Welding Tips and Tricks

Had a rodeo friend call me and say they needed a new hitch put on there horse trailer.
They wanted an adjustable one. Besides that, the spring is broke on this one and it doesn't hold it on the ball very good....
I'll be cutting the white one off, and welding a newer, heavy duty, feature packed adjustable height hitch back on....

My main problem is bidding the job....

Pictures...

John,
T&M on that one. Give them a rough idea of time and material for a ball park. Unless you are confident on your time you can loose money fast on those kind of jobs. Looks simple enough but..............
-Jonathan

Jonathan..
I'll let you know when I know...
He's a long time friend....
I'll save some money and use 6013.

He brought it by my place an hour ago....
I have to have it done by Friday afternoon...

Well,
The good thing is that He supplied the new hitch, and the safety chains.... And even let me take his Metabo grinder....

I'll Let you all know....

I'll keep track of T&M....

~John

I'm gonna go out on work on it for a couple hours....

Thanks,
~John

Well,
It looks like there is more welds in there, than that can be seen....

I've got 10 pics, lets see if I can explain...

The piece of vertical pipe that is on the trailer hitch now, is 4inch OD....
The new one is 4.5 inch OD.
As you can see in that third pic in this post, there's a little piece of tubing going horizontal....

I've got a small drawing in next post.

~John

This is what it looks like if you were hovering in your helicopter directly over the frame work, with the cab removed. (sort of).

Were thinking of cutting a hole inside the cabin, and coming through, maybe an 18in hole in the floor.
I thinking there's a lot of weld, on top....

If I could get in from the top, I could cut/torch those welds out, and cope the tubing, and make the larger pipe fit in there, weld it down, and close the floor up....

Dangerous eh????

Let me know what you all think, and just so you know, I'm on first name basis with the mods, just in case we have to lock this thread.....



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Just so you all know, the only things I've done so far is cut those vertical welds out....
Nothing structural yet....

Now,
With all your guys permission, I'm gonna get a hole through, carpet, 1/2inch plywood, and 16ga steel, and its all gravy work from there....

I'll be using up my 2lbs 1/16 6013, just to keep the cost down on this job.... I'll do a root pass, and a cover pass... Preheat with a LP weed burner, cheaper than O/A....

John,
Now you see why I said T&M, you never know what you will find. Looking good, glad you are doin it and not me
If you want to keep the cost down, I have some wet 7018 I will ship to you.
-Jonathan

Superiorwelding wrote:John,
Now you see why I said T&M, you never know what you will find. Looking good, glad you are doin it and not me
If you want to keep the cost down, I have some wet 7018 I will ship to you.
-Jonathan

OK,
Good thing is, that the customer is understanding of the amount of work its gonna take to do this job...

I'll keep the pics coming....

Don't be afraid to critic and offer suggestions.....

Thanks,
~John

BTW,
I've got a bunch of wet, rusty, 7018....
I'll trade you for some boxes of 6013....
Wet 7018 is a far cry better....

I need to go to weld air and get some more 1/8 Jet LH 78.....
My invertecs love it, and my Ranger 8 loves excalibur....

I gotta keep them both happy....

Since you mentioned the quandary of pricing this job...

For what it's worth, at a business level quoting fixed-price jobs is the key to healthy profit - if you do it well. Customers don't generally like the open-endedness of T&M, because it shifts the risk to them and they can't budget for it.

That is, customers will have a mental block about paying more than $X/hour for a certain skill - that automatically caps how much you can ever earn. To break that barrier (and effectively earn more per hour) you need to price by the job, and finish it in less time (so you have capacity to take another job sooner). A la the dealership mechanic model.

Then the key to flat-rate pricing is basing it on the customer's perceived value for the result. Sometimes this requires some education so they properly value the result. Then, the obvious - the price can't be below your cost, so you can't be sloppy about researching the job. Not all jobs are worth taking. You also have to be crystal clear what the job is, or "scope creep" will eat you.

But when calculating your costs, keep in mind that labor isn't a hard cost - that is, you're never losing money on your own labor unless you're turning down higher-paying work to do this job; you're just making less per hour than you'd like. (I.e., any income is better than none, though some people will decide they don't want to work for less than $X/hour.)

FWIW,
Richard

Thanks Richard!!!!

I'm gonna know a lot more than I did before this job!!!

Here's today's progress so far...

This front room is living quarters.
Sink, oven, fridge, shower, restroom, table, and a bed.... ETC.
Gotta be careful...
Turns out there wasn't plywood there.
I peeled the carpet back, and there's the sheet metal....

Taking this hitch of took over 2 1/2 hours...
Not to mention 4 cutting wheels, and a little O/A....
As you can see in the last pic, I cut the hitch off, right below the tubing....Last resort...

Now the problem is getting that larger diameter piece of pipe up in there.
Should I notch the tubing with a torch???
Or remove that horizontal 6in piece of tubing???

Going out now....

let me know what you think...
~John

We decided to notch the tubing.... O/A torch, and a grinder....

So,
I tacked it up, made sure everything was square, and ran the first pass with 1/8 8010, good and hot....
Ground it smooth, and welded it up with 3/32 7018. Machine was set between 90-100amps... Invertec 250....

The pipe is 1/4 wall, and the tubing is 1/8 wall....
It is a good design IMVHO....

Here's where I'm doing the work....
Cramp conditions...
Had to put clean coverals on too....