A little side project this weekend. My first legit welding project. Learned a few things. Things y’all will probably say “duh” to, things that I already knew aka was already told, but guess I had to relearn the hard way. Things like:
1. The welder is more efficient when it’s plugged directly into the outlet, and the extension cord is deleted. I only have one outlet in my shop so my power source is limited. However, this kind of work required retooling a bit so I could set the welder right in front of the outlet.
2. Metal HAS to be clean. Like super clean. Like cleaner than a wire wheel can do. This was one of my first welds, and it turned out terrible because of the two aforementioned mistakes:
Ground that off and went back over it.
Once I started cleaning the metal appropriately, my welds turned out more like this:
@AgDieseler is my inspiration and I’m hoping to be half as good as he is when I grow up.
Anyhow, y’all may or may not remember from my initial launch of this build, that I bought this K5 swing out tire carrier to mount my spare, and after installation immediately realized the tire was too big for the carrier and abandoned that plan. Kept the carrier on the truck though. Bought a new fuel can to put on it since it had provisions for one, only to realize it only worked with the vintage cans. Not to be undone, I bought a ‘69 USMC can, repainted it and installed. Still wanting to carry the other new can, though, I bought a basket-style carrier for it and bolted it to the driver barn door. Realized that was too much weight for the sheet metal and took it off and stored the can and basket.
Well, I still wanted to be able to carry both cans, since I had them, still wanted to use the basket since I had it, and wanted to make better use of the K5 swing out carrier than to carry just one can. I had avoided for a while this notion of altering this carrier, since they are kind of rare. But, in
@campfire ’s spirit of “build it the way you want it”, I decided it was time to make better use of the carrier.
Bought another basket, picked up some quarter inch flat bar and got to work. I will say that I saved the original brackets in case they ever needed to be used again.
Here’s a brief play by play and then the final product:
And the final product:
So the framing for the baskets were welded to the carrier and the baskets were bolted to the new framing. Every crosspoint where metal touched metal was welded on all sides.
There were some adjustments made in the process:
- The cans sit higher than before so that the framing could stay between the carrier tubing.
- I also moved them over two inches toward driver so that the passenger brake light wouldn’t be as blocked.
Here’s the before and after:
Some tweaks had to be made, but overall I’m satisfied with the final product. Got a few other small things I’ll be adding to it in the next couple weeks. More to come.
With all the different lines and angles, it’s hard to look at it and believe it’s sitting level, but it’s pretty close. The different shades of red don’t help either. These cans will eventually be repainted yellow. They do carry diesel fuel afterall.
Overall, it was a pretty decent first welding project.
Andy
