Which welder

Well for a range of opinion from people who've used them then register on migweldingforum.co.uk & read a bit & watch the videos. It depends on how much money you've got (or the extremely low chance you've got 3ph from your storage heating), personally I really like the tiny R-Tech mig welder I've got, whatever you buy think carefully about the gas, the little bottles get expensive very fast.

People will give different advice about brands etc, but simple advice I'll give is "get one with a Eurotorch ".

I have a SIP Migmate 130 (which many won't recommend, but I find it a distinct improvement on my previous Clarke). When the swan-neck failed I found it had to have a whole new gun at £60! (Clarke MIGs and Eurotorches have replaceable swan-necks at about a tenner). For a few £££ more I got a Eurotorch conversion - this transformed the usability of the welder and gives the added advantage of a 4 metre pipe so I don't have to keep moving my welder.

I'm more than happy with the modded SIP, and I do a lot of welding (my VW camper is the only car I haven't had to weld yet but I do need a gearbox!)

Have a look here:

- he's local to me, so I go tohim and he knows what he's talking about. Competitive on price too.

I had a mig (170A, IIRC) which served me well enough. I think it cost me about 70 quid (s/h), and possibly something similar for the gas/rental (I got a big tank to use with it). Easy enough to get to grips with on heavier stuff; welding thinner material took more practice.

Main gotchas were my having a mask with a fixed screen (offer welding tip up to material, then can't see a bloody thing until trigger is pressed :-) and gaining enough access to the material being welded (sides of vehicles a doddle, undersides not so much without a car lift or inspection pit)

cheers

Jules

Search past posts, this has been done to death

You need a wire-feed MIG welder. Manual stick is cheaper, but no use for bodywork. You can use gas too, but it's harder and much slower. Handy for shaping though.

Cheap MIGs are grim, as their wire-feed is poor. Cebora or Butters are about the cheapest you'd be happy to use. Murex have a Tradestig 141 that is getting a good reputation and is about the cheapest of all the useful ones.

Gas needs to be an inert mix, not CO2. This means either disposable (pricey!) or renting a cylinder from BOC et al. This is a real pain in the UK 8-(

Get an automatic helmet. fantastic things. Also a leather jacket (dirt cheap, really useful under vehicles) and a bright floodlamp. Angle grinder, wire wheel, flap disks etc. & the obvious safety kit. You can never have too many clamps.

Night school is good. You need to be "told how to weld" (5 minutes, a book will do it) and then practice a lot. Don't practice on the vehicle you're trying to fix. You need a wheelbarrow full of small mixed clean scrap, then after you've welded that into a solid lump you'll be getting the knack of it. Once you're half-decent, you then need to start sawing your welds in half and testing them to see how they really are. A good book on welding in general is Gibson's "Practical Welding",

The theory of wire-feed is vital to understand:

• Constant voltage, not constant current (so the arc length is self- regulating and you can do what you like about wire stick-out).

• Transfer modes. Spray transfer (very good, needs the power up) Dip transfer (good, what you have to do with thin sheet, bit tricky to get right) Globular transfer (that thing with the pigeons that most amateur welders favour, definitely bad)

You learn by winding the dials up and playing with spray transfer on thick stuff, then learning subtlety (lower power and dip transfer) later on.

Shaping replacement panels is another story. Fortunately Beetles and campers are both nice thick steel, nothing too weird and have good panel availability.

Gas is very expensive and a good compromise is to use gasless wire. It does spatter a lot more, but after cleaning up the weld is more than adequate.

Its not that easy to use on car bodywork though as it tends to cut through .

eh? IIUC on thin sheet gasless MIG wire is worse than MIG wire with seperate gas? - how so?

Cheers Jim K

Its down to conductivity of the shielding gas. You can get differing ratios of argon, CO2 and O2 depending on thickness of material and depth of weld.

I concede that the shielding gas is better than "gas" from gasless wire, but its effect can be offset by using a lower welding current.

...yebbut..... he is specifically referencing thin material (car bodywork).... why do you and he believe it's *harder* to weld thin stuff with gasless wire vs gas and ordinary wire?

Cheers Jim K

Thin metal is prone to "blowing" holes, but only if very thin and ought to be plated anyhow. With gasless you may have to reduce current wrt gas to stop this. It also depends on feedrate, charcteristics of welder (current vs voltage) and the skill of the operator.

I find gasless is more tolerant of unclean metal, it's also largely unaffected by wind. Each to their own.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Fredxx" saying something like:

Another plus for gasless is it just sits there, ready to use. You don't need to worry about a gas bottle or rental or any of that shit. The downside is it's a bit harder to use at first, but it rapidly justifies its existence when in use. I have a small gasless set for odd use and it's fine for a lot of things when I can't be arsed with farting around dragging a bigger set around. The wire is more expensive, but not a big deal, really.

Gasless wire also has less metal in it for twice the price.

If you add up the cost of gas and normal wire I guess its probably not far different to gasless wire.

Depends on how much you are prepared to pay, small hobby Mig welders which will be ok for car body panels run from £180 upto £500+ for a Portamig 185., i would decide how much you can afford and the ask on  migweldingforum.co.uk which as another poster has said is _the_ place for informed advice. If you have never used one before you need to practise and get your technique perfected before you even think of starting on the VW. unlike this chap  

Gasless is hotter so you get more penetration, a lot of  Migs start at 30amp which will just blow holes in

Are you using the right welder polarity?

You can fit a Clarke swan neck to the SIP. You then have to use the Clarke shrouds, but everything else is the same.

One tip is to use anti-spatter spray into the nozzle. Tips etc last much longer then.

You can get a secondhand TIG welder for about £350. They rock!

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Mark saying something like:

WTF? He's welding in a complete suspension turret with shit welding like that? And look at the cut lines.

Madness.

I've read an number of articles which suggest it doesn't make much difference and that its more the current/voltage characteristics which are more important.

My MIG is wired for gas, and my understanding the ideal polarity is the reverse for gasless wire, yet I can make satisfactory welds. If you have an alternative experience I would like to hear them.