I’d been putting off working on the bike for a while now, because the next logical step was welding the suspension mounts into the frame, and I’ve found that very intimidating. I have exactly one week of welding training, a noncredit continuing education class at the local community college. It taught mo only that welding is hard to do well, and I’m lousy at it. I’d seen plenty of horrible amateur welding disasters posted on the web. Then there is my equipment: a few years back when Clarke went out of business, I bought one of their “SG135” (in reality, only 85 amp) 110v spool gun MIG welders on clearance. I’ve previously used it exactly once, to repair a broken handle on our walk-behind mower. That repair has held up okay, but ensuring I got decent fusion meant I turned it into a boogery, blobby mess. So I knew what I should expect from my welding skills. I was also worried about trying to weld two pieces that had such different thicknesses.
I did a bunch of test beads on scrap metal, but they were horrible and they weren’t getting any better. I didn’t know enough about what I was doing wrong to get better, so I gave up that idea.
So I put it off, and put it off some more. I made the excuse that I should wait until I could spring for a bottle of welding gas and do “real” GMAW. I have a regulator, but haven’t gotten around to anteing up for a tank of welding gas; I still have the flux-core wire that came with the unit in it. However, from what I’ve read, flux-core wire actually provides a bit better penetration per amp — with only 85 amps max available, there was a defensible reason to go with that.
The more I procrastinated, the more I hated the fact that I was unwilling to even try. So, last night after work, my wife had to leave for the evening. It was raining, so I couldn’t mow the yard as I had planned. It was time: if I screwed it up, at least I would screw up today and not leave things for “someday” that might never come. I psyched myself up; I just needed to do two dozen little tack welds…how tough could it be? I burned the paint off the frame backbone with a MAPP torch, scrubbed it with a stainless-steel brush, plugged in my welder, and—
The result was a heartbreaking disaster. I can barely bring myself add these photos photos to the long list of mock-worthy welding fails, but if I am serious about this being the true, unvarnished account of my journey through this project, it’s only fair I be as honest about my mistakes as my successes.
My heart sinks every time I look at these, and these were taken after I’ve knocked off the little slaggy bits, filed the blobs down (mostly) flat with the bung faces, and put a shot of primer over the whole thing. I don’t know if my wire feed was too fast, or my amperage was too low or too high or what, but the gun would jump around uncontrollably as soon as I pulled the trigger; that’s why there are some welding blobs on the frame tubes that don’t even touch the bungs. I couldn’t figure out what to do differently, and everything I tried just made things worse in one way or another. In the end, I believe I got enough fusion to hold the bungs in place adequately. I can proceed to the next step of the process. Once I reattach the shock mounting plates, even without the fuel tank in place, these won’t even be visible. But I’ll know what a sorry mess is under there.
So, I can say I did it. But this may prove the point where this project went from something with great potential to something that will never be worth the effort that went into it. I feel a little better for overcoming my fears and making the attempt, and a whole lot worse over the outcome.
