Nate's 2002 TJ, Not so simple anymore by gst95dsm

2 minute(s) of a 391 minute read

Ordered!





Can't wait to get this stuff.  

Today I'm doing welding practice welding up my little harbor freight trailer. So far the welding is fun but welding on stuff that's already been painted sucks. It's hard to get it all clean enough to weld smoothly.....

Ok well I sure did do some welding today. Bit off a little more than I should have. I started welding all the seams on my HF trailer. Cleaning the metal sucked. I ended up using Aircraft stripper with good results. My biggest issue today was there was pretty good sized gaps in some of the seams. It seemed like the arc was shooting through the gaps and I was loosing control of the bead. On some of the bigger ones I started running one bead on the edge of the metal and then another to connect the two. I had some good some bad results with that. My weld quality was decent on most of it. Pretty good on a little bit, and HORRID on a little more than was pretty good. HAHA. I got to do a bunch of different angles though and feel that I learned quite a bit.  

I was proud of this little bead so I took a photo.



I also definitely learned painting stuff that's been painted or powdercoated in the past SUCKS. Even with good cleaning of the weld area, the surrounding area from the heat will blister and smoke.... FUMES.... bad... headache. I think a trailer like this is a worst case scenario being made out of C channel with a lot of nooks and crannies.... still fun though. Now i'm painting the damn thing, gotta put it all back together today and be done.