OldIron82
Full Access Member
Hello all. A few pics of my first rodeo with cast iron. It's the 093 ATS downpipe slip joint housing, the bigger 3" version. I positively loathe the slip joint idea I cannot believe that anyone thought this was a good idea.
Stopped at a welding shop and told them I wanted to melt mild steel and cast iron together and I got a deer in the headlights look as if I was the devil and my eyes were glowing. Luckily, a very knowledgeable gentlemen was in the back and he knew exactly what to give me. MIG was out of the question due to the combination of me not having the proper shielding gas and a small spool of the wire was way more than I wanted to spend all together. I don't have a TIG welder so therefore stick was the last option. He gave me 1lb of 3/32 312-16 rod. I was told its a stainless steel type alloy rod that would be best suited for joining dissimilar metals. I'm not the best at stick, and the half dozen times I have stick'd was putting a 3/4" pintle plate on a truck and other thick steel when you set the welder to "Billy Burn Through" and let her eat. This time I was welding cast iron to thin wall pipe. No pressure. Watching dozens of youtube videos I decided on the cold weld method as opposed to preheat/postheat.
Basically, I made 1" long beads, 180° from each other and kept working my way around until the entire joint was melted together. After making a 1" long weld, I immediately stopped and beat on it with a ball peen hammer while it was still red and supposedly what that does is stretch the weld before it has a chance to shrink and distort which could possibly lead to the dreaded cracking. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. No cracks, not terrible looking. Sure as Hell ain't stacked dimes but again stick isn't my forte. One little hiccup, I think I wasn't watching my height from the rod to the work piece and the arc went wild and awol like a proton pack and blew a huge hole in the down pipe. I used the MIG to fix it, then ground it down and tried again and was successful.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll cut the downpipe and install the flanges for the v-band. Not too much room but looks like it will work great.
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Stopped at a welding shop and told them I wanted to melt mild steel and cast iron together and I got a deer in the headlights look as if I was the devil and my eyes were glowing. Luckily, a very knowledgeable gentlemen was in the back and he knew exactly what to give me. MIG was out of the question due to the combination of me not having the proper shielding gas and a small spool of the wire was way more than I wanted to spend all together. I don't have a TIG welder so therefore stick was the last option. He gave me 1lb of 3/32 312-16 rod. I was told its a stainless steel type alloy rod that would be best suited for joining dissimilar metals. I'm not the best at stick, and the half dozen times I have stick'd was putting a 3/4" pintle plate on a truck and other thick steel when you set the welder to "Billy Burn Through" and let her eat. This time I was welding cast iron to thin wall pipe. No pressure. Watching dozens of youtube videos I decided on the cold weld method as opposed to preheat/postheat.
Basically, I made 1" long beads, 180° from each other and kept working my way around until the entire joint was melted together. After making a 1" long weld, I immediately stopped and beat on it with a ball peen hammer while it was still red and supposedly what that does is stretch the weld before it has a chance to shrink and distort which could possibly lead to the dreaded cracking. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. No cracks, not terrible looking. Sure as Hell ain't stacked dimes but again stick isn't my forte. One little hiccup, I think I wasn't watching my height from the rod to the work piece and the arc went wild and awol like a proton pack and blew a huge hole in the down pipe. I used the MIG to fix it, then ground it down and tried again and was successful.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll cut the downpipe and install the flanges for the v-band. Not too much room but looks like it will work great.
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Sent from my LG-H810 using Tapatalk