Hi, Ryanrmueller.
It'll do if you don't have the required arc welding electrodes and/or are a bit 'hesitant' about your skills with arc welding cast iron. The other thing with brazing with a welding torch is that the heat is applied more slowly and is distributed more evenly throughout the weld area and surrounding metal, which also helps to eliminate cracking problems.

Even it was arc welded, it would likely need to be pre-heated with a torch anyway.

Just my 0.02

I have been working on the head for the Thirty. After taking a hard look at the overall wear, I decided to change the valve guides and valves. I will turn guides from cast iron bar stock and will modify some diesel valves by adjusting the head diameter, length, and lock grooves.
One thing I thought was interesting was the name "Thompson" on many of the old valve heads. A quick trip to the internet found some history of the company that became the T in TRW. Seems the company was founded on the idea of making valves by electrically welding the heads to the stem.
The diesel valves are available after market for around $20.00, if it works out I would be open to modifying valves for fellow members.

Hi Mike,
IF that is a lower skirt crack I would think it has cracked due to running with excessive clearances in the bore.

Measure the skirt diameter on the skirt faces top middle/center and bottom mid way between the piston pin bores and see how parallel the face is.
If it seems fairly equal in dimension between the top and bottom then veeing out and brazing or full cast iron welding may be an option--need full depth of the skirt section to be effective so do say the outside first and then the inside after veeing down to full bronze line on the opposite again.
Stringent heating up and cooling down procedure will be needed to prevent further cracking, warping and inner stress buildup within the skirt problems.

Dad, an A Grade Welder with 60 years experience, welded the piston skirt on the W Adams Thirty--as it had had a sizable chunk missing from one of the thrust faces clear up to the oil ring groove at some time, a piece of another piston skirt of same diameter had replaced the missing skirt section on that one side--had not been fully welded before only tacked and had survived--now fully welded/brazed.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Forget the welding and become a " Gunsmith" What I use for fixing broken cast blocks is Hi-Force 44 solder. This is a 4% silver 96% tin alloy that melt at 475 F. Use Copper Bond flux which is a liquid so evaporates quickly. I go about 1" then add more flux. If you think you need a higher temp alloy you can use Hi-Temp Hi-Force 44, this is 95% cadmium and 5% silver. Cadmium is a toxic metal use with caution. It melts about 650 F do not go over 740 F. These are gunsmith solders used for joining steel parts. But I have found they work well on cast iron too. They are available from Brownells a large supplier of gunsmith tools etc. They have a large website. Another interesting product they have is Heat-stop. If you need to weld braze solder close a heat sensitive part. Apply Heat-stop between the two areas and the heat does not pass. You have to try it to believe it.

Made some more progress on mine. Repairing the back of the winch control housing that was damaged was more hassle than I hoped, I was hoping that was cast steel so I could just mig weld it up, turned out to be cast iron so that is a longer, riskier process to "repair" but it came out usable I think.



Seat was raised with 2"x4" tubing and there is clearance between the original angle iron bracket and the seat risers to run the brake control rod;









Shifter was cut off and extended forward with 1.25" tubing. I'm going to plate over the front to enclose the tubing and finish up welding now that I know it fits. I never was able to remove the shifter from the shaft, I whacked it a few times but was afraid of damaging the shift housing further so I just left it on while I modified it (removed the entire tower);





I think I'm going to finish bolting it all up, re-connect fuel tank and run it a bit to make sure everything works good before removing the winch again to fix the leaking gasket that way if there is a bad bearing or any weird noises I won't have to keep taking it apart.

Jordan

Hi, Folks.
Here is a link to a video on Youtube showing welding cast iron with no preheat.

Hope it helps.

Just my 0.02.

"WA7OPY" wrote:

I have very good luck repairing cast iron parts with thin webs by using Eutectic alloys, it is powered metal that is sprayed on with a special torch system. Works good but very costly, the powder can run over 200.00 a pound. Looks a lot like brazing but with high strength that is machinable. You do need to grind clean the spot you plan to weld and taper the edges out. A little pre and post heat is need. The Eutectic spray is not good for heavy welding. I have used it to repair cracked heads and blocks....WA7OPY

Hi WA7OPY,
I'd be interested to know a bit more about this technique, what sort of torch is it etc......G0JWG

I have very good luck repairing cast iron parts with thin webs by using Eutectic alloys, it is powered metal that is sprayed on with a special torch system. Works good but very costly, the powder can run over 200.00 a pound. Looks a lot like brazing but with high strength that is machinable. You do need to grind clean the spot you plan to weld and taper the edges out. A little pre and post heat is need. The Eutectic spray is not good for heavy welding. I have used it to repair cracked heads and blocks....WA7OPY

Very good advice Neil!

