Re: Jeff Bade and his joints

["T.R.E. Jr." <T_R_E_Jr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

---Cool! Would you mind coming down to AL to help with a Spring-Over 
Conversion? I wouldn't trust anyone so far with welding my perches in place. 
If you did that good a job for the welds on your pitman arm, then I am sure 
I could trust your welding on my axles. Then again, that was quite some time 
ago and even my eyesight has been damaged from the welding I have performed 
in the past ;-)

---Heating the cast is the trick. Thank you for your input Jim. I would have 
thought that with all the talk about welding bench vises and other things 
that I would have remembered to put that in my reply earlier. That also 
makes me think about whether it is tempered or not. I would think likely not 
considering it is cast. DOH!

---Thank you,
-T.R.E.Jr.
-`73 Scout II (StoneThrower)
-`51 Farmall H (Heinz)
-`49 IH fridge (presently unnamed and in need of a compressor)
-`49 Plymouth Special Deluxe 4-door Sedan (Papapalooza)


----- Original Message ----- 
Jim Aos <jaos@domain.elided> wrote:

<snip>
> On my old 3/4 ton 53 Ford, I heated up the steering arm to what I thought
> was enough (medium red ) and could not bend it.  So I cut it with the 
> proper
> bevel and welded it with 1/8"  E7018 NEW rod.   This was in about 1967. 
> Ten
> years and 80,000 miles later a spindle broke on the same side at about 40
> mph, and I went for a ride.  In those days I wore 750 x 17"s for tires.
> There was NO damage to the steering arm.
>
> On the 1200 D pickup, I cut off the ends of both pitman and steering arms
> and welded  chevy ends on them with the same above procedure.  The chevy
> ends were so that I could put a heavier draglink in. Even new draglinks 
> for
> 3/4 ton IH was to weak in the ball joint ends for my tire size.  While
> pushing snow up hill I broke the bolts and upper kingpin off the left 
> side.
> I was wearing 245 x 70 x 19.5"s tires with heavy mud and snow chains with
> cross added between all existing links.  0 damage to the welded ends.
>
> I don't know if the pitman arms etc. are heat treated, but they are a 
> tough
> alloy  of some sort.
> My $.0025  Jim A.