Thread: Welding steel tube frame w/AC stick-- Best methods?

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Wow Psycho! I checked out the pictures of your Kart on another post. COOL! & talk about a good power to weight ratio? You've got that covered, for sure!
You don't need that many welding tips as your almost done with it! The welds that I could see looked alright. Just put gussets on any points that your unsure of. In fact, I don't remember where but somewhere on the internet I saw pre cut gussets {with cool little holes in them for weight savings} that were really inexpensive. On second thought make that CHEAP not inexpensive as you couldn't even make them for what they were selling them for. Oh, back to your welds, your almost done with your cart and way past the point I figured you were at. When your welding pipe {you propably already know all this but I'll get into it anyway}, you can go either uphill or downhill with your welds. Downhill is probably easier but uphill will give you more penitration. When going downhill you just go straight down {don't osillate}. Sort of experiment with staying ahead of your puddle and holding it back. When going uphill experiment with osillating and going straight. Sort of let the end of your rod 'pull' the puddle up behind it when just going straight. When osillating just 'build' the puddle up as you go...... Bill....

Hey Psycho, if I believe it may be best to strip the cart and take it to a shop and have it tigged together. IMHO it would be a very good investment.

Originally posted by billlsbird
Wow Psycho! I checked out the pictures of your Kart on another post. COOL! & talk about a good power to weight ratio? You've got that covered, for sure!
You don't need that many welding tips as your almost done with it! The welds that I could see looked alright. Just put gussets on any points that your unsure of. In fact, I don't remember where but somewhere on the internet I saw pre cut gussets {with cool little holes in them for weight savings} that were really inexpensive. On second thought make that CHEAP not inexpensive as you couldn't even make them for what they were selling them for. Oh, back to your welds, your almost done with your cart and way past the point I figured you were at. When your welding pipe {you propably already know all this but I'll get into it anyway}, you can go either uphill or downhill with your welds. Downhill is probably easier but uphill will give you more penitration. When going downhill you just go straight down {don't osillate}. Sort of experiment with staying ahead of your puddle and holding it back. When going uphill experiment with osillating and going straight. Sort of let the end of your rod 'pull' the puddle up behind it when just going straight. When osillating just 'build' the puddle up as you go...... Bill....

Those pictures are actually from 2 weeks ago I think. The car is basically done with the exception of the fuel delivery system and brakes. The engine was normally gravity fed by the morocycle gas tank, but I have a fuel sell on the floor pan and so I need to figure out a fuel pump system that will work with CV carbs.

I haven't done any long vertical runs yet. Most of the non-flat welding was on the round pipe frame. My engine mount, my seat suppoprt, and front end I welded from a flat position. I need to get some extra weldable steel for practicing too.

Adrian

Originally posted by Dave Severson
Hey Psycho, if I believe it may be best to strip the cart and take it to a shop and have it tigged together. IMHO it would be a very good investment.

I will be stripping the kart back down to the frame as soon as I'm completely done building and fine turning everything. I'll take it for a few low speed test rides to make sure I've got everything dialed in right, then I'm stripping it completely, removing all the slag, grinding down the welds, inspecting each one, re-welding if necessary, etc. The frame might look flimsy, but it's actually much stronger than it really needs to be so It won't make much difference if I break any one joint. The only real critical welds are my front spindles. I welded the front spindle U brackets to my front axle. I'll probably bring my front axle into a shop and have them inspect it.

The rest of the frame can suffer several failures before I stop rolling since I over-engineered it so I'm not too concerned about it. -- but those front spindles I welded on are ALWAYS in the back of my mind

I'm actually looking forward to stripping everything back down to the frame and doing the detail work. Prep all of my fabricated components for paint, paint them, then carefully reassemble everything.

Adrian

Originally posted by billlsbird
Wow Psycho! I checked out the pictures of your Kart on another post. COOL! & talk about a good power to weight ratio? You've got that covered, for sure!
You don't need that many welding tips as your almost done with it! The welds that I could see looked alright. Just put gussets on any points that your unsure of. In fact, I don't remember where but somewhere on the internet I saw pre cut gussets {with cool little holes in them for weight savings} that were really inexpensive. On second thought make that CHEAP not inexpensive as you couldn't even make them for what they were selling them for. Oh, back to your welds, your almost done with your cart and way past the point I figured you were at. When your welding pipe {you propably already know all this but I'll get into it anyway}, you can go either uphill or downhill with your welds. Downhill is probably easier but uphill will give you more penitration. When going downhill you just go straight down {don't osillate}. Sort of experiment with staying ahead of your puddle and holding it back. When going uphill experiment with osillating and going straight. Sort of let the end of your rod 'pull' the puddle up behind it when just going straight. When osillating just 'build' the puddle up as you go...... Bill....

Hey Bill, you might be able to see some of my welds if you look at all of the pictures I've taken from beginning to end. Here is a link that contains every picture I've taken so far. I'm well over-due to take new pictures as all of these are very dated:

PsychoKart pictures from beginning to about 2 weeks ago.

Adrian

Don't grind the welds, most of the strength is in the crown of the weld.

Originally posted by 76GMC1500
Don't grind the welds, most of the strength is in the crown of the weld.

Good point. Another NHRA rule, for good reason.

Originally posted by 76GMC1500
Don't grind the welds, most of the strength is in the crown of the weld.

Well, I need to remove the slag, and inspect each joint for good penetration. I can tell there is a lot of pitting and probably some slag inclusions so I'll grind the suspect areas down and re-weld them until I'm happy. I'll stop grinding when I've removed any pitting, etc. I'll re-weld every joint if I have to but I'm confident most of the joints are good so we'll see.

If all my joints are pitted and crappy, I'll grind them all down and bring the frame to a shop so someone can TIG/MIG them as suggested earlier.. Any idea what I should expect to pay to have someone do that if I end up going that route?

Thanks,

Adrian