19 replies to this topic

[smitims]

Hi all,
I've got some welding to do, front end repair on my 1275 GT.
I've never welded before, but have heard MIG welders are the easiest to use and give the best results? Would you say thats true?
And also, does anyone know if this welder is worth the price, or whould i save up and get a dearer one?
I dont want to get a cheap one just to save money only to find out its utter sh*te!
http://www.screwfix....equestid=229435
Many thanks in advance!
Tristan

[smitims]

I only went and added the wrong link for the welder didnt I... plonker... lol
This is the MIG welder in question!!!
http://www.screwfix....lder-150a/30030
Cheers

[leigh21]

i have just been looking at this one today and would like to know the same please.

[Shifty]

Utter junk and only useful for welding gates.

The min current on that is 60a, way too high for rusty minis, you need a min current of 30amps

Save your money and look elsewhere.

[garrett3]

I have one of these myself.

I opened mine up and had a fiddle to get the minimum down as its just too hot for thin metalwork.
Bloody good unit now though

Unless you are very good with fast welding etc then this is no good for minis/cars

[smitims]

Thanks very much for your advice!

[zebidee]

I'm in the same position, check here for some good tips. They also have a section on recommended welders

[998dave]

machinemart have a good cheap welder or two that'd be enough for hobby work.

Dave

[PaulColeman]

I'm certainly no expert on welding but I had a £150 MIG from Machinemart and it was crap. To be fair, welding is most definitely not my forte but I couldn't wait to get rid of it. If I were going to buy another welder I would get a TIG, particularly for thin metal. I was very good at blowing big holes in the panels I tried to weld which was a combination of thin metal due to rust being removed from the panels making them thinner and too much current. My biggest gripe with 'cheap' MIG welders is that the wire feed is never that good.

Like I said I'm no expert just my personal experience.

Paul.

[AVV IT]

I've just started to learn to weld and recently replaced my first panel on a mini. I also did a fair bit of research and asking around, both here and elsewhere before buying. From all this advice and my experience so far I've learned that welding is difficult enough to pick up with a decent gas MIG welder and proper accessories. Basically if you try to cut corners, or do it on the cheap it will go from difficult to learn, to virtually to impossible and you will simply give up.

So to make it as easy as it can be, then get yourself a decent MIG gas welder, the Clarke 135 Turbo seems to be the most popular here, but I actually chose the Sealey Supermig 140 in the end, which seems to be of similar quality. Throw away the hand held mask that comes with the welder and get yourself a decent full face decent auto darkening helmet. Also invest in a refillable argon/co2 bottle and regulator, this not only makes quite a difference to your welds, but also the disposable bottles soon become very expensive as they only last a few minutes.

EDIT: A decent pair of welding gauntlets and a thick pair of overalls are also a very good investment if you don't want to get burned. I also discovered that a fire extinguisher is a very handy thing to have, if you don't want your mini to go up in flames the first time you go near it with a welding torch!!

Edited by AVV IT, 29 June 2011 - 07:01 PM.

[sonikk4]

I'm certainly no expert on welding but I had a £150 MIG from Machinemart and it was crap. To be fair, welding is most definitely not my forte but I couldn't wait to get rid of it. If I were going to buy another welder I would get a TIG, particularly for thin metal. I was very good at blowing big holes in the panels I tried to weld which was a combination of thin metal due to rust being removed from the panels making them thinner and too much current. My biggest gripe with 'cheap' MIG welders is that the wire feed is never that good.

Like I said I'm no expert just my personal experience.

Paul.

A lot of the problems with wire feed apart from the speed is that the roller that feeds the wire has two different sizes, normally .6mm and .8mm wire. If this is not set up correctly, the clamping pressure and also as i found out my 135TE did not like the 1kg spool of wire as the wire feed angle was too acute but changing over to a 5kg spool cured that problem.

It does take time and patience and practise is everything.

[Cooperman]

EDIT: A decent pair of welding gauntlets and a thick pair of overalls are also a very good investment if you don't want to get burned. I also discovered that a fire extinguisher is a very handy thing to have, if you don't want your mini to go up in flames the first time you go near it with a welding torch!!

The fire extinguisher is an absolute must. I once set fire to my garage whilst MIG-welding and without the large foam extinguisher I would have lost everything!
If welding on a complete car, it's a good idea to have an assistant as a 'fire marshal'.
You just can't be too careful.

[jamiestevenbell]

dont you actually get a better weld if your gas weld? with oxygen and acetylene?

[ibrooks]

Oxy-acetylene is easier to get nice neat welds with as it doesn't happen as quickly and you're adding the wire by hand but...... it takes a long time to get the heat into the area you want to weld and that means it trasfers to the surrounding area and you get lots of distortion. Electric welding gets the metal almost instantly up to temp so unless you spend ages with the arc in one place you aren't putting anywhere near the amount of heat into the area.

TIG versus MIG. TIG is much slower than MIG and it'll take you ages to do the same work - using gas all the time at a higher rate and it's got to be Argon which is more expensive. MIG with a decent machine and a little bit of practice/understanding as to what's going on is far better for most car work.

Iain

[PaulHam]

I bought that welder from screwfix, arrived and it looked like parcelforce had thrown it out of the back of the van! But I was very impatient and needed to try it out!
Build quality feels good (I would say better than my Clarke unit) but after reading reviews online and finding out about the high minimum current I took it back to screwfix for a full refund and bought a Clarke 151te from Forthtools, for abit cheaper than machine mart!

Just have to learn how to use it properly now!

Paul