Hot Rods The talent on The HAMB is second to none!

I'm watching "ass monkey garage" right now. It's an older episode and they are restoring a wrecked F40 Ferrari.
What caught my eye most was the factory welds on the frame of this car. We are talking about a 200 mph super car.
Now, I know that the look of a weld doesn't nessesarily mean it's the best weld, but the welds I've seen on alot of projects on The HAMB along with the profomance of the finished cars that have been built here blow away the welds that were on this F40!
This was a huge boost to me to continue building my 56 chevy. A build thread on my car is coming soon! Thanks to all the builders on The HAMB for posting your projects and ideas!

 

Pretty welds have very little to do with the automotive industry, they look nice and if you have never done production welding for a living they are important at least to the one that makes them and hopefully to those who look at them but they have very little to do with the industry. Getting it off the line is what is important to the industry.

That is not to say that we as builders of one off cars should not try and make them look nice.

 

You would think with an expensive car like that you could expect "Form and Function" both.

 

I'm constantly amazed by what I see here.
I consider myself on the higher end of mediocre, but I'm not qualified to get some of you guys a beer.

 

When I was servicing 911 Porsches daily at my shop, an occasional onlooker would sidle up to look at the chain configuration, unusual tools used, and the pretty, shiny covers!

It was more often than not that they noticed the robot-performed mig welds that fastened bracketry to tube components and the infrastructure, for a better term. I heard the "Eeeeoooh" more than once.
Try and explain to a neophyte the whys and wherefores of auto production.
I just said, "Look at a 935 sometime... They're all tigged."
Hah! 'Tig' with a spool!
Many comments dropped by unwelcome visitors convinced me that 'All the fools aren't dead'.

 

I'm not so sure slightly more than 1300 units built in a nine year period would constitute production.
Even still, at $400,000 in 1987 I would expect "perfect" in all aspects of a hand built super car.
The purpose of my post is to give props to the talent of the HAMB members, not to argue about production welds. My personal opinion is that the talent here is far better than that of factory built, over priced super cars.

 

They came off the same line as the rest of them, so add that 1300 units to the rest of production for that period.

Now go back and read and reread what @Atwater Mike posted.

One thing to remember about any manufacturer, cars, washing machines, toasters you name it, they hire a hand full of quality people and the rest are just junkies and winos off the street.

 

People that buy F40 type cars are not concerned with weld quality, more so with "mine is bigger than your's".
As you grow in our hobby your skills get better and soon you too will produce things that make others jealous. You just need to learn that "close enough" really isn't.

 

I read somewhere about American tin bashers' reaction to the long-ago Maserati Indy cars. They had to make up body panels for one after a wreck, and they discovered the Italian aluminum work to be absolute crap, roughed-out panels smoothed with gallons of filler. Professional Indy cars in those days sported perfect aluminum, covered only by paint...
Bonus question: Can you connect the old Maseratis to the Custom scene??

On pretty welds...look at the gas tank welding on a Model A Ford or the side plate welds on a V8 60, automated electric welds. Amazing stuff. I think I've posted what information I have on how Ford did that.

 

I was looking at some of the perfect welds made on the displays over at the Space and Rocket Center. They were phenomenal in that they were indeed perfect. I was so impressed. Then I looked at some of the work done by you guys on here and I have to say, some of you can weld as nicely as the robotic welds on the Space Shuttle equipment.
We have the best of the best on here. I just wish I was good enough to be in the same room with some of you.

 

You are in the same room with us.

I set up some equipment for FMZ in the bay area to weld aluminum armor plate ( location on a need to know basis), the project engineer for the project came out after my second adjustment pass to rave about the welds and thank me for such a fine job. It was almost good enough to hold together, not good enough for me to risk my life on so I made it right before I turned in my time. I doubt that the knuckle draggers they had working there maintained the equipment very well but at least it was right when I left.

 

"...We have the best of the best on here..."
The most skillful and creative members of the hot rod world have always been amazing people, capable of imagining and then building the apparently impossible. I've wondered for many years what would happen if the government regarded them as a major resource, and not just good wrenches to draft and put to work fixing jeeps.
Suppose NASA had gotten to work ten years earlier, and, instead of spending 99 gazillion dollars had offered a prize of $100,000 (Gasp! Ooooh!) for an American standing on the Moon.
Probably we would have seen someone like Barney Navarro or Mickey Thompson up there, standing next to a highly modified Ford roadster and happily breathing out of the oxygen tank from his welder...

 

Yes the welds shown in builds here are top
notch. . I too work production welding in the automotive industry. Took great pride in my work. It even opened the door there to robotic programming in the late 80's early 90's. Like playing with toys all day. Loved it.
But proper welds do not necessarily have to be pretty. An old saying we used at Babcock&Wilcox welding pressure vessel nuclear. It's not how good a welder you are but how well you grind.

 

Without scratching around the internet, my quess is that you are referring to the car Dean Jeffries built, the Manta Ray.
Ok, I scratched.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Jeffries

 

And That dear friends is the answer - A pretty weld is just that - PRETTY. It doesn't make it better, it doesn't make it stronger, it just makes it prettier. Ferrari uses robotic welders in most cases, even on low volume cars. And the fact is it doesn't make a damn bit of difference what it looks like. The car's purpose does not change or suffer due to weld perception. It's just apples and oranges to what guys do who build hot rods ~ a whole different world.