I might try heating the nuts if there are nuts on studs. Heat them up cherry red and put a 6 point socket on it while its red. If you get a turn on it, you probably got it. If it seems like it is twisting the stud, stop and heat again, turn back down a little, heat again etc. If you can get the turbo off with 4 studs left sticking out of the manifold you are ahead of the game! Of course you most likely get to do it again to get those studs out so you can start over with new. If any break off flush I would consider welding a flat washer on there. Pick one a size smaller than the stud so you don't mistakenly weld the stud to the manifold! Once you get the washer welded on, grind it off flat and weld a nut on so you can put a wrench on it. Some take several tries but letting it cool/cooling it completely before heating the cast manifold around it will give you the best shot. Good thing about cast iron manifolds is they are not damaged by heating them up cherry red to get broken studs or bolts out.

hello all,

newby here, but been net searching Howard Rotary Hoes long time.
there has recently been similar conversation on SmokStak about soluble oil in engines.
i put my 2+2 cents worth in...

only a few days later when continuing attempting to catalogue my info piles i find a relevant article
on back of magazine page i bought of Howard advert.

as Caterpillar written, i thought there might be more info here,
all good, thanks Eddie for pics of the real deal.
the article is about moderately long term use of soluble oil type rust inhibitor in a machine in apparently constant use.

also note ive since spent time reading several other forums of this same discussion thanks to
google searches for

soluble oil in radiator

and

soluble oil engine coolant

lots of interesting info and stories

one of the better technical info places is

www.carbideprocessors.com/pages/machine-...machine-coolant.html

regarding what i said on SmokStak,
Andrew's 20 litre tin is same as the old type plain soluble oil we used to use,
still have a couple of empty tins in use as stands.
it is good product for most machine shop work.
we used it for many years no problems,
then in some cases it seemed to interfere with welding.
might have been half caused by trials of different mig welding wire, mig gases,
and even gasless / fluxcore wires.
we never did find out for sure,
but now we use a synthetic, supposedly very popular around here,
it is only just oily enough to preserve the machinery when wet,
when it dries the cut steel stays bright for a couple of months, but it will eventually rust.
but we now have no problems with welding inteference.
however it slowly dissolves the bandsaw paint, making it wrinkly like brake fluid.
do not use synthetic oil in engines, at least one brand will most likely harm soft components.

thanks for the pictures of the Cat oil tin, that would be what is written about in this article.
also the 2 percent mix ratio, not mentioned in article,
whatever you get read the label,
i agree with 'less is best' balanced by need enough to do the job.
distilled / demineralised water is best,
then clean rainwater, the townwater here has minerals.

in a bandsaw operation there is always a pond scum on top of sump,
as well as dirt accumulation on bottom,
both of which need regular cleaning out.
unlike a motor, there is constant dirt input via the steel and tapwater.

keep an eye on the water in your machine, if it starts to look sus,
drain it out , check for rust and sludge,
rust would say not enough oil, sludge means too much?

note this article is 1959, i agree with others comments about
cast iron compared to alloy parts,
modern gear should be best with manufacturers product,
but i have good reason to doubt this is always true,
with one big name company autogearbox oil cooler failing,
letting oil in to radiator and water in to gearbox. 2 similar vehicles, 3 fails.
nice vehicles to drive, always properly serviced, i did not see failed parts,
do not know if corrosion was problem or some other mechanical design type weakness.
the repeat fail was in less than a year, it would seem too soon for corrosion,
but corrosion can be quick in the right (wrong) circumstances.

as regards nothing in water,
a courier driver friend had a water pump replaced on his light van,
a different big name quality car company,
in my personal experience these vans water pump bearings and or seals fail at 234 000 kms,
give or take 2k. this one almost made it to 235k.
he thought it was a bit sus the coolant was clear when it came back.
'oh well - maybe its just a clear coolant' he thought.
i told him to get back and ask the mechanic about that, but he never did.
almost exactly a year later the motor started overheating.
no leaks, but the water pump steel impellor blades were eaten away to stubs, so no circulation.
the alloy pump body was still like new inside.

