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New member. Old bodges.

Todd100 said:
Ash fairly hands on job then, I'm a design engineer but get my hands dirty whenever I can, some of your fabrication looks brilliant though :)
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Thanks mate. I appreciate that. It's always nice to hear that I'm doing something that looks right, especially since I'm making it up as I go with improvised tooling....lol.
Yeah, it can be a hands on job sometimes but unfortunately a lot of my time is spent doing paperwork or Airworthiness certificates as I'm a CRS. Things are quiet at the moment so I'm taking the opportunity to design and build some tooling and transport/storage trollies. Obviously my design skills are considerably lacking in comparison to yours though considering your job. I'm not so much of an "Autocad" type designer, more of a "fag packet schematic" type of guy....lol.
What is it you design if you don't mind me asking??
 
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I'm blown away with your work, holy moly, nice one mate! I reckon a lot of folk would have abandoned that by now!
Can you weld my sill for me before I make a horses a55 of it with cardboard, filler, hopes and dreams :lol:
 
Thank you. To be honest if I'd known it was as bad I'd have run a mile.....but I was already right in to it and had it stripped so I thought what the hell....
My intent is to build a big camper since our old one was too small so I thought I might as well practice on a car I got for free. Better to screw that up than an expensive van. As luck would have it I'm really enjoying it and I seem to have the knack for it. It also gives me the opportunity to do what I wanted to do in my teens. As an apprentice I had all these great plans about doing up my cars and modifying them. I had plenty of ambition but absolutely no money and nowhere to keep them. Now I'm a bit older and getting a half decent wage I thought bugger it, why not?? I can, so I did. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed the motor trade and how much I miss it, but now I dont need to put up with customers and can do what I want to the motors when I want, so it's enjoyable now rather than a chore. So much so that I bought another one...20180628_140434.jpg
Was going to be a parts car and end up as a matching trailer for the red one but it's too clean so I felt guilty about breaking it. So I'll use the engine and box out of it for the red one and make it in to a sleeper. This one needs almost no welding so I can spend more time on the running gear and go daft with the mods. The red astra is going to be a looker with the custom paint job, but the gold one is hopefully going to be a beast....
 
See this is why I wish I knew how to weld and had an engineer’s mind.

Fantastic work buddy. :thumb:
 
Vauxestate1 said:
Mate looking good I'm lost for words lol
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That makes me feel much better about it. Nothing quite like some encouragement to get the enthusiasm flowing. Thank you.

Andy said:
See this is why I wish I knew how to weld and had an engineer’s mind.

Fantastic work buddy. :thumb:
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If I could offer one piece of advice, do a welding course. I got put through one at work in October. It lasted the whole of 3 hours and I just got stuck in and used trial and error from there. Once you get the knack it's actually pretty easy. The hardest part seems to be working out what the settings should be. I just scribble down what settings worked for what kind/thickness of material and keep it in my little black book. Using good wire and gas helps a lot too. I started out with a small portable turbomig and gasless wire. Big mistake. It was doable but really fierce and messy. I bit the bullet and went to gas and solid wire. I use an Argon/Co2/o2 mixture which seems to work really well. 20171216_172620.jpg
I had a crack at welding thinner body work material with the gasless wire to start with and it was awful.
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This one small patch took me about 2 hours whereas with gas it would have taken about 20 minutes to weld and dress it.
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But with a quick blast of primer to seal it till it gets painted, it actually looks not too bad. Didn't even need any filler but will no doubt need some fettling once it goes to the paintshop.
 
To be honest it's been owned by one friend or other for the last 8 years. I've always quite liked it so was quite chuffed once I got hold of it. I'd actually knocked it back about 3 times before I eventually took it....
Glad I did now...
 
Out of interest what welder are you using? I recently bought a clarke 150en but not tried it out yet
 
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I started with a clark weld 100en turbo. Got it second hand from a Facebook selling page....
It's a really good welder. Small enough to be portable but has plenty of juice to get some decent heat in to fairly thick metal. The torch and cable is great too. It's a metal coil tube so it doesn't kink or bend. My only complaint would be the lack of fine adjustment because the power is adjusted by switches, but other than that it's really impressive.
My other machine I've had for 15 years, used it twice, could never get it to work so it was abandoned at the back of the garage til a few months ago. I needed something with some real heavy duty power to weld 1/4" plate steel I was using for the jacking point. I dug it out and it turns out I'm a complete diddy. The new liner I'd put in it was sitting too far back and had jammed the feed rollers, that's why it wouldn't work. 2 minutes and it was sorted. Turns out I hadn't wasted £600, I was just a plonker.....lol. $_86-1.JPGIts a Sealey Supermig 185A Special Edition.
Bought it from Mac Tools back in about 2003.
Now its working it's a fantastic piece of kit. Really finely adjustable. If you swap between 0.6 and 0.8 mm wire I've managed to weld material as thin as a biscuit tin lid with the help of a home made heatsink, right up to some 3/8" steel fittings but they took a couple of passes. Although to be fair I'm a bit lazy that way so I have the wee clark sitting on top of the supermig with a 2 way valve to the gas bottle. 0.6mm in the clark and 0.8mm wire in the supermig and just swap the gas between welders depending on what I need to weld. I reckon your 150en should be a great piece of kit.
 
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Nice one, I only paid 90 quid for my 150en so even if it gets me learning a bit more im happy with it. Just need to get a bottle of gas and get welding
 
Aye, it should be perfect, and that's pretty good at £90. Steer clear of the disposable bottles. They're a fortune and you get literally a few minutes of welding. I use a company called UK Gas. You pay a deposit for the cylinder and buy the gas. They post the cylinder to you and there's no monthly rental. Once it's empty you post the bottle back in the packaging they supplied and stick the label on it then they refund you the deposit for the bottle. I've had my 20litre bottle for a few months now and I've only used 100bar out of the 200bar it came with. That's the best thing you can do though, just get practicing. Trial and error is the only way to get really good at it. Get some scrap metal and just go for it till you're happy with the results. Remember too that the prep makes all the difference, and keep the magnets well away from the arc as they upset the flow of electrons and cause splattering and hotspots....
 
You havent got a link to the one you got have you? I knew there was a C02 shortage but the straight C02 is mega money at the minute
 
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