Quote Originally Posted by firebird77clone View Post
Adding a plate is absolutely stronger. Plate over the whole mess, to incluse the open ended section. Grinding the welds first will let the plate sit flat.
Make nice pretty welds and it will be as strong as it looks.
I'm not sure I agree. A good structural weld needs to have proper weld prep, with the two pieces of metal butted, or very nearly butted together, with the edges ground back to a V that's about as wide at the top as the metal is thick, but not more than about 1.5 times the thickness (rule of thumb) that gets filled with welding wire, fusing the two together with full penetration of heat. You'd be laying down new weld atop bad weld that doesn't have full penetration. It's not going to be as strong as a properly done weld between two plates, in my opinion.

I'd start over.