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Hodge-Podge 609

Beautiful fab work all around. I've got a funny question for ya, do you use any sort of spatter spray? If not, any tricks? The area surrounding your welds are immaculate
This is the stuff we use at work and it's been my favorite by far. We bought some other stuff that I can't seem to remember the name of, but it would leave a nasty film much like all the other anti spatter sprays. The spray definitely helps, but gun angle is a HUGE part as well as you're actually laying your bead. I also go back and wipe with a rag that's been lightly sprayed with WD or Kroil and then chip bb's with a chisel or screwdriver. Make sure you have wiped first or the bb's don't come off near as easy and it's way easier to scratch and gouge the material.

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I also go back and wipe with a rag that's been lightly sprayed with WD or Kroil and then chip bb's with a chisel or screwdriver. Make sure you have wiped first or the bb's don't come off near as easy and it's way easier to scratch and gouge the material.
I'm curious on your thoughts on this. I know exactly what you're talking about when you hit a bb with the chisel and you could always see where you chipped it away from unlike your picture. I just don't understand why rubbing it down before chipping would change anything? Are you wiping it while it's still hot and maybe the slight quench of the rag on the small bb changes the hardness just enough to make it a tad brittle so it chips away clean? I'm not questioning you at all just curious why the rub changes anything. Very excited to try this out myself now. I hate the little shiney marks that process leaves behind.
 
I'm curious on your thoughts on this. I know exactly what you're talking about when you hit a bb with the chisel and you could always see where you chipped it away from unlike your picture. I just don't understand why rubbing it down before chipping would change anything? Are you wiping it while it's still hot and maybe the slight quench of the rag on the small bb changes the hardness just enough to make it a tad brittle so it chips away clean? I'm not questioning you at all just curious why the rub changes anything. Very excited to try this out myself now. I hate the little shiney marks that process leaves behind.
I have no idea to be honest lol It just seems to work better. For some reason wiping of the chalky residue left behind from the weld with that light oil has helped tremendously in my experience. It also goes without saying, I make sure to have the corners of my chisel polished off to help cut down on the gouging. After I put my grind in I like to do a quick like hit on the belt sander with a scotch brite belt just to softer the edges slightly. Maybe I'm just getting lucky but hopefully it works out for you as well!

And no on the wiping while its still hot. I usually just wait until its warm to the touch or it changes the appearance if you go in and wipe right after you laid the weld.
 
Great info thanks for that. I'm not an amazing welder by any means, but I have pretty consistent rhythm and torch control. My struggle is I've always circled back to welding dry (besides some tip dip just to keep the consumables happy) because the spatter sprays I've tried in the past have left that annoying residue that then requires cleanup of its own. Trying to reduce the amount of time spent cleaning dingleberries, I'll definitely be giving that spray a try. From some quick google searching it doesn't seem to be the most "off the shelf" stuff, but worth it if it works :beer:
 
Great info thanks for that. I'm not an amazing welder by any means, but I have pretty consistent rhythm and torch control. My struggle is I've always circled back to welding dry (besides some tip dip just to keep the consumables happy) because the spatter sprays I've tried in the past have left that annoying residue that then requires cleanup of its own. Trying to reduce the amount of time spent cleaning dingleberries, I'll definitely be giving that spray a try. From some quick google searching it doesn't seem to be the most "off the shelf" stuff, but worth it if it works :beer:
Yeah, not easy to find from what I could tell searching.... I'd like to give it a try too...assuming I can find it.
 
a tig welder is the best solution to eliminating the marks from dingle berries
Agreed, been using this method for years now. One could weld 3 different materials with one gas and a flick of a switch. Well, and swapping a tungsten if switching to aluminum but still. Also could weld around parts without worry like seats. I am excited to give this a shot though and see if it works as well for me.

And no on the wiping while its still hot. I usually just wait until its warm to the touch or it changes the appearance if you go in and wipe right after you laid the weld.
Thanks for including this. Tells me either your gun position is magical/ spot on or the anti-spatter you posted is what's helping the chips break easier. Can I ask what welder your using? Wire? Gas?

From some quick google searching it doesn't seem to be the most "off the shelf" stuff, but worth it if it works :beer:
Over the years I've noticed all the good stuff that actually works is NOT going to be found at your local auto parts store, maybe a higher end auto paint shop or a welding/gas shop. And don't expect to spend less that $30 a can.
 
