CRD upgrade

[5oclock]

Yes weld distortion makes things difficult. What helps for me is to tack weld every thing first, then go back and do longer welds. But it helps to keep the welds short. I had to make a new gun safe a while back out of 6mm plate and that was a headache with distortion.
Keep up the good work JoergM.

[Straubz]

as mentioned tacking and smaller beads help with the distortion and warping, another thing that you can do before welding to the diff is put some downward pressure on both ends of the diff so when it cools it will be close to straight, i have seen this done with a bottle jack under the center and chains to both ends, altho you need to be careful with the alloy centre.
found this thread demonstrating what i mean.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/technical...axidrives.html

[JoergM]

Originally Posted by Straubz

as mentioned tacking and smaller beads help with the distortion and warping, another thing that you can do before welding to the diff is put some downward pressure on both ends of the diff so when it cools it will be close to straight, i have seen this done with a bottle jack under the center and chains to both ends, altho you need to be careful with the alloy centre.
found this thread demonstrating what i mean.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/technical...axidrives.html

Yeah, i hear you. I was tack welding the plate first before I laid down some additional beads. I tried to keep the lines short and then start on another end. I even used compressed air to cool the beads down. I am not really sure what it was because when I was welding the front wall, it did not warp anything. I guess it was the rather small area and I was using a clamp keeping the 2 plates tight together and potentially of fo the beads which was somehow causing some misalignment since it was sticking out and might cause some issues underneath which I was not able to see.

Nonetheless it is all good now and the truss sits flush and level. I just need to weld it onto the axle after I have painted it .

Thanks for the link, however, not sure if I can achieve what is explained in the posting. And it looks like there was a lot of welding on one smaller spot. I guess I will do rather short beads and take my time and let things cool down and use compressed air to cool things down immediately.

[Adrian D]

Originally Posted by JoergM

Thanks Adrian, yeah I am using way thicker metal. the top bride is 10mm and the side walls are 6mm. Typically you find around 8mm for the bridge and around 4mm on the side walls.

And you are right, the plasma cutter is worth every penny. Not so much on straight lines where you can use an angle grinder as well but when it comes down to round cut outs or tight spaces or as in my case if the material is really thick and it takes forever with a saw or a file.

Even for straight lines it's amazing.

I'm making repair panels for MX5's out of 2mm thick sheet metal and every time I started a new lot, cutting up the raw 1/2m sheet was a pain. Grinder takes forever, makes a lot of dust and noise and uses up lots of cutting wheels, the shear has to be bolted in place, needs two people, one to hold the sheet in place and one to cut and the panels end up slightly distorted.

With the plasma it's a piece of cake. Lay the sheet, put a straight edge, cut.

[Adrian D]

Short beads are ok, I welded the rear truss with the axle still under the car, when I took it in for alignment, the rear camber was spot on, so no bending.