear somebody else who goes on the road with a plaz. I am aware of the dry air stuff - the drier the better. I could never get my dad to spring for even a basic descicant drier for the shop machine and we frequently blew out comsumables. I did put a drain sytem on the tank and ta...

Kewl, thanks guys! I'm looking to add a plasma to my arsenal on my truck (don't have much of a shop to speak of). My welding supply store is having a big spring sale on TD equipment among other things and said I should look into it. Anybody doing a mobile plaz unit? What do you use for gas? Is an ai...

Anybody using Thermal Dynamics welders or plasma systems? How do they hold up? Are they comparable to the Miller's and Lincoln's of the welding world?

Hate to disappoint you guys that were watching this. This project is not going to be completed by me and there will be no more posts. It was going to be one of my last projects while working for my dad but months of chatter behind my back and a jerk customer blew up in my face last week. Now I'm lef...

Cool! Thanks guys!

Here's a new one for you guys. Has anyone tried using a copper backup bar while migging thin aluminum? I wanted to use my spool gun on some thinner stuff but I kept having burn thru issues. I tried to crank my power source (Miller 301G) sown in voltage but it bottoms out around 15V and I couldn't se...

Oh by the way... feel free to critique and offer suggestions, I can handle it!

This is the completed sump. With the new housing hanging off of the back. One picture is obviously from inside of the tank. Again try no to look to closely at the welds. Part of my problem came from not realizing how thin the tank was until it was too late. :roll: Duh! why didn't I think about that ...

Ok don't look to close at the welds... I'm having a learning curve with stainless and flux cored wires. The sump ended up being part of the structure of the rear of the tank so I had to do my best getting it welded all the way around. I'll tel you now that it is no fun to weld cored wire overhead wh...

Told ya more today! Here's a quick view of the sump before it went into the back of the tank. We used a 12" x 1/4" wall x 24" long pipe for the sump just to make sure we got enough liquid into the pump housing. Laugh if you want at my crazy way of positioning the sump in there (I actu...

Here I had started cutting out the necessary areas for the new sump. After a few hours and some fire we decided to remove all of the insulation from the back of the tank (don't worry it was very small but it coulda been much bigger). There was a double-layered support ring at the back that I had to ...

I've seen pictures and videos of this thing before and it sounds too good to be true... so it probably is. I had an instructor in tech school tell me one time "...multiple use tools like crescent wrenches and channel locks are great but keep in mind something that will do everything will not do...

I talked to my wife and she said for $800k a year we would be on our way down today!

Is anybody looking into this? I'd like to hear some feedback.