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I use a Licoln power MIG 255 (.035) at work and a little Hobart 187 (.030) at home. The Hobart definitely puts out more spatter but its not terrible. Kinda odd but the Lincoln likes it more when I pull the puddle and the Hobart likes to push lol I can't explain that one.

Talked to my boss and I guess we have Central welding special order it to the store that's close to us in Auburn, Washington. So if anyone is wanting to order they may have some. The other stuff a lot of the guys use is the Best Welds brand. It honestly works better, but you're gonna be left with the sticky residue to clean up.

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Enough about anti-spatter spray 😆 I had designed everything including the knuckle before messing with any metal, but apparently I deleted all the photos of the modeling. Similar to the inner C I ran a FEA on the knuckle to compare with the factory one in multiple different loading scenarios. The knuckle was a lot more tricky than the inner C as one would imagine... I tried to keep it as small as possible, not too much heavy plate, and relatively easy to build. Everything on the housing has facets so I didn't wanna start throwing in big radius formed plate to clash with everything else. However, the hard brakes bring hot spots so it was a lot of fiddling around with inner gussets and material thickness to get everything to jive.

The knuckle is made up of all .250" material and .375" from the side plates. The upper and lower ball joint housings started as 1.250" cold rolled bar. Made a basic hole pattern and a key slot for a hi-steer arm to bolt on and had a program done to run on the mill at work. Unit bearing pocket is a standard TG unit with the brake ears cut off (way easier to do it this way). Every weld you see on the knuckle has a TIG root with a MIG cover.

Basic tool for the knuckle

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Upper and lower pre-assembled and welded up

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Test fitting on the housing for the first time

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Steering arm proto before ordering material and the test fit with double sheer arm.

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This is not the correct hardware, but too anxious to not bolt it up. Arm was designed to use 12pt 5/8-18 bolts.

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what ball joints are you using?
Spicer. I was thinking of doing eliminators, but was curious how the install would be with factory parts and I can always do eliminators down the road.
 
Beautiful work.

Do you have weights on the Cs and knuckles?
I do not sadly. In my excitement I didn't get them on the scale. I can do a mass analysis on SW though which is pretty damn accurate. Maybe figure in 1lb for wire for the combo of Knuckle and inner C combined.
 
Arms all machined and bolted up. Opted to make a weld in sleeve to correct the 12.5deg so I didn't have to start with such a large piece of stock material. Since we don't have a 5-Axis at work this was the easiest way to go about it and only had to build one set of soft jaws to hold the angle while the hole was punched in.

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You work for Morrison?
Yeah, had to give a little AME flare haha After all, I've gotten to use a lot of resources that aren't accessible to a lot of people. Very fortunate with all the equipment at my fingertips. Lots of lunches and breaks filled with modeling and favors asked among coworkers. I can run the Lathes pretty good, but the Mill I leave to the experts haha
 
the fucked up thing about the thread title is in my mind this was gonna be a hodge podge 609 that i could do . but now we see all this kick ass work it is far from hodge podge....

amazing it is.... :beer::beer:
 
the fucked up thing about the thread title is in my mind this was gonna be a hodge podge 609 that i could do . but now we see all this kick ass work it is far from hodge podge....

amazing it is.... :beer::beer:
Right?! I mean I could do a killer 609 bit it wouldn't have this level of cleanliness.
 
Finally got my dad's Commando finished up so I had room to get my jeep back at my place. First order of business was to bring everything home from work and start tearing down the jeep. I went with Spicer 35 spline stubs, Dutchman inners, and Spicer u-joints.

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Punched out the unit bearing at work for the 35 spline shafts and redrilled for the 5x5.5 pattern. Also, whipped up some bushings to accommodate the new larger shaft. Curious to see how the long these hold up and if I'll be needing to swap to a bronze bushing.

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A little side by side comparison with the old vs new.

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Pulled ram off to get it situated on the new housing.

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New end links welded up

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After getting the ram roughly situated, I needed to adjust the elevation slightly to get the arms straight at lock. Instead of doing a bunch of grinding and dropping the entire mount I just milled roughly .250" off the ram mount.

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Based on where the ram fell in relation to the center section I couldn't use the clamps on the two outer locations. My OCD kicked in and decided to use the inners and whip up some ram stops as well to keep everything looking symmetrical.

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