first time welder....stiffeners

hey everybody

looking at buying a set of these in the next month or 2
http://www.hdoffroadengineering.com/...ame-stiffeners

http://www.hdoffroadengineering.com/...ame-stiffeners

after seeing what cracks in a friends XJs frame has put him through, and me recently going to 38s i figure its time.

I got my grandad to do all my axle welding for the perches, and truss and stuff, but im not going to ask him at almost 80 years old to go crawling around under a jeep.

theres only 1 guy i know in town thats good with jeep fab stuff and welding and he has helped me out in the past, but ive been trying to get ahold of him and hes not picking up. i figure ive got 3 people (including myself) looking for business, and if he wont pick up the phone or return calls then screw it.

long story short, this will pretty much be my first time welding. my friends got a miller 110, which he runs with fluxcore that ill probably be using.

ive used it a few times when i was setting up my axles to tack stuff into place, so all my grandad had to do was burn it home, but other then that, no real experience.

ive been wanting to learn to weld for a while, and i figure this is a perfect experience. it isn't something that will cause a catastrophic failure if the welds go, and with all the rosette welds to be done, and stitch welds i figure ill get plenty of time with it.

any suggestions. im thinking of running a 4.5 inch grinder around all the edges to get a good bevel, and going from there. any settings i should try, techniques....or just it being my first time dont do it at all

thanks

hmm, even thought it is not critical per se, it is still a PITA due to the material thickness differences of the stiffeners and the relatively thin/layered unibody, and the glue that holds the unibody together. If you only have experience with tacks, I would for sure at least get some different thickness plate scraps and refine/develop your technique with some real beads, otherwise you may just end up blowing a bunch of holes in your unibody which could be bad. I never made anything until I was really comfortable with welding scraps. Good luck!

I wouldn't want to do that for the first job. Screw up the unibody, and there's no going back. I would want to practice a lot on bumpers or something.

I learned how to weld with a 90amp HF Flux Core welder a few months back when I built my bumper, after flopping my last rig I bought frame stiffeners (HDEngineering) for the new rig. I was pretty scared going into it that I might blow a hole through the unibody or whatever, but after finishing it all up...the welding really wasn't that bad.

It's tough to say how well I really did, but honestly as long as you're half way decent with a welder and you don't sit on the same bead forever, you'll probably be fine. My welds didn't turn out pretty, but I believe with a better welder that burned cleaner everything would have been a better success. So basically it sounds like you just need to practice by building something else first, then do the unibody stiffeners.

~Scott

I did OK doing some frame repair on an MJ as my fourth or fifth weld job. My first (exhaust) was ugly as hell and very porous and everything in between was a little better. Definitely don't want to blow a bunch of holes in your unibody though.

Definitely practice on scrap material first. Work on technique while working on your bench top. Then practice with the material sitting vertical. This is like overhead welding so get your technique down first.

If you do end up welding your stiffeners in there are a few things that you can do to help prevent blowing holes.
1. See if you can setup .023" ER70S-3 diameter wire, with some 75/25 Argon/CO2. Flux core typically burns slightly hotter. This is because it is a tubular wire with flux inside. The tubular shape of the wire increases the current density (Amps/In^2 at the tip of the wire) of the arc. Since a solid wire has a greater material cross sectional area at the tip of the wire the current density is decreased. Also it is probably easier to start out with a setup that eliminates the slag in the puddle and allows you to view a nice molten metal puddle with no slag covering. It's just one less thing to have to worry about manipulating when running your bead.
2. Try to weld the fillet welds along side of the frame rail vertical down. Start at the top of the hole and weld a bead down one side and stop at the bottom. Then do the same thing on the other side. Concentrate the heat on the stiffener with maybe a slight weave to let the puddle flow and penetrate into the unibody. Set your machine slightly on the warmer side though to help prevent cold lap.
3. For the overhead welds you'll probably want to increase your wire feed speed slightly. Overhead usually needs slightly higher wfs to help work against gravity. Again try to concentrate the heat on the stiffeners.
Whether you use solid wire mig or flux core wire try to use tips 2 and 3.

I'm new to welding but with my father's help (who has never really used a mig before), we were able to use my new hobart 130 to stick my HDO stiffeners on with ease.

Read through this. Good info.

http://www.mallcrawlin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5878

Scott