 

Or maybe just maybe, the point I was getting at is " if its not perfect that's quite alright" neither are the welds on a Ferrari!

 

You my friemd shoud run for office. LOL

Sorry I just couldn't resist.


Tell you something I saw once ( not on here) a perfect looking weld on a dragster chassis split right up the middle. I was standing with a welder friend who smiled and said, "Its a good weld it split right up the middle." He was right of course.

 

Alot of what gets posted on way too many forums is discouraging. This thread was meant to put into perspective that even Ferrari 's aren't perfect. Do the best you can and the more you do the better you get. People don't show alot of what they've done because they don't want it picked apart. It's these guys that are hiding alot of talent out of fear, talent that we will never see.

 

The Ferrari didn't lack perfection it was just not a one off car like a hot rod or custom is. I think that the majority of us build things to the best of our abilities or to the best of what we can achieve with whatever it is that we have to work with. I think that you have open up a discussion that for all intents and purposes has been enlightening for a lot of people and while it didn't take the turn you hoped at least someone may have been encouraged to know that what they are doing does not have to be purdy to be fun. At least I am pretty sure I could have a lot of fun in an ugly old Ferrari if I had a chance.

 

In the case of the F40, it was primarily built to be driven, not to be looked at. If I recall correctly it was said the paint was so thin you could see the carbonfiber through it, to save weight. And it was almost only painted on the outside. These cars were expensive new, but they never really depreciated, as the only thing else you could buy that was as extreme was the Porsche 959, which was probably even more expensive to build, and which was almost always more expensive used than new, as Porsche sold it at massive losses. (it 'repreciated'?)
And I totally agree that some of the best welding and fabricating in the world does show up in build threads here on the HAMB, but very few cars build by HAMB members have supercar performance (apart from maybe straight line accelleration ), or has won the Paris-Dakar Rally XD

 

I agree with the OP. We are among the few who have the arrogance and confidence to think we could design our own car., and once it's built be willing to drive it and our loved ones in it.

Ferrari have it easy. Probably 200+ design engineers designing the thing then another 200+ production engineers working out how to build it.

For each of us it's just one.

And that's the joy of what we do!

Enjoy the joy, Ferrari are not building for us and I don't want them to

P

 

Thanks, vintagedrags, now I don't feel near as bad about my standard "gorilla bead" what Deddy dun taught me.

 

PB, a lot more to that remark than many may think.
If a pretty weld has cracked right in the center perfectly. It was welded with great care and talent. BUT the fabricator has overlooked the stress factor or the weld joint was poorly designed. I.E. No root pass or not enough weld causing a concave condition.
Was taught the weld will endure more stress than the base metal. Normally you will see cracks along the edges of a weld where it actually cracked along the base metal.

 

There's some mighty good talent on here, but heres the welding done by Pinin Farina (Ferrari) in 1952. This project came back to me yesterday from the media blaster and is epoxy primered. The first 2 pics are body seams and the last 2 are structural where the frame kicks up in the rear. There isn't any filler, these are 'raw' welds.
Luigi didn't have a computerized MIG welder back then, I imagine a little old guy buzzing thru these welds wearing little round dark glasses and drinking wine at break time. probably welded the whole body in the morning and leaded it in the afternoon.

 

Actually one certification test for structural welding is the bend test and if the weld (normally a stacked weld) doesn't split in the middle or pretty near the middle you shell out your bucks and test again or walk off and look for a different job.

If the weld cracks along both sides evenly then it could be an indication of too much weld for the material and if one side separates and the other does not than it would be considered to be do to uneven penetration given that both pieces of the joined material were equal.

 

EXACTLY!!

 

We used to work on vintage Ferrari race cars and classic Ferrari road cars at the shop I used to work at. The big difference was simple. Race cars were built to race, not look perfect. They usually had raw undressed welds all over. No one cared, they just wanted them to be the fastest car on the track. The owner used to tell us, "If a race car is going slow enough for you to see it, then you didn't do your job.". Now the road cars were usually more refined, and better finished. People bought these to drive places and be seen in them. They wanted them to look perfect.

The F40 was a street legal race car. The guys that bought them wanted them cared more about performance and wanted them to look as much like true race cars as possible. Therefore a lot of the refinement was over looked.

The guys one here are very talented and they're work shows it. Most of us take great pride in our work and will spend the extra time needed to get it done right and make it look as good as we can. I have said, in more than one place before, that The HAMB is the most talented place on the web. Not only in craftsmanship, but it is a wealth of knowledge very few can rival.

 

The bigger the glob, the better the job, I always say.
(Kinda sorry there)

 

Zykotec "but very few cars build by HAMB members have supercar performance"

Oh Yeah! well apparently you haven't come up against my banger A at a stop light lately. You may want to rethink that statement.

 

What frequently gets overlooked in welding is the prep work that goes into it. True, some welds aren't the most cosmetically appealing; what matters is the correct heat, material, and penetration that gives it structural integrity. The welding typically seen on HAMB is because the craftsperson (to cover both genders who build some really nice stuff on this site) is able to invest the extra time and effort to create some amazing works of art.