Technical welding, whats needed, and how is it done best with a budget?

I will admit, i expected it to be like hot glueing steel together.

so i made sure the wire spool moved, i turned on the gas, i set it to low, and set the spool speed to 2...

nothing. i cant even get it to spark, let alone weld. i wire wheeled the absolute tar out of the metal even though i already got it shinyish, and still got nothing. i estimate it to be 18 gauge. now i will admit, im an electrician, not a welder. but im ready to learn and will take ANY advise i can get.


pictured above, my lack of battery tray, im fixing the "tray" part with angle iron and a junkyard sourced license plate.

 

Don't do your initial experiments on your car. practice on stuff that doesn't matter.
Don't use angle iron and license plates on 18 gauge. Use the same gauge and material.
Check your ground.
Practice on scrap.
Your odds of good welds the first time ON YOUR CAR are nil, below nil, not happening..
Practice on stuff that you can throw away.

 

Learn on scrap metal, once you've mastered the techniques, then move on to working on your car.

(hint: you need to get to solid, unrusted metal...keep cutting....then use an abrasive like a grinder or flap disc to get to shiny steel)

 

It the metal "shiney" where you are putting the ground?

I would make sure the welder works and you know how to work it on something that is not covered in rust as a starting point.

 

Not the best place to be starting into the welding world! Suggest you learn on the bench with disposable material till you've got a handle on it.

You can complete your battery tray fix now with a drill and fasteners ( nuts, bolts, pop rivets, self tappers etc).

Chris

 

Sounds like a ground problem if welder is plugged in.

 

Look at your local Jr College as they may have a welding course. You start out on stick, then move up to mig, then on to tig. Never too late to learn.

 

Best advice so far !

 

Once you start on the car it looks like you need to cut back that hole to some solid metal before patching. That thin rusting stuff will just melt away. Then clean all of the edges to bare metal.

 

All the above suggestions are perfect! Welding is a baby steps kind of thing. Practice! Practice! Practice!

 

As said, practice on stuff you can toss.
The metal shown is not clean enough, angle iron and thin sheet metal is an advanced level and by then you wouldn't do it that way. There are a ton of youtube videos for help from the welder companies.
Once you have been able to actually get two sheets to hold enough that you can hammer them and they don't come apart, you will want to form and then weld a suitable part in.
There are a lot of builds here to show how, too.
Here is a guy that has a dry sense of humor and is self depreciating but shows how. There are a ton of this type of home repair too.

 

Ummmm ... no?

Any chance the aftermarket makes a replacement inner fender for your car? Based on your picture, there is a good chunk of metal that needs to be removed before you are left with only sound metal. Angle iron and a licence plate ain't gonna fix that. Also, I am not seeing metal that is clean enough to weld. Cut out the rough, weak, thin stuff then use a grinder or a sanding disc to clean the metal in preparation for welding. From what I can see, no metal in that pic is ready for welding ... a wire brush just isn't up to the job.

Either you've got a bad ground (metal not clean enough) or your ground is good but you are actually attempting to strike an arc on metal that just isn't prepped correctly/clean enough.

 

From the photo of the missing battery tray you posted...the metal in the area you appear to want to weld to looks pretty thin and pitted. That metal will pretty much dissappear with the addition of the welding spark. Even a seasoned welder will fight it. You'd probably benefit from cutting deeper to find better metal as your starting point.

Edit: @borntoloze types faster.

 

In that pic the metal is WAY too rusty and most edges too thin. You will never get a good ground, weld and will end up with lots of blow throughs

 

Is strange you cant get it to spark .... Do you by chance have a multi process welder?
One that will do fluxcore welding (no gas) I need to change the polarity on the machine depending on what type of welding I'm doing. Or the ground will not work correctly.

As others have said, practice on the work bench. In fact I made my battery tray on the work bench then bolted it into my truck.
Rusty metal is very difficult to weld .... learning how you do not want to practice on your project vehicle.

 

Everything everybody said. Plus, try to strike an arc to the ground clamp and see if the welder works. Mike

 

I would make the replacement panel out of 18 ga cold rolled, to lay over the top of the existing metal, and drill 1/4" holes around the new part. That way you can plug weld the panel in place, with the ground connected to the new metal. Much easier than butt welding, for a novice.

 

Late to the thread…..everything has been said!






Bones

 

the battery tray itself bolts in, so its getting bolted/riveted together instead of welded.
im just trying to fix the inner fender below the battery tray.

I DID eventually get a spark, and it left a very little piece of filler on the piece of scrap. i think its not using enough gas

thank you all for the advice, i will cut up some scraps and try to weld them together, lets see how this goes!

 

i have a large piece of 18 gauge flat steel i sourced from a junkyard. no idea what it used to be but its black on one side and orange/green on the other

 

Gas too low should stop it from welding. The welds will look like crap and be very porous but it should still lay a bead.

Here is a pretty good video on common MIG welding mistakes.

 

I always keep a couple of old junk doors or hoods or other panels around to cut pieces out of to make repair panels. If they're from the same era as the car you're working on, they'll be the right gauge and same type of steel, plus, it's usually free if you have scrap laying around. I'll study the shape of the piece I need to make and compare to the leftover bits I keep around to find something that's already close to the right shape, so I don't have to form it as much.

An old junk fender or door is also an ideal practice piece to get the hang of sheetmetal welding. Welding sheet is a very different process from welding heavy plate or angle iron, you're not going to "lay a bead" on a piece of sheetmetal. It's usually a series of tacks and a lot of cool-off time.

I agree with others about what has been said, I think you just need practice. What settings are you running on your machine? Wire speed and voltage makes a big difference.

 

my dads lincoln welder has very few options.
it has a knob that goes from 1-10, i have it set on 3.
it had a switch that has Low, and High.
and a switch that says 1 and 2.
its funny that the tombstone for stick welding is properly labeled with exact amperages from 35-225, but this mig welder has very few options.

 

Sounds like a Handy Core model. The dial is your wire speed and then you basically have 4 voltage settings (which is pretty common on 120 v MIG's) low and then you can adjust that between setting 1 and 2 and then High which you can again adjust between 1 and 2.

If it is this model here is the manual if you don't have one.
https://www.lincolnelectric.com/assets/servicenavigator-public/lincoln3/imt821.pdf

 

indeed it is a handy mig. i had to go help my mother so i put the welder away, going to practice some more after i read through the manual, as my dad lost it long ago.

 

i figured out what i was doing wrong, i wasnt squeezing the trigger hard enough to engage the spool/spark

 

Awesome now go practice.

 

My old Lincoln had a door where you change wire spool. On the inside of that door it had the adjustment settings you'd likely use on what guage of metal, wire feed speed ect.. Maybe yours has that ?

 

its spattering, really bad. i have a video im going to upload, here are the settings i have it set to.

im using some scrap 18 gauge steel.

 

Lay the cup against the metal, don't try to let it float above the surface.