Welding, stitching, plugging cracked block

regards
rod

regards
rod>Link
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/DBtractors>Link

I know some people who repair heads and blocks professionally and some who used to. Those inserts are a product designed by an old german gentleman. (I'm somewhat partial to that because I originate from old german peasant stock.) They work quite well. I'd be happy to provide you with information as to where to send the block or put you in touch with someone who knows where to get those inserts. I never paid any attention because when I was there it was to deal with spraying block decks or some welding application. What was odd to me was the fact that since all these folks did all day was repair cast iron heads and blocks, people naturally thought it must be a good place to take all things cast iron. These guys where familiar with what they did for a living but if something besides a head or block showed up they would call me. It scared 'em to death. (Fred OH can relate to this. When you own a job shop you become very versatile. Seperates the men from the boys real quick.)

If you haven't had experience welding cast iron, I don't recommend you start on that block. W/o going into lots of detail, there is no cast iron electrode that works magic. While some are much better than others, certain attention must be paid to procedure. The rules of physics cannot be broken, only bent slightly or manipulated.

Now T-bone and I are friends for life because he said good things about my #2200. But, if I was going to recommend an electrode to someone for welding cast iron only, the #2200 would not be my first choice. I would choose it for someone who only repaired cast iron on occasion. Where that alloy shines is in mulitple applications where you stock one alloy to cover a multitude of infrequent applications. The other usages would be for repairing something you keep welding on with no luck or for high strength welds on materials of unkown or dissimilar make-up.

If you don't want to worry about fixing the problem right now and a patch will be sufficient, I can recommend a sealer pencil we use to stop pinhole leaks in welds on cast iron or other materials. You only need to preheat locally to 250�F and apply.

A search of the archives on this tool board will yield the most recent discussions on welding cast iron and the proper methods of doing such.

Most weld failures will be linked to:
(1) Improper joint prep, ie: surface cleaning, v-notch the crack, failure to drill a hole at the end of a crack in a high stress area.

(2) Improper stress relieving by pre/post heating

(3) Wrong filler rod/electrode selection for the base metal to be welded

(4) Ability of the welder.

I personally use only top brand name filler rods/electrodes until I prove a new brand/rod for the application. That doesn't mean other electrode mfg's products are bad or more suitable for a pictular weld repair, it just means that once I find a filler rod/electrode for a weld repair I use that until it doesn't work for the application.

One new electrode I would like to try is from US Alloys, rod #2200. We've need an electrode like that for years!

Below is a link to the search I did of this forum on welding cast iron. See if this helps.

T_Bone

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T_Bone

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