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This is a great site! My first post. Here's my question: I have a tube chassis drag car that was originally built 20 yrs ago. The front suspension is an A-arm / coil over shock type. The spindles are built from scratch using solid bar stock mild steel (and a cut off automotive spindle)that was tig welded together. Now here's my problem: for reasons unknown to me the hole for the lower ball joint stud does not match the taper of the stud. The hole is too large already to ream out. What I want to do is cut off the lower mounting ear from the spindle, and tig weld on a new ear that can be drilled and reamed to the right size. I would use a piece of cold rolled soild bar stock for the ear. It would be beveled for the weld joint and I would run a root pass topped by two filler passes all the way around. What I need to know is: should the spindle be normalized or heat treated after all of the welding is done? How do I go about doing this? What filler rod should I use? Thanks for your help, Jeff
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Jeff,
From all the info you gave, you may want to preheat before welding because of the thickness to eliminate quench cracking but because the material is just mild steel and not 4130, the need to post heat shouldn't be a problem. Do not force cool it either. Most of our short track mild steel spindles are MIG welded and we don't do any post heat.
As for a filler, I prefer the ER80S-D2 for thicker, rigid applications or a ER70S-2.
Hope this helps.
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Andy, this is what I needed to know. Thanks for your response.
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