as regard use of kero, about 10 years ago i was talking to an old guy in the shopping centre carpark about
his very well preserved Sigma car. i asked did he buy it new, yes, so how have you kept it so good so long,
all the others have long ago rusted away, Albany west Aust being a coastal town etc,
does it live in a garage and only come out on sunny days?,
and what brand of polish / wax do you use?
yes and no no, garage yes, but driven all weather.
the secret is a cup of kero in half a bucket of warm water as a monthly wash.
no detergent, no car polish.
the kero gets in anywhere the water will, to the usual seams, and stops rust,
and it stops the paint completely drying out so it never cracks or fades !!! ???
and the rubber was good around the windows too.
it certainly kept that car looking like new.

anyhow here is article for your archives, as a low-res scan picture but still good enough to read.
cheers Rod.

I refreshed all of my pictures since photobucket screwed us all. We finally got the roller back on. What we ended up doing was using some cast iron rod and running a few beads with them on the area of the roller were we would be doing the final welding to the track frame. This created a metal surface on the roller that would be more likey to fuse with the metal of the track frame when welded with 7018. So far it has is held together. Some pack rat made a home in the dozer while it was sitting out in the pasture next to the woods. It packed a bunch stick and stuff around the front belt and it chewed up the wires in the dash. I hot wired it and drove it to the house and replaced the chewed up wires. I got it out and did some grading with it on our drive way.

Mounting a cat blade from a 7U onto a 7J and was wondering (for welding purposes) what the frame rails and the blade mounts (that bolt to the frame)are made of? There are a few cracks I'd like to weld. Need to do a grind test tomorrow but figured someone might know. Looks and sounds like cast steel but that might just be me being optimistic.

Sorry for the slow reply was in Canada looking at some tractors the past few days. We have a few heat tables we use for welding and heating parts. The small one is an old furnace burner and the big one is a 4ft by 4ft monster for doing big parts we built in house. We weld lots of cast iron blocks, heads and other parts. Found more wore out and broken parts on the Holt, the babbitt was gone down to the blocks on the rear main drive. Getting that drive shaft out of the back was quite a project. Looks like were going to have to repair the beams that hold the track frames or make new ones.

"mrsmackpaul" wrote:

Mike the problem I find when fault finding something you cant see working is I just have to have a guess

If you left the pump off and make a flange to connect a hose from a separate hydraulic supply were the pump connects and test the the valve body and relief valve on there own

This way you can make sure that part is working properly and if it is you now know were the problem lies

You need to some how need to work out a way of eliminating some of the components as the problem other wise you will just continue to chase your tail

No offence is meant by any of this just throwing out ideas to try and help you get going


Paul

No offense taken Paul, I appreciate the help everyone is giving, sometimes when you get bogged down with a problem it's good to go off and do something different for awhile to clear your head so I got busy yesterday finishing up welding some D2 bottom rollers and repairing a upper water manifold on the D2 between the pilot motor and the diesel engine, the old water pipe had rotted out and it was a odd size, 1-1/8" external so my neighbor Geoff kindly machined me a new section of pipe out of stainless steel that I could silver solder in the cast iron flange, it seems to work well, in case you are wondering about my lousy welding on the D2 bottom roller that was the first pass!
regards
Mike

"ccjersey" wrote:

I think the shaft should rotate in the bushing that is epoxied into the top cover. Probably could take something like brake or carburetor cleaner spray and get the cast iron surface clean enough for good adhesion

Looking at the Cat parts catalog, I see that the bushing is not a standard part. Also, I said that the hole worn by the forward/rearward motion of the shaft mechanism has egged out the hole the shaft passes through. I talked it over with the mechanic and he suggested a couple of things. One of these solutions was to cut a thick washer with 1" diameter hole and tack weld it into place around the shaft, not welding onto the shaft. The washer half acts as a forward stop.
Nobody mentioned adjusting the threaded rod that connects the arm to the shaft via the threaded shaft. Is this a possibility? It cannot just be "there" and have no function, can it? Adjust the shaft in the forward direction to create a stop that does not need arm movement to be at the end of its movement cycle, that is. When the arm is adjusted in forward position, it cannot move forward any farther and the round shaft is thereby allowed to rotate and disengage the clutch. Make any sense?