Over the weekend My wife and I went to Octoberfest in New Florence, Missouri which has a small swap meet as part of the event. I found a few interesting parts to buy but on the way home, I ended up doing some trading with a good friend and part of what I took in was a set of six pin Halibrands. One of them has a crack in it so now I need to find somewhere to have it fixed. Does anyone do that anymore? I'd like to eventually put them on something.
If you can weld aluminum, you can weld magnesium. I repaired my own. Be sitting down when you try to buy welding rods though. Last time I bought some it was $149 per pound. I got it off of eBay, no one seems to stock it around here. There’s a few good tutorials on the internet. None of the local wheel repair or welding shops around here would touch them, “we don’t have the proper fire extinguisher “ but there’s really very little if any danger in welding on a wheel. The danger is in working around filings and very very thin mag. Do any filing or sanding in another area far from the welding area. Depending on where the crack is, you might not want to run the repaired wheel on the street, especially at highway speeds.
@B*** did a thread years back showing how it's done. As mentioned it is not hard. The shavings and dust from grinding and sanding is like having a phosphorous bomb on your workbench tho
Thanks bchctybob and Tman. I may have to give it a try. A friend has a junk one that we can practice on. I ***ume the rods comment means I'll need to borrow a stick welder. I gave mine away after I got used to my mig.
I had this one go away on my 28 Mercury on the I-15 outta Vegas going to Bonneville about 15 years ago. I don't know anything about welding, but my neighbor across the street was a certified aircraft welder and said he could fix it. I spent some time finding whatever the alloy was (92% or something) and trying to find someone to sell me the alloy. All I found was 94%? or something and cost a minimum of $400 back then and he begged off. I kept asking around and found a guy who owned Stanton Welding in Stanton. Al Simon told me he could weld pot medal and did for when he worked for Boyd. I took the wheel down there and the guy apologized that he couldn't do it while I waited as he was on a big job. I mentioned Bonneville and he thought I was going to use it there so he wouldn't do it. I convinced him it was just a driver. Came back and he surprisingly charged me $75 or so. He said the sprint cars busted them up all the time in the "old days". He said it had some voids as he was welding and that's what lead to the failure. Luckily I found 2 of the pieces that looked like wheel weights the gas station. They were a lot lighter. I put it on the sedan and dressed it up with a file using the motor turning it off the ground. I rationalize that it's now in better shape than it's ever been the last 30 years.
Try your local welding shop…my friend up here can weld it..if ya really wanna ****, look up welding rod for Stellite..$$$$ they might be able to fix it for less than you buying the rod
I'll second that dust and filing danger comment. Back in the 60s I decided to make a 1/24 scale top fuel slot car. In that era the best cars used Pittman 85 motors, 64 pitch spur gears and 1/16" thick x 1" wide magnesium frame rails. The rails were ridiculously light to begin with but you needed to Swiss-cheese them with lightening holes. I did the deed and having heard how combustible magnesium is, I decided to try an experiment. I piled the shavings on a 1/4" thick piece of aluminum plate and set it in the middle of Dad's wooden shop floor. I lit it with a match and it instantly lit up with the brightness of the sun. Realizing the shop likely wouldn't survive this conflagration, I grabbed a nearby shovel, scooped up the experiment which by this time had ignited the aluminum plate and burned half way thru the 3/4" wood floor, and hurried outside and buried the mess. Luckily my reading said the only way to stop such a fire was burial to starve it from oxygen. Only tasks left were let my eyesight return and discuss the ramifications of the burned spot in the floor with Dad.
The Jalopy Journal
