LQ4 into a 3rd Gen/1972 Nova by frojoe

2 minute(s) of a 891 minute read

I spent about 10mins going over the schedule 40 hot piping, upon re-evaluation there were only a few welds that were mildly undercut/underfilled.. so I smoothed those out, and then added a couple beauty passes to the most visible welds just to make them nice.

Last night I started fiddling with the thin gauge stuff (16ga). Started with the passenger side downpipe. I had nailed the miters pretty square and flat.. enough that I thought I'd try fusion welding instead of using filler wire. Also tried out the pulse function on the Dynasty 350... wow is this thing cool.. never thought I'd be welding with one hand again!

The settings I landed on for the pulse feature were 2.0 pulses per second, 95% peak amperage (AKA when pulse is "on", it is 95% of whatever pedal position I'm at), 55% background amperage, main amperage set to 80A, and was at about 3/4 pedal for most of it. No filler, and I was moving the torch at maybe 5-6 seconds to travel one inch. I used a 1/16" thoriated tungsten with about 3/8" stick out, and a #12 ceramic cup with about 25cfm. The heat control was mind-bogglingly sweet...