all about welding

[Alex Blair (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Phil Waterman

To produce a crack free weld in cast iron is an art. And is really all about pre-heating from my limited experience. The question is how much pre-heating and to what temperature.

Once watch and old timer weld up a Model A Fords head that had cracks in the water jacket from freezing. He cleaned it up, dumped 20-25 lbs of charcoal in the barbecue grill put the head on the grill and lit the charcoal. He let the whole thing sit their until the coals were all nice a hot then with the thing still on the grill he took a stick welder, with what I suppose were the correct rods for cast iron, and started to weld up all the cracks. As he weld a few new ones showed up and he welded those as well. Then he said just leave it on the grill until its cold. My brother had that Model A for about 20 years after that no leaks, people would ask about the funny looking welds on the head.

Cheers

Phil..
The old lad had it right..I used 2 hibachi BBQ's as a forge with a pilot line of oxygen out of the oxy-acetlyne into the bottom of it..Get that head red hot and stick weld it with a cast iron rod..then let it cool off to cold and then re-machine IT..I THOUGHT YOU WOULD TRY IT WITH THE CRACKED HEAD WHEN YOU GET YOUR NEW ONE..CLEAN UP THE CRACK WITH A DREMEL AND
give it a go..