Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello and good evening. Ive spent the whole day trying to fill in the cracks on this manifold and am now reaching out for ideas. I've heated it cherry red, cleaned the he'll out of it, messed with every different setting on the welder. All the silicon bronze wants to do is act like raindrops off a rainex windshield. I'm of the impression its just too old and saturated junk metal. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I would do it using Aluminum Bronze rod and AC current.

Look down the list of topics here. I did a thread a couple of weeks ago called " Learned this one from Jody". I used Aluminum Bronze to fix a table saw. In the thread is a link to the video Jody did on the subject.
The AC current gives a cleaning action on the cast iron that you don't get with DC.

Welcome to the forum Olywelder
I've had very little joy with Tig brazing unless everything was " surgically " clean which clearly your manifold won't be ! when chasing manifold cracks I generally sand blast the area then V out the cracks with a carbide burr - also use the burr to clean outside of the repair area then braze with oxy / acetylene using plenty of flux ( get plenty of flux on in paste form prior to pre-heating )- you can get various flux types some of which are more aggressive - generally the ones designed for stainless will be - Eutectic make some really good ones - if you only have Tig I would of choice try nickel not bronze though I can't vouch for aluminum bronze as I've never found any in this country to try - whether or not your welder will maintain an AC arc on cast I don't know - unsure of the reasons but many cheap Tig machines won't in the same way many won't support a stable arc with 6010 rods.

Stop. Don't bevel or grind anything.

100% guaranteed method on cast iron without preheat that makes all the above obsolete.

Get you some EziWeldTig Wire and just tig it up. It's all I use these days as long as the joint hasn't been butchered by someone before me.

Watch ytube for instruction. Links on their website.

Coldman,

If it was some newby making that claim, I wouldn't trust a word of it. Coming from you, makes it a different matter. Tell me more about your experience with it. Is there any downside?

I have made a post with it. It works great I absolutely love it.
Down sides:
Comes in thin short wire so alot would be needed to fill a fully beveled joint.
Single source so it's expensive for me to ship over the Pacific with current exchange rates but I don't care I want it on the shelf always.

Went to their website, it sounds very similar to sil-bronze but I think its a flux core type wire??

No it's neither. It's a genuine solid ferrous tig fusion wire. No flux no brazing. Doesn't flow like say er70 and you think you're not wetting in well but it all works out. Don't know how, it just does. I've also used it to join cast iron to steel successfully.

When I'm in my shop tomorrow I'll take some pics of it and post up.

Coldman,

I checked out their website too. $24 for 10 sticks, plus shipping. Over $500 for 10 lbs. Yup, pricey is the word.

I'm leaving on a long road trip tomorrow, but will look at getting some, once I get back. Maybe they should put you on commission. The only reason I'm looking at this rod, is because of your post.

Here's a pic of the wire itself and a cast iron to steel joint I did a while back.
This bad boy has been in service for about a year now, no probs.

The wire is expensive but a little wire goes a long way because most cast iron repairs tend to be short crack repairs or broken bolt tabs or mounting feet. If it was a big thick machine base that required serious bevelling or if some do-gooder bevelled the hell out of the joint before I got called in I'd certainly rethink the repair process and probably go for preheated nickel rod or braze repair.

The idea with this EziTigWire is to tack the pieces back together or end drill cracks, then with a small burr or zip disc open up a small partial thickness bevel to allow the filler to flow in but using minimal amounts. Cast iron repair is nasty always and you will get schmutz float to the weld pool surface which might cause concern but it wire brushes off and comes up good. I haven't had any failures yet after having done several repairs already.

That black color makes me think it has a high silicon content. Bet it flows like a braze rod.

U could always just oxy fuel braze it . Sorry if that's been mentioned already

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk