Re: (ET) Shook deck apart, at least I have a welder....

You may have lots of welding experience but, not for nothing (as we say in New York), if I was welding clean 1/8" metal to a clean deck my dual range 35-230A welder would be in Low Range, using 3/32" rod and 70 amps to start. Do a little tack to see if it holds. Can go as high as 80A with this rod...then must use 1/8" rod from 80A to appx 130A.

On Aug 9, 2010, at 7:51 PM, Christopher Zach wrote:

It looks like the welder may come in handy: Every once in awhile I like to run the batteries down to zero, then charge them up to re-sync the cells.

NOTE: I am running 60 BB600 NiCD aircraft batteries in the tractor, *NOT* Lead T105's. Doing this on T105's will ruin them.

Anyway, this time I ran the mower for 30 minutes along with the inverter powering a 300 watt halogen lamp. Gives me a nice 30a load which matches up well with the batteries. However this time I had the deck *up* on the winch with it running.

Came back an hour later. One of the deck arm mounting points had broken clean off. As in a perfect square of metal. It's not because the metal was rusted, the deck was vibrating and it literally flexed apart.

Crud. However since it's clean I should be able to fix it. Any tips on the type of steel I should use to fix the deck? I was thinking a square plate on the bottom, a square washer of steel in the middle, and another square plate on the top.

What size steel should I use? I have the ET welder, I'm assuming welding on low current will work for the thin metal of the deck.

Thanks!
Chris

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