You’re making all kinds of cool’s stuff now. Becoming quite the fabricator!

It looks pretty heavy and long so there’s a lot of force at the heads. Then lots of vibrations too. Watch the bolts at the heads. You might want to consider adding some type of exhaust hanger (type including rubber for a little give) towards the end of the pipe.

 

Thanks, it's a very handy skill!

I can't put anything towards the end of the pipe except maybe a spring because the motor moves so much. The rubber mounts have a lot of give for the motor. You can grab the motor and move it forward and backwards probably 6 in. I can tack weld a support brace going back to the motor where the factory support braces were. I will do that at my next available moment.

Good call, I didn't even think about the exhaust studs possibly breaking off. The good thing is I made the muffler a paperweight. Other than the pipe on the inside. The outer shell of the muffler came off of a satellite dish Pole.... Super thin stuff. This full setup is not any heavier than the factory exhaust that wouldn't fit because of clearance issues. But the factory's exhaust did have to support braces going back to the motor with larger bolts to. That's easy enough to do!

 

The grapple I bought for my mini skid loader happened to have the wrong mounting plate on it. There is enough slack that when tilting down far enough you can make the grapple pop off of the quick attach plate. I fixed this today with a piece of 1.5" x 1/4" flat bar.

 

Ncie work. Your weldings came a long way from the beginning.

 

Good job man! Which welder did you use, the buzz box? 7018 rod?

 

I used my newer harbor freight green titanium welder. It runs great and has 100% duty cycle at 120 amps and under. It runs 6010 great as well. It's small and compact and it welds great. It's been great so far. 1/8 7018 rods that got wet in the rain. Still worked pretty good!

 

Always read the fine print.

 

Nice work Tristan. You can probably teach me a thing or two now.

I recently discovered ceriated tungsten is NOT the electrode to use when welding aluminum. I now have some lanthanated electrodes which will improve matters hopefully. I have to get me a PAPR to stop breathing the fumes though.

 

I added some 3/4" weld on D Rings to my trailer where they should have from the factory instead of just the outer 4 corners. Now I have 4 on each side on the top rail (originally 4 total now 8) and 2 in the front of the trailer for strapping my Dinky (mini skid loader) down. It's called a dingo 950p but it's so small I named it Dinky.

I also shortened the rear mount for the grapple hydraulic cylinder because the grapple wouldn't open all the way due to the tall mount. I informed the local vet that built this grapple of this particular problem and the solution I came up with and his new grapples open almost twice as far as the one I originally got from him. I just cut and beveled mine removing 4 inches of mount allowing the hydraulic cylinder to pull the grapple claw back farther. Unfortunately I went to low with the mount and the angle caused the hydraulic cylinder to pull backwards instead of up so the grapple was stuck closed. It was close enough that a shake from a bump would make it open. So I wanted to extend the teeth on the clamping side to change the angle of the hydraulic cylinder as an easier fix than cutting the mount back up. Well, this grapple doesn't grab leaves/ brush very well due to it being open so, my dad and I decided for me to weld a plate in there instead of extend the teeth. This changed the angle of the hydraulic cylinder enough to fix the problem and can scoop brush better. I'm going to make a removable bottoms plate so it will be like a bucket so I can pick up leaf piles on our tree jobs. Speaking of which I can now tilt the grapple all the way down forward and open he grapple and use that plate as a rake for all the small limbs in the yard after our tree jobs. It's great. Welded a piece of flat bar to the back of the plate so it won't bend or flex at all as well. Added some of those D-Rings as well.

 

Thanks.

Well, I haven't tried tig yet so I couldn't tell you anything about that. I've learned a lot about stick welding and I do have a portable mig machine designed to be ran of of either 1 or 2 12 volt batteries or the cooler part of it is the mig "attachment" can be ran off of a stick welder and it works very well doing such. Very interesting little add on. About 800$ or so but converts any welder to a mig/flux core. I haven't used it but a couple times though because I had the wrong spring setting and stripped the wire feed gear and haven't gotten a new one yet.

I'm sure you know a lot more about welding than I do. I'm learning though!

 

I think I'm getting better! The pivot end of my mine skid arms were wallered out from this particular model of machine not having grease fittings and the previous owner never changed the bushings. So I rebuilt the ends and made them 1 inch longer so that I would have a little more clearance of the tires for my custom and or home built attachments.

The eyelets were made at a local welding shop and I tapered them and welded them. 3/4" plate welded onto the 5/8" thick arms so, a little thicker and I made the bushings wider than the 3/4" plate for more wear surface for the pins. Took 9 passes per side for a total of roughly 36 1/8" 7018 passes at 125 amps.

My brother actually cut pilots out of a plate for me and I stayed up late one night trying to get the hole drilled big enough only to find out that I could not drill a hole that big because I didn't have the bit, and I couldn't get it anywhere and even the local Fab shops didn't have the right size drill bit so I ended up letting the metal shop make new ones based off of the ones I took up there with their plasma table. I have made everything a standard size from tractor supply. The bushings are a little long but they're only $4 a piece at tractor supply and the pins are a little long but them sticking out a little bit doesn't bother me and they are only 5 or $6 a piece at tractor supply so everything is now easily available instead of having to order it from Australia being as it's an Australian machine from roughly 1997, so now these bushings are standard local parts that can be gotten cheap. The pins shipped here from Australia are $60 a piece but I can now get them for $6.

I also did a pass on each side of each arm alternating so that it would not pull the arm while cooling to one side or the other.

With the tapered ends on both the end of the mini skid arm and on the new eyelet, My overall weld ended up being over an inch wide and plenty deep, all the way to the center of the steel on both the mini skid and the eyelet. I don't think I will ever have a problem ever again. And while I do not have grease pins yet, whenever it comes time to change out these bushings I will change the pins out with the pins that have the built-in grease fitting. Those are a little more expensive but, the bushings will be super cheap and once I get grease to them they will last a long time. Anyway here's some pictures of old versus new and of some of the welds. I think I really made some good progress on my welding since I started this forum.

 

It look good. You can always drill a hole in your eyelet through the bushings and grease it that way, no grease pin needed. As far as the welding goes I would only say that each bead should have (more) overlap and you should finish with a cover pass to tie it all together. But great job saving the equipment.

 

Thanks for the advice! I believe if I remember correctly it's like 40% overlap when doing stringer beads? I noticed I was definitely off a little bit like you said but I'm sure it's not going anywhere. Adding the inch to that eyelet at the top added like 3 in of clearance at the bottom of the arms but now my arms don't come all the way down to the bump stops so I'm going to make some little bump stop extenders!

I did think about drilling a hole through the eyelet and the only downside would be that every time I change the bushing I would have to drill the whole back out which would involve removing the grease fitting so that I can redrill the new bushing but that's not a big deal other than that I might ruin my grease fitting threads unless I pre-drill the hole before putting the bushing in but then I have to worry about it lining up so I could drill a large hole so it would line up easier. It may be easier to just get the grease pins that already have the holes drilled in the pins themselves with the grease fitting. These pens are cheap anyway and will probably wear pretty quick because they are soft mild steel. It's not tempered like it should be. But they're only $6.

 

Is that the titanium from harbor freight? I've had their little green 140mig for a while now and it surprisingly punches well above its price.

 

How did you keep the eyelets aligned relative to each other?

Did you bridge a shaft through both eyelets simultaneously while welding them on?