An aluminum project. the real story part 1

[Steve]

This is a 3 part thread as there are 10 pics.
Boss said to fix the old slobbering fuel caps. We tried every thing but they still leak. The machines look terrible, wastes fuel, and there is no way to lock them. This is the way it came about.
Pic 1 Some practice to assure machine and operator functionality.
Pic 2 Is all the players. Left to right: Old soaked in diesel all its life found under a rock cast cap, New adapter, New cap.
Pic 3 Inside of old cap.
Pic 4 Old cap was sandblasted, top cut out, cleaned and ready to tack in 3 places.

[Steve]

Aluminum project. The real story part 2

Pic 4 Ready to weld round the outside.
Pic 5 I passed the TIG down on the cast cap and up on the adapter. Note the ugliness on the cast while the adapter melted nicely.
Pic 6 Finished outside weld.
Pic 7 Starting inside weld. Note the gas pocket and the other junk found in the weld and the cast cap.

[Steve]

Aluminum project. The real story. The end

Pic 8 I decided to go over the outside weld again and found this gas pocket caused by out gassing petroleum products from the cast cap. There were a few others.
Pic 9 New cap assemble in place, no leaks and lockable.

There were two requirements for the weld. 1 It can't leak, 2 It must stay on the machine. The old cap was baked in an oven at 450 to 500 degrees a while to bake out some of the diesel. Machine used was our Lincoln Square wave TIG 175(sorry for the red I not in charge of purchasing dept) Amps at max AC, Balance at 50/50 unadjustable, Weldcraft WP17 torch with large cup over a gas lens, foot pedal control, argon at 20 on the ball. High freq continuous, also not adjustable. There are no other machine settings.
There it is guys. My crappy Al welds on crappy old cast cap. All comments and discussion appreciated.

[aametalmaster]

Whats to stop someone with a 48" pipe wrench from unscrewing the whole thing? Just wondering...Bob

[pthunberg]

Steve

It works. If it works, it is not crappy.

Paul

[Steve]

Ya you could remove the whole thing and that will probably happen. Locks just keep honest folk out anyway and does little to deter the thief. At least for now the fuel doesn't leak out and the Boss is happy. The crappy part is cosmetics of the weld itself. I did get one new cap and the weld looked more like a good AL should. Even the manager commented, "Looks like you are getting the hang of it". Before I could stop myself I bluted out, "Don't know much about Al do ya?".