Welding up Unecessary Holes in Frame (1 Viewer)

[EWheeler]

I am in the proces of doing a shackle reversal and saginaw swap on my 40, and my front frame horns are full of holes. I want to weld up the holes, and was curious how others go about filling holes. At one time, I thought I read to clamp some copper behind the hole and you can use it as a backing plate, making it much easier to fill in the hole. Tried that method this weekend on my roomates jeep and the copper just melted. Any suggestions? Thanks,

Evan

 

[toomanytoyzz]

How big are the holes? If they are small enough, you may be able to fill them without any type of filler material. If they are too big try going to a metal fab shop in your area and buy some drops from a hole puncher. Most of the bigger fab shops around me only charge the going rate of metal per pound for any type of drops so it's really cheap this route.

 

[EWheeler]

There are about 5 on each side that are around 1/2" dia. I know I could just weld them up without any type of backing material to make it easier, but I thought I had read an easy way to do this, just can't recall the information or where it was.

 

[45Kevin]

You could use a piece of aluminium to close the hole from behind and to keep the weld from running through. I have done this with the sheet metal on a cruiser, but never the frame metal.

 

[LukeZero]

I have a really big chunk of copper, like 3 inches x 6 inches x 4 inches. Weighs about 5 pounds. I put it up behind a hole I'm trying to fill and just start building up from the edges. A little bit of weld spatter reducing spray (PAM) on the copper block prior to putting it on the back side helps.

 

[Icantdive55]

I've tried the copper trick and it works well for me on the smaller holes. I'm sure with better technique it would work good on all holes. Anyway since I can do smaller holes I went to the hardware store and bought a hand full of washers, tacked them into palce and then filled in the rest. Just a thought that might work for you.

Rod

 

[EWheeler]

I like the washer idea, going to give that a try. If I had a 5lb piece of copper laying around, I would have cashed it in last year and retired!

 

[Gusb]

How big are the holes? If they are small enough, you may be able to fill them without any type of filler material. If they are too big try going to a metal fab shop in your area and buy some drops from a hole puncher. Most of the bigger fab shops around me only charge the going rate of metal per pound for any type of drops so it's really cheap this route.

These "drops" sound like a good idea if you can get a clamp in place to tack them up. I've been using bits of clamped on sacrificial backing (18ga) to back up a few smaller holes in body sheet metal. Seems like most of the time I can plug the hole without penetrating the backing and if the weld does penetrate the backing and there's access you can always grind the sacrificial backing off. Using various copper backing plates has had mixed results for me.

As far as frame hole repair in thicker material - someone with a lathe could also fabricate thicker plugs for a perfect fit...