English Wheel and Other Excitement

Continued from last weeks cut out... I had time to fab up and weld in the patch to the luggage shelf on the passenger side (the area behind the rear seat).

This is the patch tacked in

and the patch welded and ground down

I've wanted an English Wheel for quite some time. Last week I was in Harbor Freight looking for a pushbroom and grinding discs. I had seen an E Wheel in there before but I wasn't willing to spend $400 to find out if I liked it. They had them on sale for $200+89 for the additional lower dies. $300 I thought was cheap enough to give it a try. Of course they didn't have any in stock so I got a rain check. I called the two HF stores in my area yesterday and one of them had one unit in stock, so I went and picked it up. I bought 3" casters from Lowes and started assembling the wheel. I started the modifications right after assembly http://www.jamesriser.com/Machinery/EnglishWheel/Finally.html

I drilled and tapped a hole for the quick release to rest on, then started shaping a piece of metal to replace a horrible lap weld the PO installed.

E-wheel assembled (casters are a MUST)

this piece took about 5 minutes to wheel and fit the contours perfectly.

Bad section removed

New patch tacked
Patch welded in.

I was a bit too aggressive and I welded 4-6 tacks at a time and expanded the metal a bit. I'll have a fair amount of dolly work ahead to straighten out the welds even though the patch fit perfectly before I started to weld... Lesson learned - WELD SLOWLY and move around. Don't run a bead even 3/4" at a time!

I hammered out the bead from the panel I made with the planishing hammer and rolled it for awhile on the E Wheel. Here is the result. I need to work on the beads, but the surface of the panel is much better than it was with the planishing hammer.