My pot metal carburetor on my troybilt tiller snagged the fence and cracked at the front mounting boss. It’s old and I would rather use one of those aluminum rods to weld it together again than try to find a replacement.
Anybody try them? Any good?
My pot metal carburetor on my troybilt tiller snagged the fence and cracked at the front mounting boss. It’s old and I would rather use one of those aluminum rods to weld it together again than try to find a replacement.
Anybody try them? Any good?
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Replies
That's pretty tough to do - it's hard to keep oxygen away without shielding gas. LuminaWeld says you can use their process with OxyAcetylene, but I haven't tried it - would J&B Weld work?
Find a shop with a TIG you can just walk in?
Forrest
J&B might work, but I think the shaking of the engine, plus the weight of the gas tank attached to the carb, and its easy to bump the carb into something would break it again.
I'm thinking about seeing if I can just buy a new one. It's a old tiller I bought for 50 bucks, and I already put some money in it, still needs a oil seal on the transmission etc. Trying to keep the cost down before it gets to close to the price of a new one.
I put my ladder rack back to gether with those rods. Used Mapp Gass torch, heated metal and not the rod. when metal was hot enough i melted the rod into the cracks.
I got them at my welding store when I found out that the aluminum attachment for my Miller 175 was about 700 bucks.
6 months and the cracks are not coming back. The ladder rack is still holding, and I abuse it reguarly.
matt
That sounds promising. Ladder racks take a beating.
I've had resonable luck with those AL rods in a buzz box, especially if it was just for keeping things stuck together.But, I bet there's not enough pure metal in the carb to weld with anything, especially if any part of the area needs to be air or gas tight.They have a higher dollar JB weld type of epoxy for AL I think, check your local Napa.A medium to large guy named Alan, not an ambiguous female....
NOT that there is anything wrong with that.
Having done it, would you say that that is aluminum brazing, or aluminum welding? Did the parent metal melt?
I'd like to try that technique.
Forrest
id call it brazing as the parent metal does not melt.
matt
What you need is probably a rod designed for brasing or soldering. There's various brands of rod sold for low temp repairs and the one's I've seen work quite well, although not at all inexpensive.
http://www.aladdin3in1.com/catalog4.htm
http://divescoinc.com/
http://www.muggyweld.com/
Beer was created so carpenters wouldn't rule the world.
I bought some of the cheap Ultrafuse rods off ebay. I'll try them, see what happens. I don't have much luck fixing pot metal though.
Clean it up first and take a real careful look for tiny holes and passages anywhere near the break. Carbs are complicated and tricky, and tend not to work if those tiny drill holes get plugged up.
-- J.S.
Thanks, but the break is about 3 inches away from anything important. Should be OK on that part. The aluminum brazing, not so sure.
That's a big carb -- the ones I used to work on were maybe 4" tall overall. If you can still find it, McKay's Parts Dip was the very best carb cleaner 10 - 20 years ago. Clean it good first so you don't cook the crud onto it.
-- J.S.
John, think that stuff went the way of the bison, EPAed out of existence.
Now you can use 6 cans of carb spray with 10 times the toxic mess to try and clean one.
How's new house project? Or not a project?
Joe H
Unfortunately, the new house is pretty much stalled while the sale of the old one is tied up in litigation. The interest only bridge loan eats up all my money, and will keep on eating it until we get this cleared up.
The new place is pretty much OK, there are a few things we'll do when we're out of trouble. I want to gut the guest bath and start fresh, give it a window....
-- J.S.
John, I didn't know you were having problems with the sale, musta missed it if you posted about it. Hope you can get it worked out before the lawers clean you out.
Glad I'm not in California anymore, shoveling snow isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
Joe H
Haven't tried the low temp AL brazing compounds- seems like they should work if the surface is prepared very well beforehand.
TIG is the way to go with AL, though. Quick and relatively easy.
zak
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone." --John Ruskin
"so it goes"
try ebay,someone usally has a motor they are parting out. what kind of motor is it and size.?larry
hand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.
The engine is a 5hp Briggs. The engine itself is rare because it has a second shaft, specially made for troybilt, and no longer available, as well as no substitute available.
The carb is probably a common one though.
Right now it's held together by a giant red rtv blob.
The ones that I have used work great with just a propane Bernz-O-Matic. You MUST have clean surfaces. A very clean stainless steel brush (looks like a HD toothbrush) preps both pieces, no flux was needed.
A hawker at a fleamarket caught my eye and my wallet. He was poking holes in a Pepsi can with a ballpoint pen and then soldering them closed. I got two aluminum gutter spikes out of my trunk and asked him to do his stuff. No problem. Scrubbed them with the brush and neatly laid a fillet between them.
Good luck with the carburetor.
Yeah, that would be soldering/brazing. Which should be sufficient for many uses, if the "solder" is sufficiently strong and won't turn brittle over time or lose it's adhesion to the aluminum.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
Hate to say it but I never found anyway to weld pot metal. It is considered a very dirty metal because of the unknow materials that are used in it.
Headstrong, I'll take on anyone!
Yep! Pot metal.
I have never seen this welded with good results.
P.S. I am glad you chimed in. I always get beat up by these guys.
Thanks
Pot metal = Alchemy.
Goes from a solid state to a liquid within a 2º spread.
The Brits used to make lots of trim parts out of it, I found out it doesn't like a torch. Goes from being a thing to being a puddle in about a second when you hit the right temp.
Joe H
Do a Google search on a product called allumalloy. They have an infomercial that airs every now and then. The product looks quite amazing, and right on for what you want to do. The informercial does it with just an ordinary propane torch.
Is that alumaloy, allumaloy, alumalloy, or allumalloy? Seems that that name is a bit overused.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin